great little horror movie

Rating: 8/10 (22 April 2006)

Pitch Black opens with the basic shot of a transport vessel moving lazily through space. Almost obscured is a huge comet blazing a trail right in front of the ship. Three minutes later the comet has ripped through the ship, killed the Captain and set the ship on a direct course towards the surface of a handily placed planet.
Pilot Fry is thrown into the fray, and she has a choice between jettisoning the half of the ship containing the passengers to save her skin or trying to get the whole ship down in one piece which is impossible. She ignores the safety of the crew and trys to jettison the crew quarters, only to find that there is a malfunction and she is unable to do so. She manages to crash the ship, yet around fifteen of the passengers survive. One of those passengers is bounty hunter Johns. Another is his captured prey, Riddick.....
Riddick escapes, and Johns is forced to search the surface of the planet looking for him. It turns out that there are three suns for this particular planet, which isn't the most helpful thing for Riddick because while in prison he had his eyes 'tinted' to allow him to see in the dark. This is why he wears a pair of designer goggles that keep him safe from the sunlight. Johns captures Riddick and ties him up with some metal cables, taking his goggles away to keep him subdued.
With the ship damaged, the crew, led by Fry, finds an outpost with a small shuttle type ship. They need to transfer the fuel cells from their transport ship to this little shuttle in order to escape. However, while searching the outpost they discover that they are not the only living creatures on this planet and that there are some winged bat things that only come out at night. With three suns you'd be thinking that night would be impossible on this planet right? Wrong.
Unluckily for the survivors there is an eclipse of one of the suns. Its unclear why the other two suns suddenly disappear but hey, this is Hollywood. Anything can happen.
So the crew enlist riddick to help them survive the ensuing darkness. He helps them take the fuel cells and fights off the marauding bat things while sparring with Johns at the same time.
Pitch Black is a low budget movie that looks far more expensive than it really is. The effects for the crash are superb, and the bat things are brilliantly realised. As fry, radha Mitchell exudes just enough power and vulnerability to show that she is in charge of the situation yet aggrieved about what she tried to do during the crash. As Johns, B-movie regular Cole Hauser is eerie enough and strong enough to play the role easily enough, although his trusty shotgun looks a tad on the flimsy side.
The movie though really belongs to Vin Diesel. His riddick is a brilliant creation, all muscular front and steely insides. He doesn't care about anyone or anything, although he does seem to develop a lust for Fry that grows throughout the film until she is literally taken from his arms at the end of the film. He is easily able to carry the fight scenes and while not a talented thespian he does give his few lines (he doesn't speak at all in the first twenty minutes) with enough zest to carry him through.
David Twohy injects the limited scope of the film with skill and grandeur, and the action has a pumped up and superior feel to it. Short and snappy action scenes fill the latter half of the movie, and the lack of really choppy editing keeps things moving at just the right pace. The performances are adequate, and while the film is never really scary or chilling, it is definitely entertaining enough to fill an evenings worth of viewing.
This is proof that sometimes a low budget can really aid a film, as Twohy doesn't just throw a huge explosion or gun fight into the mix just for the sake of having one. He keeps things tight and focused, and the film is all the better for it.
A brilliant little movie.