Bad dialogue and acting, but good special effects!

Rating: 4/10 (3 December 2000)

My neighbor told me "Pitch Black" had been well reviewed, so we were both looking forward to it. Within half an hour of the start of the film, after we'd both started snickering at the trite dialogue, unnecessarily flashy cinematography and editing, and mediocre to below average acting, he admitted he must have been thinking of a different film. "Pitch Black" feels like it was written by talented 18 year-old boys. While the plot is fairly complex, the characters are one-dimensional and cliched. Their motivations are sometimes incomprehensible, often engaging in the most irrational behavior simply to further a plot point.
For example, when the villain of the piece is bound and gagged, he seems to be capable of talking people into coming within arm's reach of him -- people who are then surprised when he attacks them. Ding-dong!
And when two characters suddenly crawl out of their safe circle of fire and out into the dark, where they are attacked by the wild creatures that are chasing them -- why on EARTH would they do such a thing when they know their only safety is the light? And the motivation for their doing so is SO WEAK as to seem contrived. If you are surrounded by thousands of creatures nipping at your heels, and your only safety is the torches held by the rest of your group, there is NOTHING that would make you leave that group for even one second. The stupidity of it all took me right out of the movie.
The dialogue was... well, it WANTED to be clever. But you could FEEL it trying to be so.
There was also a definite lack of originality in some of the dialogue -- "the 'company' wants us to do so and so" seems to be lifted straight out of "Alien." The tied up villain telling the female captain of the ship to "come closer... closer..." seems to be stolen from Hannibal's line to Clarece in "Silence of the Lambs." The half-in-shadow lighting of the villain's bald head in the same scene, combined with his monotone mumblings, takes me right back to "Apocalypse Now." Maybe this was supposed to be a "tribute" to these films. My advice the filmmakers is to make their work good enough so other filmmakers will want to pay tribute to THEM.
The one saving grace -- although it doesn't quite save the picture -- is the special effects, which really are well done. The pterodactyl-like creatures are quite well executed and genuinely creepy, and they were the sole reason I did get somewhat involved toward the end of the picture.
Had it not been for them, I would have given the picture 2 stars instead of the 4 I gave it.