"Scary movie" ain't the half of it.

Rating: 10/10 (25 February 2000)

Trying to outdo any or all of the Alien trilogy is a daunting task for any movie. Pitch Black takes a different tack, spinning the underlying mythform into a fresh, sexy thriller that leaves you reeling from moment to moment.
The most spectacular success of Pitch Black is the cinematography. Clear, superbright shots of the band of survivors are intercut with cool, danger-filled shadowy caves and buildings, and the pervasive heat and light is so perfectly captured by David Eggby you can feel yourself sweat in sympathy.
David Twohy makes deft use of a time-honored thriller/horror movie technique: hiding the killers as much as possible to heighten the eventual terror of seeing them revealed. In Pitch Black, the killers are huge, nearly silent aliens which hunt the darkness with sonar (another brilliantly translated visual by Twohy and Eggby).
Unlike the usual Sci/Fi fodder, Pitch Black's band of heroes are effectively weaponless, unskilled, and burdened by a host of liabilities, not least of which is the oncoming total eclipse and an escaped murderer in their midst. They rally as best they can, given the massively stacked odds against them, but real triumph of the movie comes not at the climax, but short seconds before, when the (uneaten) characters' development becomes fully realized. This is a movie not about spacers, nor terrible aliens, but about the horrible decisions we all make and their even more horrific consequences. For all its stunning beauty, the setting and circumstances are almost trifling next to the astounding acting and conviction of the cast.
Some of the best acting comes from Radha Mitchell and Vin Diesel, as Fry and Riddick, respectively. Fry, a cargo pilot, third in command, has leadership thrust upon her after a devastating accident and crash leaves her ship scattered over a mile-long track of debris. Riddick, an escaped criminal, escapes from his confines during the crash, and proceeds to wreak havoc with the other survivors until he is captured and pressed into service as an equal by his jailer, a mercenary named Johns. Mitchell and Diesel are utterly believable in their roles, one a ragged but determined savior, the other a bemused and savage killer. Diesel is particularly enjoyable to watch as he plays the quintessential evil villain to the hilt, terrorizing the others until the discovery of the more deadly and savage resident monsters. After that, he's merely the most bad-ass human being on the planet, a role Riddick seems to enjoy.
Sadly, the bulk of the cast fades into the background (or is killed messily) within the first half hour, and the audience can't really begin to care about the remaining characters until the final minutes of the film. This distancing works magnificently with the storyline which builds the action to an intolerably tense level before releasing the audience's tension in a brutal and gory climax. The point at which you begin to want the characters to live, their lives become inordinately imperiled. It's an elegant blend, and the cast is clearly up for the challenge.
See Pitch Black before it leaves theaters...it's too big a movie to appreciate on a television.