Alone in the Dark Review
by Susan Granger (ssg722 AT aol DOT com)February 1st, 2005
Susan Granger's review of "Alone in the Dark" (Lions Gate Entertainment) Movies don't get much worse than this wannabe thriller about a rogue private investigator who specializes in supernatural phenomena. It's a total, absolute waste of your time and money.
Christian Slater stars, along with wide-eyed Tara Reid, who is improbably cast as a "brilliant anthropologist," an assistant museum curator who happens to be his former lover. In a bizarre world of stolen artifacts, lost civilizations, shadowy paranormal threats and clandestine government conspiracies involving a crazy scientist's secret experiments on orphaned children, they must battle deadly reptilian demons from the World of Darkness, creepy creatures whose very existence threatens all of humanity. Doom and gloom!
Unable to piece together a coherent story from the formulaic script by Elan Mastai, Michael Roesch and Peter Scheerer, German director Uwe Boll launches forth with a ridiculously long voice-over introductory prologue about the mysterious disappearance of the Abkani, an ancient Native American culture. After that, it's all violence. People pop up and get shot down, just like the popular Atari video game on which it's based. Along with the demons from beneath, there are also zombies. The U.S. back-up "troops" are led by Stephen Dorff, who screams inane lines like, "My guys are up there dying - for nothing!" But all the performances are quite incompetent.
Uwe Boll's horror film "House of the Dead" (2003), which was his American debut, was abominable too. While this should have gone direct-to-video, I still would not advise renting it. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "Alone in the Dark" is an abysmal 1. Chances are, you'll probably find yourself alone in the theater too.
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