alonedark

I continually tell myself to stop seeing movies based on video games and films in which Tara Reid
has a crucial role to play. Yet, somehow I always find myself back in the theatre watching yet
another video game come to life or another Tara Reid vehicle. “Alone In the Dark” is the worst of
both worlds.

I knew I was in trouble when the film opened with a text crawl akin to “Star Wars,” except four times
longer and read aloud by a disembodied narrator. After the long-winded and poorly written
exposition, the film attempted to tell the story of a mad scientist who somehow convinced a nun to
give him orphans so he could turn them into scary creatures and one of the escaped orphans who
grew up to become a kind of “ghostbuster” with a grudge.

The grown orphan, played by Christian Slater, provided the film with an uninspired voice-over
narration to give the audience even more contrived exposition. Between the opening crawl and
Slater’s narration, the exhaustive attempts to explain the story over the film itself was a troubling
sign.

Slater’s character spends the whole film running around looking for clues to an ancient culture of
long-gone Native Americans called the Akani. At the same time, the evil scientist is also searching
for such artifacts for a purpose that is never fully explained. The mad scientist’s unwitting
assistant is Tara Reid, who also happens to be Slater’s girlfriend.

The contrivances don’t end there. Slater was once part of “713,” a secret task force that hunts
paranormal creatures. Now he’s a loose cannon, but he still needs 713’s help to solve the mystery
of his days at the orphanage, a mystery that the audience stopped caring about long ago.

Thus begins a roller coaster of plot holes, hokey lines, contrived action scenes, and inferior
performances from all the players. The faults of this film are too numerous to count, but it is clear
that the blame rests squarely on the shoulders of the director, Uwe Boll, and the literal team of
screenwriters who concocted this box-office poison.

Certainly, Reid is no master thespian, but I have seen better performances from Slater, who was
understandably on autopilot for this film. With inane plotting, and action scenes so stylized they
don’t make visual sense, the film careens over the finish line in an unceremonious heap and
leaves the viewer with scores of unanswered questions.

Why did the scientist want to make all these creatures? Why would a nun give him orphans? Why
didn’t this film go straight to video?

This is not even a good rental. The eventual DVD might make a great beverage coaster though.