Alone in the Dark Review

Alone in the Dark

So after house of the dead someone somewhere thought it would be a good idea to let Uwe boll make another movie and two years later we got Alone in the Dark. Could Uwe’s second film venture be better than his first or maybe worse? Well read on to find out

The plot for Alone in the Dark centers around Edward Carnby a paranormal investigator who used to work for a section of the government called bureau 713. Carnby gets pulled back in to help with a new threat which may be linked to events that happened to him as a child.

Ok another Uwe boll flick to review and to tell you the truth it’s not as bad as house of the dead and to some may not be as bad as all the critics have made it out to be. Don’t believe me? Well to bad I’m right and you’re stupid and if that’s not enough then read on.

First off this movie is somewhat of a sequel to the game alone in the dark the new nightmare not in any official since but going by the plot. I’ve read that originally the movie was supposed to come out with alone in the dark 5 but Eden games scraped the project and started from scratch which helps make the movie seem like it’s not following the games at all.

The two main characters are from the game where as in house of the dead we had none. A lot of the plot is taken from the game including the existence of a “dark world” and the fact that light and electricity hurts the monsters and there appearance is similar to the game monster. In the movie they have to close a gate of darkness which has to be done in the game.

The action for the movie is a lot better than house of the dead. For one the guns actually run out of ammo and when bullet time is used it’s done responsible. Remember directors always use bullet time responsible because too much slo-mo can ruin a movie *the more you know (star swipe)*. The moments that are supposed to be scary aren’t and I think it’s due to the fact the monsters are cg when in most cases mainly when it’s only one monster against one or 2 humans it could have been done with practice effects.

The acting isn’t bad for a boll movie with the exception of Tara Reid who in my book is just as useless as Paris Hilton and why she was given a role as an archeologist is beyond me. In fact I’ve read that most scenes with her in it where cut from the movie in the director’s cut version so props to boll for that one.

I ended up seeing this in theaters because until the movie was over I hadn’t realized it was done by boll if I had I would have waited until the DVD but personally I don’t think it was a waste of money for an action movie it’s decent it’s entertaining. The shoot outs offer some pretty cool scenes and with Carnby's increased agility and what not from the experiments it allows for suspension of disbelief.

The killing scenes are pretty good nothing horrible but nothing spectacular just your basic quadruped’s monster eats human and later we get 28 days later type zombies except they all seem to be like Spiderman and can jump around like crazy.
This is one of those movies that I’ve herd people say it has no plot witch frankly is a comment I never understood. No the plots not super deep or anything. I mean I could understand if they said little plot meaning that there was more action and fight scenes then plot development but I’m pretty sure it’s impossible for a movie to have no plot because for that it would have to be nothing but a collection of action sequences with no dialog.

There is something that was simply amazing about this movie and that’s the soundtrack. The sound track for this movie was great it was the first time I heard night wish but it has a huge collection of some of the greatest metal bands including Lacuna coil, arch enemy, fear factory, in flames, shadows fall and dimmu borgir plus a bunch others.

Overall the movie isn’t as bad as people make it out to be I think it gets a bad time because boll is attached to it it isentt the greatest but it is entertaining

How I would do it. Well there’s not much to be said here I haven’t played enough of the games to make an educated statement but I think I would have used practical effects instead of cg for the monsters and tried to make it scarier.

Overall the movie gets 5 out if 10 back flip bullet dodges. It was decent the action was ok and it wasn’t as bad as house of the dead.

The acting gets 5 out of 10 as well. Christian Slater and Stephen Dorff give decent performances but Tara Reid is horrible.

The plot gets 6 out of 10 it doesn’t follow any of the games specifically but had Eden games not changed part 5 it may have been different and it does seem like a sequel to one of the games.

And the content gets 5 out of 10. A few characters a few monsters and a few plot elements from the games are used but just like resident evil they turned a survival horror game into an action movie.

ok so I think I’m getting used to this new format and I’m liking how its working for me I’d like some feedback from anyone that’s actually reading this. Up next is doom then its right back to boll with blood Rayne. As of right now we are about half way through all the live Acton video game movies that are out there are three coming out this year and I plan on seeing all of them including the Chun-Li movie that comes out this Friday but my hope is by the end of the year if not sooner I will be caught up and able to do the reviews as the movies come out and there’s already 3 coming up in 2010 including Bioshock and prince of Persia.