Edward Carnby (Christian Slater) is a paranormal investigator. One day, he is attacked by a man who seems impervious to bullets. Luckily, Edward can fight, and he manages to defeat his assailant. As he digs deeper, he discovers that multiple people are after him, leading to a gateway between our world and another—one filled with angry CGI monsters.
Turning video games into movies rarely ends well—especially when a German director named Uwe Boll is at the helm.
To put it bluntly, almost everything about this movie is wrong. It’s an action-packed sci-fi horror film with a Hollywood budget of $20 million, yet it looks like a low-budget TV production made for less than a million dollars, the kind the Sci-Fi Channel might air at 3 a.m. The film is riddled with atrocious CGI effects, disastrous dialogue, misplaced music, and a completely nonsensical plot.
The movie is also packed with directorial mistakes, making one wonder how such errors were overlooked—such as a supposedly dead agent visibly getting up before the scene ends. The so-called “bullet time” action sequences are painful to watch, made even worse by Mnemic’s ill-fitting soundtrack. The worst offense, however, is the dreadful song “Seven Seconds”, which plays over a completely misplaced and cringeworthy love scene.
Many consider Alone in the Dark one of the worst films ever made. While I’ve seen worse (perhaps I’ve watched too many bad movies?), this is undeniably a disaster. The film flopped spectacularly, earning back less than half of its budget.
One of the biggest mysteries in Hollywood is how Uwe Boll keeps getting funding for his films. Surprisingly, Boll himself admits—on the film’s audio commentary—that he exploits a loophole in Germany’s tax system:
“Maybe you know it, but it’s not so easy to finance movies in total. And the reason I am able to do these kinds of movies is I have a tax shelter fund in Germany, and if you invest in a movie in Germany, you get basically fifty percent back from the government.”
Essentially, German film companies only pay taxes on profits, while film losses can be written off. For Boll, making a box office bomb is actually profitable. Unbelievable, but true.
The film isn’t quite as terrible as Uwe Boll’s House of the Dead (2003) that he made previous to this one, but it’s not far off. The ridiculous plot and abysmal effects are major weak points. On the plus side, Christian Slater is a decent actor—even if this was arguably the worst career move of his life. Uwe Boll has made better movies after Alone in the Dark, but most of them are pretty bad.
Alone in the Dark has some entertainment value, which saves it from a complete zero-star rating. But be warned: this is a train wreck of epic proportions.
About The Author
