The film trailers beef it up, but it doesn't totally disappoint

Rating: Null/10 (14 December 2000)

I'm not a huge fan of science fiction films (as I find most of them to be predictable and disappointing), but I found Pitch Black to be a well made flick, despite being short of what the trailers make it out to be.
Even though it appears to come across as a generic science fiction movie about the survivors of a spaceship crash who have to battle carnivorous monsters before they can escape, Pitch Black throws you one of its many unexpected curves by having complex characters who actually seem like real people placed a rather interesting bind. Most of the survivors, as diverse in religion and occupation as you would expect to find amongst a list of survivors of any plane crash, are as much at odds with the convict and murderer Riddick as they are with the monsters from which they must protect themselves. Riddick is also at odds with the other survivors, who would rather see him dead or behind bars again, as well as with their common enemy. It makes one wonder whether they're helping each other out of the goodness of their hearts or for their own personal interests--a refreshing change from many science fiction films where the protagonists want to help each other out of moral responsibility.
I thought the special effects were appropriate for a film like this, and it's hard not to appreciate the imagination that went into the setting (it's nice not to see people stranded on a desolate copy of Earth with only one orange sun that rises and sets). While I thought some of the actions of some of the characters were rather stupid at times, the evolution of others made up for it. Vin Diesel stole the show with his commanding screen presence as Riddick, but Radha Mitchell was a bad choice to play Fry. Overall, it's not the heart-stopping, edge of your seat thriller that it was advertised to be, but definitely worth the rental fee and is anything but "average".