READER REVIEW: Will anyone be ALONE IN THE DARK this weekend?

By: Patrick Sauriol
Date: Friday, January 28, 2005
Source: Eric Lurio

Opening today in theaters are two thrillers with supernatural stories, 20th Century Fox's HIDE AND SEEK and Lions Gate's ALONE IN THE DARK. Normally CINESCAPE will assign one of our crack film critics to go see an early press screening of a genre film, so that we can deliver to you the company's official review of said film for you to read on the movie's opening day. Buuuut...

What happened was that Fox went ahead and screened HIDE AND SEEK to critics earlier this week -- but there weren't any early screenings for ALONE IN THE DARK that our critic could get into -- or that were booked. What that means is that we can't give you our official opinion on the film. Fortunately, at the eleventh hour, we received a third-party review sent in by a longtime independent film critic who did manage to see ALONE IN THE DARK at an early showing, and who offered to send it in as a review sent in by a scooper.

So what did New York City-based film critic Eric Lurio think of director Uwe Boll's latest horror film? Read on and find out (unless you're Mr. Boll -- in which case, you might want to skip reading this story and move on to the next one.)

"Congratulations to Michael Roesch and Elan Mastai!!! These two fellows have managed to get their gawd-awful script produced!!!! Not only that, they got a distributor, too. I would say 'Good for YOU!!!' But this is such an astoundingly bad film that I'm not sure if this sort of achievement should be celebrated.

"This film is based on a video game. Why exactly they would want to do that again after every other video game movie has bombed is a mystery, but they went ahead and did it anyway.

"We begin in ol' BF, where a bunch of orphans have been kidnapped by an evil scientist and an evil nun, that is except for one, Edward Carnby(who'll grow up to be Christian Slater), who is hiding in an electrical generator of some sort in a shed. Cut to the present day, where Edward is now a retired paranormal investigator who's looking for artifacts from lost Atlantis, called Abskani as even the morons this film was made for wouldn't believe it. Having found same, our hero returns home, where somehow the evil Professor Hudgens (William Sanderson), has found out what he's got and sends an immortal baddie to kill him.

"This would be at least fun if the chase was done right, but it's not, and as we've been giggling at the horrible dialogue since the opening scroll [I've not heard such gaffaws since at least BATTLEFIELD EARTH], it's difficult to stop now.

"Our hero then goes to the local Indian culture museum, which is run by our hero's old flame, Dr. Aline Cedrac (Tara Reid), who appears to be either half-asleep or on drugs. Now I've seen Ms. Reid in other stuff before, and she's a competent, and on occasion even good, but THIS...ewwwwwwwwwwwww...

"Then comes the marines. Okay, not the marines, but the top secret branch 713, which are kind of like Ghostbusters with rocket launchers. Why they come is that the monster from the other side, who've destroyed the Abkini ten thousand years before. It really doesn't matter what's going on, as we've got monsters who look like 'Alien XIV' and most of the film are our heroes and 713 leader Commander Richards (Stephen Dorff) fighting the monsters in an old abandoned gold mine.

"I'm amazed that the whole thing was so boring. They do this sort of thing rather well on STARGATE SG-1 so why can't these people? The ending makes no sense at all, which explains the title, which doesn't either.

"Others have said that Uwe Boll is the next Ed Wood. This may be a complement, if you think about it. Nahh....that would only give you a headache. In fact, the film will give you a headache. So avoid it at all costs."

[Believe it or not, Eric gave the film a 0.02 out of a possible 10. Yikes!]


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