Edward Carnby, detective of the paranormal, unexplained, and supernatural, investigates a mystery that brings him face to face with bizarre horrors that prove both psychologically disturbing and lethal. He discovers that evil demons worshiped by an ancient culture called the Askani are planning on coming back to life in the 21st century to once again take over the world… and only he and a young genius anthropologist stand in their way, at a literal gateway to hell.
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Billy: Alone in the Dark is a remarkably charming videogame. In it, you play as Edward Carnby, a supernatural investigator in an old house populated by spooks, scares, and goofy little skeleton-men. Unfortunately, Alone in the Dark movie is directed by… Uwe Boll. Which means a bland aesthetic erases anything I might have loved about this movie and replaces it with military-grade nothing. Fun fact: the military gear used in this movie was actually a product placement for paintball armour.
It’s so bland. So unimpressive. It hits beats that “a movie” feels it should hit, including a gratuitous sex scene scored with the most cliche music possible, likely only because the studio owning the track paid for the feature. It’s a workman’s movie, not a craftsman’s movie, and God does it show. Michael Bay once defended Transformers by saying it gave a lot of people jobs. I don’t even know if Uwe Boll would say that. I don’t think he sees the point of film other than to craft two hours audio and visuals in order to orchestrate the business end. He has, in fact, retired because he claims “the market is dead” and “movies don’t make money anymore”. Germany recently closed the tax loophole that allowed movies like this to exist. Thank God.
Amelia: For those that don’t know, Alone in the Dark is a classic game series that started on DOS with a point and click adventure/horror game. Check out ProJared’s Let’s Play videos on the first game if you’re interested in learning about the series that started beautifully but then turned into the shit we just endured.
We open on a huge text scroll that’s read aloud to us. It gives us a shit tonne of exposition that Uwe Boll isn’t capable of telling us through visual storytelling because he’s shit. I’m against all text dumps personally, and yes, that even includes everyone’s favourite Star Wars. It’s cheap. I hate it. It goes on for a minute and a half here. I especially hate that.
We also have narration. Another lazy man’s tool to get across story that should be told visually because, again, this is a movie. But Uwe Boll doesn’t know that, because he doesn’t make movies, he makes German tax write-offs.
Billy: For most of this movie’s runtime, I was just bored. I ended up looking for other things to do on my laptop, especially during the endless action sequences. I was pretty happy when Karin Konoval showed up as the nun, because I love her as Maurice in Planet of the Apes. She actually has a pretty interesting little character with a complex history, the burden of a mistake made long ago. Her mindstate is something that I would have loved to be explored in a better film. Alas, it wasn’t to be. Alone in the Dark also has Tara Reid as a sexy lady scientist, so make of that what you will.
Amelia: AHAHAHAHAHA TARA REID IS PLAYING AN “INTELLECTUAL” IN THIS MOVIE – THAT’S SO BELIEVABLE!
It’s like putting a pair of glasses on a turd and just trusting the glasses to make us think it’s smart or cultured. I total buy that Tara Reid understood the words she was reading off her script. She knows what pictographs are and has clearly studied them for years. No doubt.
Christian Slater is also in this movie. Looking for a quick and easy paycheque I assume, because there is no life, no charm, no nothing in his performance. I love Christian Slater. I’ve been madly in love with the man since I saw him in Heathers as a teenager. But here? Even with all that adoration over all those years, I will not defend him in Alone in the Dark. You have an established career, Slater. Why go to Uwe Boll? Did he have something on you? Indecent photographs or proof you’d murdered a transient in Alabama or some equally terrible shit you couldn’t have seeing the light of day?
Because I think having your name on an Uwe Boll movie might be worse than a sex tape coming to light.
Billy: The thing I can’t stand the most about Alone in the Dark is how shamelessly it steals from other movies without bothering to ask why it worked in the first place. Most hilariously, it seems to borrow its narration from Blade Runner, since Christian Slater brings all the enthusiasm of a tranquilized Harrison Ford to his line readings. Snark aside, the end sequence is clearly riffing on 28 Days Later, with the two characters wandering empty streets. It then takes a sudden heel turn to end the film on a parody of Evil Dead when the camera zooms ahead in a Raimi shot into the two actors’ faces. Nothing about the events of the film leads into this shot. It doesn’t make sense. It’s brainless, reasonless, and stupid.
Which isn’t even the worst theft it accomplishes! You know what wasn’t a horror movie? Aliens. It’s an action movie, forgetting everything about what made the original Alien terrifying. And that’s kind of what Alone in the Dark aspires to be, with its militaristic, rah-rah jingoism taking centre-stage in a movie that should have been about spine-monsters and a hidden dark dimension. It takes a lot to get me not to care about an alternate dimension. I live for that shit. Alone in the Dark made a big mistake, seemingly on purpose.
Amelia: I will admit here that I was the one that said we should do Alone in the Dark. To be honest with you, I was just curious to see a full Uwe Boll creation. I’d been hearing about the shitty man for years and have seen his movie House of the Dead dissected by YouTuber IHE in his “Search for the Worst” series, but I’d never been a firsthand witness to the abortive mess of a Boll movie. Now I have, and from the bottom of my heart, I am sorry. Billy, I am sorry. Readers, I am sorry.
Billy: Apology accepted. But the indiscretion has not been forgotten.
Amelia: I shudder to think what movie you’ll bust out to make me watch in retribution…
Billy: *pulls out Wonderful World of Disney original movie Mr. Boogedy*
Amelia: I… deserve this…
Spooky Verdict
Billy: Zero nothings out of nothing because this movie is nothing
I just want to apologize to our audience for the fact that we didn’t watch a movie today. We were supposed to watch Alone in the Dark, but we must have forgotten to do that because I honestly don’t remember watching a movie at all. Some pictures were on my TV screen and some sound came out of my speakers, but I assume that was some sort of AV troubleshooting. This wasn’t a movie. It just… happened.
Amelia: Zero nothings out of nothing because this movie is nothing
It’s just so fucking dull, guys. This isn’t a good-bad horror movie to enjoy like the remakes of The Haunting or The Wicker Man, this is just a bad-bad movie that got put under the horror genre because that’s where most of the bad-bad movies end up. Uwe Boll was literally making movies to write them off on his tax returns in Germany. I think the concept of art might go straight over the little fucker’s ugly head.
