In caves, EVERYONE can hear you scream!

Rating: Null/10 (3 November 2001)

Oh yeah, this is the real mccoy!
Creeps up on you this film. One minute you're sitting there thinking, "Yep, been here, done that" and suddenly - you haven't! To say this is the best sci-fi ever shot in Australia (somewhere around Coober Pedy I recall) really conveys little. What Aussie sci-fi IS there? (let's forget about the eminently forgettable RED PLANET debacle, most of which was shot overseas anyway) so lets upgrade that comment to "one of the best Sci-fi films ever made anywhere!" David Twohy goes a long way towards redeeming himself after the soporific WATERWORLD.
One of those movies you simply have to view two or three times to appreciate its qualities, it just gets better as it goes along. The plot contributes nothing to the film's success. Interplanetary spacecraft "Hunter-Gratzner" crashes on to a barren planet at the ass end of the Universe. Bathed in perpetual light and murderous heat from a triple sun alliance (um? is that actually technically possible? don't planets orbit suns??) the ten or so surviviors deduce that an eclipse is imminent, the first in 22 years - is that bad timing or what? Things are especially problematic when the planet's terrestrials surface from their underground lairs specifically during darkness to snack on whatever's on the menu.
The ship's captain, Carolyn Fry (Mitchell) is already feeling a tad down, as she feels it is her fault the ship has incurred some seriously permanent body-damage. The other crew members are more worried about Riddick, one mean motherf----- of a convict. As it turns out, with his surgically enhanced eyes, he is the only one can see the aliens with his neat "night-vision," a talent which comes in majorly useful as the survivors attempt to make their way back to the ship for protection.
It is Vin Diesel's movie as he plays his role to perfection. This is as much a story of individuals working out their own issues under extreme pressure as being taken apart by grisly predatorial nasties. Radha Mitchell is equally cool as Captain Fry (a very different Ripley!), an officer with all the right stuff when it matters and a soft feminine side when it doesn't.
Top twist at the end and hey, are those aliens grotesquely realistic or what? This is a thinking persons' film.