Is it ethical to plagiarize myself? I just wrote a review for the new Alien Vs. Predator DVD and everything that was said in that review applies to this one. In fact Alone In The Dark is at times a blatant rip off, homage to the Aliens Series, in terms of style and the look of their key monster. This is one of those films that’s hard to defend. Can I just say I liked this film for what it is, and end my review now? Guess not.
Alone In The Dark is loosely based on a cult video game series. The game series pushed the envelope of what 16-bit gaming was capable of. It was a beautifully animated but incredibly tough to play – it was a lot of style and no substance. Much like the game, the film looks gorgeous and had one moment in the film that was taken directly from the game that made me go “”Wow that is damn cool!”” Also like the game, the story is shallow and overly complicated for its simplistic purposes.
As near as I can tell, Edward Carnby (Christian Slater) is an paranormal investigator who used to work for a secret government agency called the 713, until he was kicked out or quit, and went independent. He holds an artifact that is the key to bridging the world of the light (our world) with the world of the dark – a world field with creatures that look like the Aliens from Alien.
There are tons of subplots that are so convoluted and confusing that they aren’t worth mentioning, and numerous things that just didn’t make sense. I don’t want to get into too many of them or they will spoil the film, but one of them is where the heck all of these monsters coming from?
Then there’s something about the aliens experimenting on kids, and that plot line being dropped at the end in favor of a “twist” that really doesn’t work with what happens immediately following that revelation. Christian Slater desperately needs a hit film and this isn’t going to be the vehicle that gets him back in the mix, but he does a fine job with the material he has, and he’s believable in this role.
Unfortunately he has to spend a lot of screen time with Tara Reid who plays Aline Cedrac, a doctor of Archeology (I think). Reid’s performance wasn’t horrible (for this type of film), but it wasn’t very good either. Her line deliveries were just laughably bad at times, the same goes for Stephen Dorff’s tough no nonsense, cliches.
I didn’t walk into this movie expecting to see The Godfather or The Player or Shindler’s List or academy award caliber performances. I walked in expecting to see a fun adaptation of a video game franchise that I had fond memories of. For the most part it delivered.