Alone In The Dark

Hmm, interesting cover: plain black with a picture of a human skeleton on it. Exciting, looks like a horror movie. Let's pop it into the DVD player and find out. The menu shows teeth and screaming. Yeah, it looks like horror. Cool.

On the menu a segmented worm slips into someone's mouth, urgh. Yeah, this is horror all right. So who's alone in the dark? Well, me for one. Hmm, ancient Native American civilisation, a gate to the dark dimension, lost artifacts, Bureau 713, secret experiments on orphans... ooh weird.

Then there's Edward Carnby (Christian Slater), a paranormal investigator with no memory. He has nightmares. Might he be one of the lost experimental orphans? Could be.

That's the first two minutes and the rollercoaster doesn't let up. The evil professor wants the artifacts. Carnby wants to know what's going on. He used to work for bureau 713. The professor still does and Carnby's girlfriend Aline Cedrac (Tara Reid) works for the professor. That's one heck of a set up, try to keep up.

A superhuman assassin, sent by the professor to recover the artifact, hunts Carnby. It is impervious to bullets and a pretty good fighter to boot. But Carnby is no wuss in the fisticuffs stakes, either, so there are some pretty good action scenes.

As far as the film goes, it all becomes a bit of a cliche when the bureau 713 SWAT team turn up to help Carnby and Cedrac hunt the Giegeresque demons in the museum. Of course, if you haven't already guessed, Alone In The Dark is a computer game tie-in, simillar to Resident Evil. And, of course, where would we be without the obligatory thumping heavy metal soundtrack? Don't worry that's present and correct. too.

Alone In The Dark features decent performances from the principal actors and the storyline is fairly good. There's no great moral, or spiritual message, and the ending is perhaps the weakest point, as we are left somewhat hanging. But director Uwe Boll has achieved his aim of making a "creepy, dark, suspense, action, horror movie". And if that's your bag, or you're a fan of the computer game, this just might be for you.