Pitch Black is another example of a film where the special FX are the real stars of the show

Rating: 3/10 (7 January 2017)

A transport ship carrying around 40 passengers crash-lands on an unknown planet and only 11 people survive the crash. The survivors of the crash are initially concerned about one of the survivors of the crash namely Richard B Riddick (Vin Diesel) as he is a dangerous and violent criminal that they have been transporting who manages to set himself free after the crash. However, when the planet that they crash-land on is plunged into a month-long period of darkness, the survivors soon learn that Riddick may be their only hope of survival when a group of flesh-eating aliens try to take them all out one by one...
To me, Pitch Black is an example of a potentially good film that unfortunately has been placed in the hands of the wrong director. In order to work, films like Pitch Black need to have tension, suspense, dynamism and strong characterisation and it's clear from a very early stage that you are not going to get any of that here.
Pitch Black is clearly trying to set itself up as a modern day Alien type film, but Twohy has none of the skills that Ridley Scott or James Cameron were able to serve up with the first two Alien films. I'll admit that the first 20 minutes or so were relatively suspenseful, but it's clear that after Twohy's rather clichéd 'cloak and dagger approach' in respect of introducing Riddick to the story that he had nowhere really to go and completely fails to develop or improve upon the story. When watching Pitch Black there is just no spark, no dynamism and nothing interesting about the story or the characters. Even the character of Riddick is poorly developed and I'm sure that he could have been made more interesting with a better director or writing crew.
The last few lines in the above paragraph really sum up the problems with this film; if your narrative's success is dependent on its characters then it's generally a good idea to make at least one or two of them interesting - this is what made Alien and Aliens both work because you cared about the characters and actually gave a damn about what happened, but in Pitch Black the characters are as lifeless as the planet that they crash-land on and if I'm honest I found it a bit of a struggle getting to the finish line with this one.
The performances aren't great either with no-one really making much of an impact (no pun intended). Vin Diesel should have been great in this sort of role, but I felt that he was slightly hampered by being a rather poorly written character. Everyone else here was just as bland and unmemorable.
One final thing that made me laugh about this film is its ridiculous plot contrivance; our prisoner happens to have had his eyes surgically altered so that he can see better in the dark after being denied sunlight for lengthy periods. He then finds himself crash-landed on a planet that ends up being plunged into darkness for a month??? I can suspend some disbelief, but that is quite a ridiculous coincidence don't you think???
Pitch Black is rubbish, but it's not even enjoyable rubbish and in my opinion you're better off watching either Alien or Aliens because they at least are both entertaining, tense and rewarding pieces of cinemas which are qualities that certainly cannot be attributed to Pitch Black.