UnowPriceless hyped garbage

CommentsXp Best movie ever!

FirstWitch A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Marva It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

chickenpek Based on a popular yet aged video game I was surprised to see this was even a thing seeing as I had never heard much about the old or later games.I was actually a huge fan of the latest Alone In The Dark game (2008) and I like Christian Slater as an actor so I was expecting to have an enjoyable lazy watch. However this was not the case with the very simple and bland script, visual effects that seemed very aged and the overall disappointing film.I could have afforded to go on a tangent or two with the characters and story and defiantly needed to be slowed down. It's defiantly not a film worth checking out.

Shilo January 28, 2005I think this film is going to get crushed because Uwe Boll directed it. He's the guy who adapts videos games into movies. He directed "House of the Dead" back in 2003 and now he has adapted "Alone in the Dark," a video game series set around the spooky and supernatural. "House of the Dead" was not that good and this picture is not that good either but it's not terrible. In short, I didn't mind it and I was entertained but I was left wondering a lot and I should not have been left in that state. I will decide whether to recommend the picture at the end.It's about, Edward Carnby (Christian Slater) who is a detective that specializes in the occult & strange occurrences. Carnby used to work for Bureau 713, a secret government organization that protects the world from paranormal activity and danger. When Edward discovers one of his friends he grew up with in an orphanage has disappeared, he discovers, Professor Lionel Hudgens (Matthew Walker) is planning something big and Carnby must stop him. Together with his ex-girlfriend, Aline Cedrac (Tara Ried) and Commander of Bureau 713, Richard Burke (Stephen Dorff), Carnby must race against time to stop the professor from re-opening a portal and releasing demonic creatures before it's too late.It opens with a cool narrative telling us about a group of mine workers who discovered the remnants of a long lost Native American civilization called, Abkani, in 1967. Shortly after, Abkani vanished from Earth without a trace. As a result, Bureau 713 was established to research and uncover the dark secrets of the Abkani. The director of the bureau, Archaeologist Lionel Hudgens began conducting gruesome experiments on orphaned children and the government shut him down. When the film begins, a team of people is looking for a runaway child. You guessed it, It's Edward Carnby. This opening serves as the core of the story as we learn revelations from it later on.I'm going to get this out of the way right off the bat. Tara Ried can't act. Her character Vicki in "American Pie" was a dumb ditz. She played the same character in "Urban Legend" and she plays the same character in this picture. I'm not being mean, I'm speaking from seeing her experience on screen. Now, I have played the game that this is based on and the character of Aline is smart and can take care of herself. Tara Ried's character cannot. She is always hanging in the background and she is cardboard with the role. Always in trouble and yelling for help. I'm sure Tara and her character will be another big target for this film but this is not about her. Now, what makes this picture interesting is the story. For a supernatural picture, it works and it's entertaining to see it unfold. Uwe Boll didn't do a terrible job with "House of the Dead" and it certainly showed he tried to make a good film. It seems to be the actors he uses are some causes of the problems and I don;t think I'm wrong about that.What's interesting is that Carnby has an interesting backstory to him. I think most of the films story is lifted from the latest game "Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare." There are a few similarities to the source material: The creatures thrive in darkness and can be harmed by the light or electricity. The creatures in the films are called Xenos. I believe there are some others sources from the earlier games but I'm not sure because I have not played them. So, the character of Carnby is most interesting. He was raised in an orphanage where he lost his memory when he was ten years old. Experiments were conducted on him and the children and because of this he has the ability to sense paranormal activity. He was electrocuted when he was a kid and that serves as a plot twist later on in the film. He finds himself investigating his own past which seems to have connections to Abkani, an ancient Mayan-like Civilization from another dimension who worshiped the demonic creatures that Carnby seeks to destroy.Aline works in the city's museum of history as assistant to Hudgens. She has a vast knowledge of the Abkani. The plot really becomes interesting when a friend Carnby grew up disappears in the middle of the night and Carnby finds that it's all connected. Now, the story might be fine but the action sequences are implausible, to say the least, and a sped up heavy metal soundtrack doesn't help much during an action sequence. The special effects are terrible. The acting is wooden and there are numerous mistakes in the editing. There's a sequence where a female soldier is killed but when the camera moves away, she lifts her head. Again, the actors he hires.The character of Lionel really works with the story. We don't know a whole lot about him. Maybe that's a good thing? He's really sick and twisted in his evil ways and he serves as a major part of the story. What doesn't work is the ending. Yes, there are numerous plot holes throughout and we are left wondering but what really drags the film is the ending. I was left wondering what happened myself. Stephen Dorff is wasted in the film. He reminds me of his police officer appearance in "Feardotcom" and you might as well believe it's the same character; dumb and stupid. We're led to believe there will be a sequel to this but I don't think so. For what's it's worth, it's not a terrible film but it's not good either. On that note, I don't recommend the film because of the numerous faults and the price you have to pay to see it but when it hits DVD, it's worth it to take a look it.

fbustamp Well, what can you say about a movie whose "soldiers" are equipped with paintball protections, even the weapons look like they are taken from paintball. This movie is a Mimic and Aliens rip-off, among others. Even the sex scene is really crappy . It amazes me how this Uwe Boll guy is still allowed to make movies, or even that he gets the money to make them. I mean, at one point, one of the dead "soldiers" starts moving before they change the scene. At least that made me laugh. This is the third movie made by Uwe Boll that I watch, the others two being "In the name of the king" and "1968:Tunnel Rats". They were both way worse, I didn't even get to laugh with those. I think that this Uwe Boll guy should make a last movie in which a character is send from the future to kill his mother before his birth, achieving such task, and then not make any more movies.

Leofwine_draca It was inevitable that I'd get around to seeing a Uwe Boll film sooner or later. The German director is widely regarded as a modern day Ed Wood, incapable only of churning out a string of god-awful genre flicks packed with bad acting, worse effects and a complete lack of talent. ALONE IN THE DARK is the title of a popular PC game that went on to spawn sequels and remakes on plenty of other computers and consoles, and this is the filmic adaptation. And it's a pile of pants.You know you're off to a bad start when the opening scrolling text begins. And then goes on. And on. And on. Basically there's more story condensed here than in the rest of the film, and that's because test audiences left confused, wondering what the heck the film was about, and the opening scroll was tacked on afterwards. Then, to my surprise, things got cheesy and quite a bit of fun. We meet up with Christian Slater, playing a muscular, vest-wearing hero type, and watch his encounter with a superhuman skinhead who leaps great heights and takes bullets with seemingly no pain or effect. Boll's direction is hyper and wannabe stylish, and this sequence is a hoot.Then things get really bad, with a muddled story about an evil professor, a museum relic that comes to life and a tactical unit of wannabe SWAT guys fighting monsters. The monsters are bad – half the creatures seen in HELLBOY, half THE RELIC – but the slithery worm things that live in people's spines are pretty neat, a nice gross out idea. The film moves on from there with a series of poorly connected set-pieces, all of them predictable and done to death a million times previously. There are explosions, shoot outs and a few mild gore scenes, although one shot of a woman's head split open is pretty near the knuckle.I find it difficult to dislike Slater. He has this nice guy persona in every film I've seen and he seems slick and cool here. Even the bit of crumpet on his shoulder (AMERICAN PIE's Tara Reid) isn't too irritating. Then there's Stephen Dorff, who I last saw in the awful haunted house movie COLD CREEK MANOR, and he isn't bad either, playing a hard-ass commander. Maybe Boll is better at directing actors than he is at directing stories.Anyway, things play out predictably, and it all washes over you with its inanity and pointlessness. Yes, this is a bad film. Is it one of the worst films ever? I doubt that. It's actually on the level of a Sci Fi Original movie, except with a higher budget. 'Pretty trashy' and 'nothing to get excited about' sum up this film nicely for me.