List Price: $19.98 Our Price: $17.98YOU SAVE $2!
Buy it
DVD Alone in the Dark
As another entry in the video-game-to-movie genre, Alone in the Dark certainly delivers in terms of its splattering gore and number of things that get shot or blown up with the kind of arsenal familiar to any fan of games that allow the player to shoot or blow things up. You could argue that some game-based movies have been big successes--gauged either by audience appeal or box office scores. Even though a lot of hardcore gamers probably won't care, Alone in the Dark is not of that ilk. At least the Resident Evil and Tomb Raider series had some interesting characters and locations (not to mention sexy stars). But Alone in the Dark is crippled from the first by a mundane setting of caves, laboratories, and street-fighting backgrounds as well as a cast (including Christian Slater, Stephen Dorff, and Tara Reid) that couldn't be less interested in the overly complex plot. The absurdity starts right away with a long expository pre-title text crawl that carries all the gravitas of a "Monty Python" sketch intro. The gist of the plot has a group of scientists, special-ops military guys, and paranormal freaks and geeks investigating evil creatures that were once harnessed by an extinct subset race of Native Americans. Unleashed again, the creatures must be destroyed, which is where the video game blasting and attendant gore comes into play. Considering the cult following the game series carries (the first installment is over a decade old), Alone in the Dark could find a nice little life on DVD, but theater-goers might discover the title's a little too literal. --Ted Fry
Will someone in Hollywood eventually realize that Uwe Boll is utterly incapable of making a good movie? More to the point, that he's utterly incapable of making even a bad horror film? His action films are mediocre, but if you're filming horror videogames, perhaps you should look for a horror director, not an action director.
After being blindsided by the mindless-action fare that was House of the Dead, I at least managed to have an idea of what I was in store for with this schlockfest, though I did hold out some hope that a much higher-powered cast this time round would help Boll at least make a decent action film. No such luck.
Christian Slater stars as Edward Carnby, intrepid hunter of things that go bump in the night. Tara Reid is his girlfriend, Aline Cedrac, the stereotypically sexy bookworm holed up in the museum all the time (unless, of course, she's either having sex with the male lead or getting herself into some sort of danger). Stephen Dorff plays Richard Burke, a commander in the paranormal investigation team of which Carnby was recently a member. They're trying to find out what sort of odd, nasty monster is loose in the world and, of course, stop it.
Now, there's enough here to make a half-decent movie. Instead, what Boll delivers, much like he did in House of the Dead, is a mishmash, of other, better films. Those who have seen, especially, Resident Evil and Pitch Black will see a lot of similarities not just in the substance of the shots, but in the way those shots are set up. There wasn't an original thought in Boll's head the whole time he was making this movie. Even if Mastai (the writer on this project with the most experience-- his most famous script before this was for MVP: Most Valuable Primate II) had delivered a script that were actually worth anything, Boll would have found a way to screw it up.
Even though I should know better by now, I know I'm going to get sucked in again. Boll's next project, BloodRayne, scored the twin coups of getting both Michelle Rodriguez and Sir Ben Kingsley, either of whom could act rings around any ten actors in previous Boll releases. After that, he's got a Dungeon Siege adaptation coming out whose cast makes all three of the aforementioned Boll pics look like shoddy crapfests where all the actors were no-names working for half-scale. (Well, okay, House of the Dead was. But the point stands.). I know both are going to disappoint me just as terribly as this did. But, unfortunately, I keep seeing Boll movies like I keep not moving out of the country when we elect morons; they keep promising, and I keep hoping that someday they will actually deliver. Alone in the Dark fails spectacularly. *
should be titled, "bad acting in the dark."
do not rent this movie. i thank God i didn't waste my money/time when it was in the theatres. for some reason, the makers of this film thought that people would see tara reid as smart if they pulled her hair up and we'd see christian slater as tough if he portrayed a "jack nicholson" type character. oh wait, that's how he plays all of his roles. i had held out for hope, in chance that stephen dorf would make this less of a B movie. i was wrong. lines were forced, the story was hoakie, and characters completely unbelievable. waste of money and time.
Boll has ruined an historical game franchise
Boll ruined a great gaming franchise. That's all I can really say.
The original Alone In The Dark game was first released in 1992 and was praised for its incredibly rich plot, attention to details, and revolutionary 3D graphics at the time. It spawned 2 more standout, and much talked about sequels. The games took place in the 1920's and its main character was Edward Carnby, a Southern private investigator and a gentleman dressed in a dapper suit.
For years, I'd dream that a movie based off the games would some day come about. That dream has now been shattered by Uwe Boll.
Alone in the Dark is what spawned games like Resident Evil and the Max Payne series. Several years later, Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare - the 4th game - was released. It was set in modern times and consisted of a completely different Edward Carnby dressed like a goth and with the hair of a rockstar going around attacking demons in a haunted house of a madman. Needless to say, the game did poorly.
What's worse is that Uwe Boll decided to take the ideas of the revamped Alone In The Dark for his movie. All I can say is, even the poor 4th Alone in the Dark is far superior to the movie. The movie is just that bad.
I'm sure the movie would have been a lot better if another director was hired to make this movie. The acting, the plot, etc. do not give the games the reward they deserve.
Don't give this movie any reward! If you truly want to see an incredible work of art, play the original games. They are hard to find nowadays but seem to be available second hand on amazon.
Since movies began, thrillers have depended on a door just slightly ajar, with a narrow slit of darkness that promises to hold your worst fears. In the first five minutes of Boogeyman, a young boy's father is violently sucked into a closet, scarring the boy so badly that he grows up to be blank-faced Barry Watson (7th Heaven), who plays Tim, an editor at a newspaper or a magazine or something. Tim, to impress his girlfriend's parents, wears a coat and tie but doesn't shave his sexy stubble. A premonition of his mother's death drives him back to his childhood home so he can exorcise his phobias. From there...well, there's lots of atmospheric cinematography, regular jolts of loud music, and many quick edits. What actually happens is pretty obscure and, really, not worth... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Barry Watson - Emily Deschanel - Lucy Lawless Director(s): Stephen T. Kay DVD Release Date: Released the 31 May 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $19.94 Your Price: $15.95YOU SAVE $3.99!
Buy it
Despite an abundance of gaping plot holes, White Noise serves up enough spooky atmosphere to make it worth a look-see for fans of supernatural thrillers. Even when hampered with a shoddy, clumsily written screenplay, Michael Keaton brings professional conviction to his role as a grieving widower who is introduced to the mysterious (and according to paranormal researchers, highly documented) existence of EVP, or Electronic Voice Phenomenon, which allows the dead to communicate (one-way only, it seems) from the great beyond, through images and voices recordable on a variety of electronic media such as VCRs, computers, etc. Seeking contact with his recently deceased wife, Keaton finds dire warnings of evil in the afterlife, with connections (all too convenient) to killings and... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Michael Keaton - Deborah Kara Unger - Ian McNeice Director(s): Geoffrey Sax DVD Release Date: Released the 17 May 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $19.98 Your Price: $17.98YOU SAVE $2!
Buy it
Action buffs will have a fine time with the spray of bullets, shattering glass, and pyrotechnic silliness that makes up the bulk of Assault on Precinct 13. Updated from the little-known cops-and-robbers classic John Carpenter made in 1976 (two years before he made his name with Halloween), this high-concept thriller is mostly a lowbrow kill-fest, and is very happy with itself for being so efficient in both categories. A decrepit police station on its last night before retirement--New Year's Eve, no less--plays unexpected home to a gang of criminals who become snowbound in the basement lockup. Another mysterious gang of people who stealthily gather in the blizzard outside want one of the particularly nasty criminals (Laurence Fishburne) dead, and they'll take the rest of the... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Laurence Fishburne - Ethan Hawke Director(s): Jean-François Richet DVD Release Date: Released the 10 May 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $19.98 Your Price: $17.98YOU SAVE $2!
Buy it
It's not the scary hit that The Ring was in 2002, but The Grudge makes a similarly convincing case for American remakes of popular Japanese horror films. Barely a year passed between the release of Takashi Shimizu's creepy ghost story Ju-On: The Grudge and the production of this American remake, set in Tokyo and starring Sarah Michelle Gellar in her first post-Buffy horror film. About the only significant difference between the two films is the importing of a mostly-American cast (including Bill Pullman, Clea DuVall and Grace Zabriskie), but The Grudge was reconfigured (by screenwriter Stephen Susco) to allow Shimizu to refine and improve the spookiest highlights of his earlier version, which enjoyed previous incarnations as a short film and two... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Sarah Michelle Gellar - Jason Behr - Clea DuVall Director(s): Takashi Shimizu DVD Release Date: Released the 01 February 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $19.94 Your Price: $15.95YOU SAVE $3.99!
Buy it
When you consider its unfortunate production history, Cursed turned out surprisingly well as a werewolf thriller that horror buffs will appreciate. It's hardly the disaster critics made it out to be, but extensive rewriting, reshooting, recasting, and lengthy delays in production and release (including the elimination of R-rated gore to earn a PG-13 rating) clearly took their toll. The result is a fun but flawed monster-show that begins when a young talk-show producer (Christina Ricci) and her teenaged brother (Jesse Eisenberg) are bitten by a werewolf, setting the stage for a horror-in-Hollywood scenario that reunites director Wes Craven and screenwriter Kevin Williamson, creators of the Scream franchise. What could have been a classic horror comedy is instead a fairly... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Jesse Eisenberg - Christina Ricci Director(s): Wes Craven DVD Release Date: Released the 21 June 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $29.99 Your Price: $26.99YOU SAVE $3!
Buy it
