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because it was so bad. I felt that I could not in good conscience allow many of the other reviews that have showered this travesty of a film in praise stand as the only accounts of the work.
I have been trying to think of a reason that someone would like this movie. I personally have a broad range of interests in film; I am obsessed with a lot of the current and older horror and slasher-type films in addition to blockbusters, documentaries, art films, and so on, but this film lacks appeal to any demographic I can think of. Film snobs obviously will think it sucks, but people who love a good campy horror film will be bored out of their mind as well. I saw shorts and full-lengths at the Philadelphia Terror Film fest last fall that had an eighth of the budget of this film, and they blew it away, so any commentary about the smaller budget Alone in the Dark II had is null and void.
I will cede that the first Alone in the Dark was pretty bad, but that a lot of people liked this film simply because it was not directed by Uwe Boll is beyond me. Perhaps we have traded out the bad from the previous film (actually, everything aside from the name has been taken out of the last film and the games), but what have we gained in return?
In this story, Edward Carnby has somehow transformed from Christian Slater into Rick Yune, whose only relevance to the Alone in the Dark universe seems to be his name. He accidentally gets stabbed by some crazy guy with a magic knife (it looks like a decorative butter knife), An immortal witch stalks Carby in "visions," and some random family and their animal husbanding friend decide to protect him owing to family history. Despite being Carnby's protectors, they threaten to kill him, some generic "captain of the guards" type goon talks tough to him, and everyone generally yells at him at a moderate volume; I've never seen so many people so angry at random things yelling so quietly. Then again, I've not seen many films with acting this bad.
What baffled me most of all about the reviews I read was the acclaim for Bill Moseley. I love a lot of things he has done, but a combination of the worst character and a general lack of enthusiasm made his role one of the least appealing parts of this film. He is constantly angry at the most moronic things (like at Carnby for getting stabbed and being hunted by an immortal witch), and deals with it by speaking loudly in a monotone at everyone.
The bottom line: the plot is stupid and barely justified, the script amateurish, the acting ranging from acceptable to atrocious, and there isn't even enough gore or jumps in the dark to make it fun to laugh at. As others have noted, nobody is alone because they all stand around in bovine-like herds, the sets are rarely very dark, and everyone unloads machine guns into the walls separating them from ephemeral ghost witches. Dumb.
score 1/10
thehandofguido 12 April 2010
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2235152/ |
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24-2-2021 12:08:18