Not much to recommend it

Rating: Null/10 (24 February 2000)

Is it scary? No, not really. Everyone who dies is pretty much set up to die so when they do buy it you aren't surprised too much. Most are doing something stupid when they do: not staying down, looking in tunnels (when will folks learn?) or running away from the light, for example. You always needs a few of these type deaths but a good grab from the pitch black might have helped too. Are the effects good? Well, kinda. The aliens are pretty free form. There appear to be three varieties: bats, pterodactyls and ground based critters that move too much like the Alien. The right one always seems to be about to make the kill required by the cast member stupidity. When you see them they look o.k. but don't really challenge the genre too much since they do look rather Alien-eque. Characters? Well let's not pretend this matters in a good ole aliens eating people film but these aren't very good at all. Vin Diesel has been praised but this is an easy role to nail and the other characters are mostly flat with stupid attempts at depth: he's an Islamic cleric not a priest (yawn), he's a bounty-hunter with a drug habit (yawn). None of these wrinkles make a lick of plot difference. Plot? Does it make any sense. No. First, struggle to imagine the evolutionary path that creates rabid, photo-sensitive, multitudinous predators on a planet that is pure light for 22 years in a row and has no visble prey items. Ignore that and then try and figure how as little light as the crew has keeps these things at bay. A Jack Daniels bottle used as a torch? This fear of the light seems to kind of come and go being more or less at needed plot moments. Throw in a few twists that don't matter (spoiler): one of the boys is actually a girl...oooh and its pretty silly. Pay a dollar and yuck it up some but don't waste full price on this.