Owtkast's Movie Review of Alone in the Dark (2005)

At least there's video games
Owtkast - wrote on 08/27/08

I really wanted to like this movie. Its pedigree--story-wise--was ever so promising. Alone in the Dark was originally a video game that preceded Resident Evil and basically set the tone for the computer RPG survival-horror genre. The lead character in the movie and the game, Carnby, share the same name. Furthermore, the video game was based off of H. P. Lovecraft's 1920s pulp horror writings, which in turn spawned a wonderful horror-survival role playing game called Call of Cthulhu--probably the most popular game in that genre as well. In the movie, there is a Bureau 713, which is clearly a reference to a series of pre-X-Files books about paranormal investigators working for the government. In theory, and with some decent writing, this movie could have drawn upon a very rich tradition and set itself up for a number of sequels. Needless to say, the movie fell flat on its face, got up, fell over a cliff, and fell on its face a second time--just to be sure. Horrible acting, mediocre FX, an 80s thrash metal soundtrack of some sort--what were they thinking? The worst sin of all is the plot/story, which is at best disjointed and at worst.... even less than disjointed. The film is also disjointed on a visual level because of very bad cuts and transitions between more-or-less pointless scenes. Extremely jarring film work--in a bad way. I really hoped for more out of this movie, but I hadn't gone in to it expecting anything above your average campy B-movie. Unfortunately, this one ended up being a REALLY bad b-grade movie with zero campiness. Take a step up and go watch Van Helsing for campy B action-horror. If you're looking for something in the Lovecraft/Alone in the Dark video game/Cthulhu genre, I'd recommend "In the Mouth of Madness" as one of the better B-grade Cthulhu movies out there. If you must watch it, wait for it on video. It ought to be coming our right.... about.... now.