Pitch Black = Dead Average

Rating: 5/10 (26 October 2003)

I must say that I had reasonable high hopes for this movie, but when watching it, it soon became clear to me that it's seriously lacking in the originality department.
What we have here is the tried-and-true formula of a group of wildly different and colorful characters getting stuck in a dangerous situation and then getting killed off one by one..it's been done countless times before (the Alien movies, Event Horizon, Deep Blue Sea, Sphere, Resident Evil, The Haunting and dozens and dozens of slasher movies) and most of the times a lot better.
The story consists of the normal array of arguments, revelations, fights, people freaking out, comedy one-liners etc, and in this case the revelations just aren't that shocking, the one-liners aren't very funny, the enemy isn't especially memorable, and the various deaths are predictable and rather stupid (could somebody please explain to me why some characters get slaughtered, while many of the others survive in spite of the fact that they're really aren't illuminated any better than the ones that get killed?).
Granted, "Pitch Black" is acted pretty well, and the camera work is also well-done, but for the most part it's a thorougly average, unoriginal and generally quite dull by-the-numbers movie
** out of **** stars