Like all of your old Atari games, "Alone in the Dark" should be tossed aside.
After seeing this movie, which is based on an old Atari game, I understand many of the reasons why the gaming system is no longer around.
Director Uwe Boll is responsible for bringing back to life this old video game through the use of terrible acting and an unbelievable storyline. The film also failed to help bring back the careers of Christian Slater, Stephen Dorff and Tara Reid. It only helped in adding another notch in their belts of bad movies.
After working many years with a paranormal section of the U.S. government called 713, Edward Carnby (Slater) leaves to do some detective work on his own. He searches the far corners of the earth, and discovers some artifacts that lead back to an ancient Native American tribe called the Abkani, who worshipped evil reptile-like demons that live in a dark world. Amazingly, Carnby and these demons share a strange connection that traces back to the orphanage that he was raised in.
Luckily Carnby finds a person who knows and studies the ancient Abkani tribe and who he also happens to date. Anthropologist Aline Cedrac (Reid) is a museum curator who handles all the Abkani artifacts that come into the museum.
As more Abkani artifacts are discovered, strange things begin to happen. One night all of the people who lived with Carnby in the orphanage up and disappear. We later come to find out that the nice nun at the orphanage was not so nice after all, and all of the children were implanted with a sort of bug that attached to their spines and took over their nervous systems.
It turns out that the agency 713 is not all it is cracked up to be. Along with hunting and protecting people from the paranormal, they also do experiments on orphans. These bugs were used to take control of the children and turn them into some kind of zombie to do their bidding.
As weird as that sounds, Commander Richards (Dorff) of 713 knows nothing of these experiments and decides to join forces with Carnby and Cedrac in their hunt to stop the zombie people and the invading army of evil demons.
If that sounds confusing to you, then we're all on the same page, because I did not know what the hell was going on half the time. I think, to take the viewer's minds off the bad acting and terrible story, they decided to just make things as confusing as possible.
They might fool others, but I saw straight through it and unfortunately right into the bad acting. Slater has never really been a favorite of mine, and this movie just makes things worse between us. The whole hardcore attitude that he displays in every movie just does not sit well with me. Dorff and Reid aren't much better. After "Blade" I only see Dorff as a vampire and Reid always seems like an idiot, no matter how smart of a girl she is supposed to be.
I felt like this should be shown on daytime TV along with all of the other junk they play when no one is home to watch it. I would not recommend going to see this movie, not even if you are the biggest Christian Slater fan.
I would give "Alone in the Dark" one out of five pitchforks, and that's more of a pity point.
Reach the reporter at brian.kirshman@asu.edu.
