Alone In The Dark

There is enough hatred aimed toward poor Uwe Boll on the net already. To this end I will make but two comments. He has never, ever wanted to be Scorsese, and the man made two dreadful mistakes in his early years of directing. He edited cuts of the actual House of the Dead arcade game into the action scenes of the film and he allowed Tara Reid to be cast in Alone In The Dark.

While putting together artifacts from an advanced ancient tribe, many creatures are unleashed upon the world. Christian Slater and his girlfriend Reid get wrapped up in the middle of this just to find out that thanks to a government agency's experiments years ago at Slater's orphanage he is connected to the creatures.

As with Uwe Boll’s entire filmography, this one is based on a video game and feels as real. Christian Slater was kept on a short leash, Stephen Dorff has rare fits of overacting, and Tara Reid was, well, Tara Reid.

Much like Silent Hill and Resident Evil, the Alone in the Dark game had a narrative story structure that would make it an easy transfer to film. Unlike its peers, Alone’s plot is simple and directed with only one real surprise that even the gamers saw coming several hours prior to getting there. With all these flaws, why do I own this film, and why have I watched it more than once?

Even though it deals with things that go bump in the night and there were ample chances to make this a very creepy, dark horror film, it instead got the action treatment. Here’s the rub. It’s easier to make a good low budget horror film than a good low budget action film. This film feels like a throwback to the mid 80s when everyone wanted to make the next Die Hard or Commando. The dialog has flashes of genius. There are some dynamic action scenes that mask the bad the acting with flashy editing. Even Tara Reid only annoys me a third of the time. I love the fact that, on several occasions, when they are being chased by something that can kill them in seconds she is running at half the speed of smell.

I consider this a guilty pleasure film. I like it despite its flaws and I don’t really know why. As a bonus the film introduced a much larger audience to bands like Nightwish and In Flames. This DVD even included a handful of very rare music videos that are, arguably, better than the film.

The Nitty Gritty: Scale of 0 to 10

Camp Factor – 6 (Uwe Boll automatically gets a 3. tara Reid automatically gets 2. The commandos get another 1)

Gore – 2 (so many unused chances)

Creep Factor – 2 (Tara Reid trying act… creepy)

Nudity/Sex – 1 (one tasteful love scene)

Jump Scenes – 2 (even more lost opportunities)

Verdict: I am a gamer. I find myself watching most of Uwe Boll’s films. I enjoyed several. But there are only a couple that I ever go back to. By every standard, this is a horrible film, but I find myself putting it in every few months if for no other reason than to have a few easy smiles from a film that doesn’t require the synapses to fire.