Believe it or not, this is a good movie

Rating: 7/10 (1 June 2008)

Yes, this is a B-movie, but that doesn't mean it can't be good. The plot is nothing remarkable, but still works. A spaceship carrying a mixed bag of characters crash lands on a desert planet. Of course, the survivors are not alone and are soon in a battle for their lives against strange bat-like aliens.
What works here is the writing and character development. Vin Diesel is surprisingly good as the clever and philosophical Riddick. He's a dangerous convict turned reluctant savior. The supporting cast does a great job of bringing dimension to characters that could easily have been overly simplistic. What drives the movie is the constant uncertainty about the main characters' true motivations. Riddick is particularly hard to figure out and in the end it's hard to say he's really a "good" guy. His character is far more complex than that.
The special effects are strictly mediocre, but the director seemed to understand this. So the creatures are mostly kept in shadows, helping to avoid those, "That looks so fake!" moments. The actual design of the bat-like creatures is clearly "inspired" by Giger's design for the movie Alien. They certainly could have been more original, but they get the job done. At least the special effects people decided to rip-off an all-time classic movie monster design.
The story moves along at a good pace, never feeling too rushed or too slow and keeps the viewer on edge. It's usually pretty obvious who the survivors will be in this type of movie (where characters are being picked off one by one), but this one surprised me a little at the end. Overall, this is a good effort and far better than a lot of big budget sci-fi action movies.