Alone in the Dark

Plot synopsis:
The narrator reads a long, boring story about the existence of an ancient Native American civilization which disappeared for unknown reasons.Present Day. Edward Carnby (Christian Slater) is on board an airplane and has a nightmare, in which he remembers how he hid himself in a high-voltage box as a child, while staring at some alien-like creatures.As an adult (explaining in a voice-over narration), Edward looks for remains of an extinct Indian tribe, the Abkani, which disappeared suddenly 10,000 years ago for reasons unexplained. He's found a trinket piece of something related to it. On his way to the museum where Aline Cedrac (Tara Reid), an assistant curator and Edward's ex-girlfriend, works and is scanning some more Abkani pieces, he is attacked by somebody with supernatural abilities named James Pinkerton (Ed Anders) who tries to steal the artifact that he has, but Edward fights him off.At the same time, Professor Lionel Hudgens (Matthew Walker) almost doesn't make it alive from a sea voyage, where he finds the "edegus" or something like that. The ship's crew finds a coffin made of gold from the ocean floor. After they dock, the evil and greedy captain of the salvage tug locks up Hudgens and his men open the gold coffin... even though Hudgens asks them not to do so. Five minutes afterwards, they are all dead but for Hudgens, imprisoned inside a storage room on the ship. Hudgens slips away ashore after collecting another item from the empty gold coffin, which apparently contained a mysterious creature.Upon the opening of the gold coffin, an old friend of Edward disappears into the night. Several other people across the USA and Canada walk off in a trance as if being drawn by some beacon. Edward hears a ear-splitting screech while in his apartment looking over the Abkani artifact. At the same time in an underground military facility, called Research Agency Bureau 713, the location of the opening of the gold coffin is relayed by the control room techs who report it to their bureau chief by the evidence of the electro-magnetic wave that appears on their monitors.Edward, a paranormal investigator and former agent of Bureau 713, thinks it's related to the Abkani. The old friend was a fellow orphan, from when Hudgens convinced Sister Clara (Karin Konoval) to run some experiments on the children without anybody's consent (shown in another flashback). Edward investigates.Edward arrives that same evening at the Natural History Museum where he is reunited with a not-so-happy Aline with the artifact and she shows him another Abkani artifact that recently arrived and she has been working on it since Professor Hudgens is away. Just then, the mysterious creature from the ship attacks them inside the museum, killing a security guard, but Edward and Aline hide in a storage closet long enough for troopers from Bureau 713 to arrive, and the creature (which is a four-legged, fast-moving beast resembling a cross between a panther and the creatures of 'Aliens') retreats into the night.Commander Richard Burke (Stephen Dorff), the team leader of the Bureau 713 strike force, arrives where Edward tries to relay information to him that something big is going down, but Burke rebukes him, saying that since he no longer works for Bureau 713, to stay out of their investigation.The next day, Edward tries to get information from his former co-workers at Bureau 713, one of whom is staff surgeon and pathologist Sam Fischer (Frank C. Turner), to learn more about the creature encountered as well as the history of the Abkani.At the same time, Professor Hudges arrives back at the museum where he goes to his office where he has a captured creature (whether this is the same creature from the ship or a different one is never fully explained). Hudgens uses a syringe to draw fluid from the captive creature to study it as part of his further research to combine the DNA of man and beast.Edward continues investigating his past by going to his former orphanage to learn more about Hudges research, and then back to his apartment where Aline is and they consumate their attraction to each other.While the Bureau 713 soldiers are patroling the museum, they are attacked by several creatures, who are the missing people that wondered off upon the opening of the gold coffin containing the creature. During the firefight, several soldiers, and most of the human-creatures are killed. Edward arrives on the scene and talks more with Burke, who again tells him away. However, during a scuffle, Edward picks Burke's pocket containing his Bureau 713 security badge.The next morning, Edward goes to Bureau 713 where he talks with Fischer in the morgue looking at one of the dead bodies, where Fischer shows Edward a small, cenntipede-like baby creature in the dorsal spine of his old friend Pinkeron. Fischer also discovers that Edward has one of his own in his body, but it is dead, presumably because of the contact with the electro-shock while Edward was a child. Fischer tells him that he could take the creature out, but leaving him disabled. As the monster looks dead, it's not an urgent matter. Burke and his men arrive and escort Edward out of the morgue and the building.That evening, Professor Hudges ambushes Fischer as he arrives home to find his wife dead. Hudges inserts a baby creature into Fischer's mouth, thereby putting him under his control.Edward discovers that the Abkani had fought those creatures which can get killed by light (that's why they always move around on dark places). They also disrupt electrical light, creating blackouts. The Abkani artifacts found all over the world actually open the gate to another dimension, where millions of those creatures are sleeping, waiting to be freed and kill humans. Hudgens is making further experiments with the creature he's captured somehow when he takes some of the creature's blood and injects it into his veins. That way, he becomes a semi-alien being and can control the monsters.At the climax, Aline, Edward, Burke and the latter's military squad go to Edward's orphanage, where there are strong electro-magnetic disruptions. They are attacked by dozens of these reptilian-like monsters and there is a climactic and violent 20-minute fight where almost all creatures and humans kill one another. Edward, Burke and Aline reach the old surgery room underground where the baby creature was transplanted into Edward. There, Hudgens takes Edward's piece of archeological remains and opens the gate. Millions of creatures start to wake up and run down a huge cave. They go down the walls but they don't approach the gate for some reason, giving time for the three good characters to kill Hudgens, run away only to realize that they can't detonate the bomb from such a long distance. Burke comes back and blows everything up... himself along with the creatures.Edward and Aline rise to the surface at the back of the orphanage at dawn, only to find an evacuated city without people, cars abandoned on the streets. They walk down the street, but several noises are heard. The last shot shows them in the middle of an empty road turning around suddenly, supposedly to confront one of the creatures.... regardless of it being day.Aren't the monsters hurt by light? Because the gate hasn't been closed properly, the door has been left open for a second installment. (No, please!)

Tags: gothic, murder, stupid, cult, violence, flashback, good versus evil, psychedelic, romantic

Review:
If you don't want to feel slighted you'll sit through this horrible film and develop a real sense of pity for the actors involved, they've all seen better days, but then you realize they actually got paid quite a bit of money to do this and you'll lose pity for them just like you've already done for the film.
I can't go on enough about this horrible movie, its almost something that Ed Wood would have made and in that case it surely would have been his masterpiece.To start you are forced to sit through an opening dialogue the likes of which you've never seen/heard, this thing has got to be five minutes long.
Tara Reid is a bad actress but good looking and that's all that really matters in films like these.
Can mankind defeat the army of darkness unleashed by an ancient evil cult?¨Alien¨ and ¨Resident Evil¨ Sagas are two good terror/action movies with a lot of attributes which this film version regrettably fails to emulate .
The motion picture was middlingly made by Uwe Boll who poured a lot of money into special effects ; however , being deemed worst film of 2005 by the Stinkers Bad Movie Awards .All four of the films he has realized that were based upon video games, House of the Dead (2003), Alone in the Dark (2005), BloodRayne (2005) and BloodRayne II: Deliverance (2007) were listed on the bottom of barrel by the reviewers.
The movie starts with Slater hunting artifacts, obtaining his latest piece after some dealings with a "Chilean mercenary force specializing in selling rare antiquities." I may have the exact quote wrong, but you get the idea.There is an evil doctor that wants to unleash some hellions on earth (no reason given), experiments on children, super demon/alien-human hybrids, "photonic" bullets (the demon things can't stand sunlight) and, of course, Slater and Dorf to try to save everyone.Jesus, I can't even being to wade through the clichéd elements.
Yeah we get zombies.So lots of crap that could be entertaining, but none of it is.Also, the ending is completely stupid as everything turns out to be not that big of a deal to fix in the first place...at least nothing a little dynamite can't handle.Not the very worst thing you'll see, but a truly bad movie..
Most of the time it is exaggeration of the fact but I would like to welcome Alone in the Dark to the short list of real candidates: Plan 9 from Outer Space, Battlefield Earth, and the Adventures of Pluto Nash.As I watched the 90 minute bore I found it difficult to even stay awake even while I was trying so hard to laugh at the film.
Said plot basically follows Christian Slater, who looks nothing like the Edward Carnby of the video games, as he deals with supernatural creatures emerging in our plane of existence and a government agency attempting to deal with them.
Anyone aspiring to become a movie director should definitely watch Uwe Boll's films.
after reading all the dooming reviews, calling it the worst movie ever or boll the worst director i expected some good trash-fun à la future war, but really: all this criticism has absolutely no valid base, its just far far from reality, its a whitchhunt its not even a real trash-movie, there are a few scenes where you may roll eyes or laugh like a sudden sex scene riot along with a quite inappropriate "7 seconds" in the background, but there are many things the movie does just right, even though it takes a lot of inspiration from existing movies of the genre you hardly ever get the impression of really stolen or already seen scenes, the creators even experiment with own methods of staging the camera-work is really well done most of the time, its versatile and entertaining, sometimes its even experimental - partly successful, for example the distorted zooms same for the action-scenes, they are also very well done, its good martial arts and has some unique ideas a part where this movie really shines is the staging of the monsters, in this regard it achieves much more than many competitors of the genre, it doesn't have to avoid the comparison with movies like "the relic" here, the beasts look excellent and are superb animated, some scenes are really among the best you can find in any of the alien-clones, for example when professor Hudgens stands on a hill sending out his "dark minions", a really nice scene, or the look into a deep cave filled with monsters, or a beast going up in steam - its really excellent, even more if you consider the less than mediocre budget of this movie the acting is absolutely sufficient, slater remains a bit colorless, Reid has some short weak moments, but overall its just fine for this kind of movie, even some extras can keep a good straight face which is not the rule except for a somewhat edgy flow, some awkward scenes and a slightly clumsy introduction there is absolutely nothing wrong with this, you see that boll is still exercising but its solid monster-movie entertainment nevertheless boll-movies have become a shrine for bad movie-jokes, but they all get less funny once you ve seen the movies because they are just not that bad, its no "future war" and boll is no ed wood, maybe its because there is a German director buying American actors which annoys the people, or maybe they just continue what disappointed fans of the game started, its funny how even the "big critics" join the group of bashing monkeys but well: a study says that 60 percent of the internet users use message boards only to relieve their frustration...
If you watch his films to have a good time laughing at the bad dialogue or crappy acting/directing you are like me...
He seems to make the money back to the producers and that's all that counts in the end for him to keep making them.Those who watch His films so they can spread the word about how bad they are: It's like going to McDonalds and eating every week and then complaining that McDonalds have the worst food ever?
I not going to spend a lot of time on this but Alone in the Dark is another crappy movie with horrible actors including a washed up Christian Slater and Stephen Dorff with crappy acting by dumb rich blonde Tara Reid as a smart archaeologist(a big miscast).
Based on a popular yet aged video game I was surprised to see this was even a thing seeing as I had never heard much about the old or later games.I was actually a huge fan of the latest Alone In The Dark game (2008) and I like Christian Slater as an actor so I was expecting to have an enjoyable lazy watch.
It looks the most like an actual decently-budgeted movie out of all of his films.In addition, something about this movie strikes me very-much as a great example of "so bad, it's good." Whether it be chuckling at lazy attempts to make characters look smart (giving Tara Reid glasses, for example), or poorly-executed action beats...
I'm in no hurry to get in the boxing ring with director Uwe Boll, a man who has been known to use his pugilistic skills to silence his less favourable critics, but I have got to say that this horror/action film (apparently based on an Atari video game) is utterly diabolical—far worse than I ever expected (my opinion of Boll had been reasonably high after seeing Rampage, which was surprisingly effective).The long-winded opening narration is the first clue that this is going to stink: ancient civilisations, evil creatures from another world, a secret organisation devoted to investigation of the paranormal, and a mad scientist experimenting on orphaned children are clumsily thrown together in an attempt to establish the background to the film, but they only succeed in confusing the viewer before things have even begun.
Matters are made even more incomprehensible with a prologue that occurs '22 years ago' but which segues into the present day and proceeds to introduce even more mind-bogglingly random elements to ensure that even the most astute of viewers will be completely baffled.As the film progresses, more and more nonsensical garbage is haphazardly thrown into the mix, Boll's pointless directorial stylisms making everything impossible to follow, with the occasional voice-over by Christian Slater (intended to help explain matters) only adding to the embarrassment factor.
Ridiculous voice-overs aside, Slater's performance isn't all that bad, but his co-star Tara Reid is absolutely terrible and was clearly hired for her looks (yet she doesn't even have the decency to take off her bra during the obligatory sex scene!).After much frenetic shooting, a smattering of reasonably fun gore, some choice snippets of lousy dialogue ('Some doors are meant to stay shut') and lots of naff CGI creature attacks, during which Boll throws in some lousy Indiana Jones-style adventure and a scene completely ripped off from James Cameron's Aliens (the Xenos—yes the monsters ARE called that—obliterate a team of soldiers, despite the use of automated sentry guns), the film wraps up leaving the viewer none the wiser about what they have witnessed..
Actually I've no idea what kind of film is this one, I thought it was a Sci-Fi, Horror or even adventure film, but after watching it I found out that it has no goals, no story, no interesting events that may help you complete watching the movie.Also acting of Slater was too bad, I felt that he isn't an actor at all after watching that movie.Unfortunately the least vote here is 1, to be honest I want to give it -10 out of 10..
Sometimes people like to have something to rag on no matter what - right now, for the Internet film community, it seems to be Uwe Boll - and judging from quotes I've read by him, as well as movies I've seen, he deserves a lot of it.But some of the hatred goes too far.
"BloodRayne" was already on the IMDb Low 100 before it even really got launched into theaters.I'll give you an example of the exaggeration regarding this film: One critic I read claimed the opening narration went on for nearly ten minutes, however it lasts perhaps a minute at the most.The dialogue is pretty bad, and the beginning with Christian Slater telling a young child on a plane that his mother is wrong about being afraid of the dark is unintentionally hilarious.
I better take a look." Or how about Tara Reid - a supposed archaeologist (hah!) - referring to Newfoundland as "New Found Land." I read here on IMDb that Reid was invited on Jay Leno and wasn't even able to give a definition of her profession in the film.Christian Slater I pretty much just felt sorry for throughout the film - he's such a good actor and his resorting to crap like this and "Hollow Man 2" is a real shame.
If Boll's name had not been attached to the project and it hadn't attracted a theatrical run, I'm sure it would have a slightly higher rating on here and less of a "fan base" so to speak.I'm not supporting the film or saying it's remotely good - it isn't - but I am saying it's about as bad as any other straight-to-video horror garbage.I wouldn't recommend it because I didn't even have a fun time watching it for giggles - it's just a really lame film that takes itself way too seriously and perhaps its only positive attribute is that it has some amount of (admittedly ripped-off) style..
Moreover, the acting is a bit wooden and the dialog is kind of sub par but then again, there are many action movies that suffer from similar problems.One major annoyance with this film though is the darkness, yes, darkness would naturally be an integral part of a film called Alone in the Dark but having nearly all the action take place in near complete darkness ruins the film as it makes it impossible to see whats going on; this is especially poignant in one scene where pretty much all the light comes from the muzzle flashes of the guns.
At best he can garner a few points for some bad-movie fun at times, but the product over all is so poorly produced throughout, from its overwrought writing to the mis(or WTF)casting, to simple things like music and weaponry characters use, or the designs of the monsters or whatnot.
and it's ultimately too dull to care at all.The plot is so convoluted that you would have to be the biggest slobbering geek for Alone in the Dark the video game (and hell if I know any of them), and it mostly just concerns some paranormal investigator with memory loss and who is an orphan (Christian Slater) teaming up with an archaeologist chick (Tara Reid, who else), and some other prickly paranormal guy (Stephen Dorff) all trying to track some creatures that have escaped from a crypt off of a ship from God knows where over God knows what and blah blah.
Honestly, one would come to this at most expecting some cheesy-stupid dialog for the actors to chew on, and even in THIS it's a failure; Slater's narration sounds like it was made at gunpoint via ludes, and Dorff looks confused at to why he's even acting next to Tara Reid.
The ending, by the way, is retarded into such a way that it makes only minimal sense, and then gives an Evil Dead ripoff that is just staggering.While watching the movie Alone in the Dark, I was bored and more engaged chatting with my friends as it went from one big action ramp up to another with the same pale-faced actors and incompetent special effects went along.
After House of the Dead, I thought Uwe Boll had a decent chance of redeeming himself, because how could one make a movie as bad as (or heaven forbid worse) HotD?
Uwe Boll therefore is the worst possible choice to direct a movie based on a video game, and it is as good as hiring a director to do a movie based on a book he never even read.
From that point on I just wanted to punch mister Uwe Boll in the face (in pure boxing-fashion) for completely turning a great franchise into a travesty that has literally nothing to do with the source-material.Carnby looks and acts nothing like the character he is supposed to be playing from the games.
come on!, it's one of the worst movies i have saw, pointless nonsense incongruent plot, very badly direction and edition, scenes look forced some of them without any sense, no continuity (it's night then it's day), even in a scene someone dies for no reason and when everybody i walking away from the move she moves!, the sex scene it's terrible, starts with music like someone have pressed a button..
As more and more evidence of a connection appears between his own past and that of Bureau 713, Carnby must decide whether to help save his friends  and possibly the entire human race  or abandon them to uncover the long-hidden truths for which he's been searching all of his life.Now for the record, I have heard and read many stories about people walking out on bad movies but never actually witnessed it.
Tara Reid's performance was god awful, and thankfully, despite her having second bill, she does not over power the film.Slater and Dorff have definitely seen better days.
The rest of the cast is filled out by one of the staples of a Boll film: random, untrained people off the street who bring a warm, campy quality to the backgrounds of each scene.But the real star of this movie isn't the leads or the chatty extras; it isn't even the terribly familiar monsters (imagine H.R. Gieger's love child with a Velociraptor and Lon Chaney's makeup and you've got a very general idea of what they look like).
and disappointed because Vin diesel wasn't cast with Angelina Jolie or something, it shouldn't be in IMDBs bottom there's much worse like doom.I took this film as a stand alone horror thriller flick, with a talented cast of Tara Reid and the very good Christian Slater, and they pulled it off well, some great effects with some equally as good action fighting sequences, they tried putting some new shooting scenes together, like they did in Equilibrium, which i think is a different & new look about action shoot em up movies!
Richard Burke (Stephen Dorff), and his squad, they battle against the evil creatures.In spite of having a charismatic good cast, leaded by Christian Slater, Tara Reid and Stephen Dorff, "Alone in the Dark" never works and is a complete mess, without development of characters or plot.
Bad action scenes, a run-of-the-mill story, and ridiculous plot holes sprinkle the movie like the cheese that it is.
I strongly advise anyone not to go see this film but to beg Lions Gate not to allow this director (Uwe Boll --who also brought us House of the Dead) to continue with the video game franchise movies he has slated.
So I had some hopes for Alone in the Dark, but I now know since I have seen his latest film, I am positve: Dr. Uwe Boll cannot make a good movie if his life depended on it, and with the way his career is going now, I won't be surprised if something happens to him.
Cgi is lacking, story is also a bit, but is a video game turned movie...and has Tara Reid as an intellectual...take it for what it is, like I did, and you will appreciate it as I have.