Whle I said that I didn’t like Silent Hill, I have to join everyone else and say that Alone in the Dark is horrible. And not in a good way.
A couple months ago I was at the video store and saw Alone in the Dark sitting on the shelf and decided to rent it without looking at the back of the box. I get it home and pop it in and it turns out that it isn’t Uwe Boll’s film, but rather 1982’s Alone in the Dark. Let me tell you, the 82 film with the same title is a million times better than the 2005 version.
As I’m writing this I’m listening to Boll’s commentary and he keeps saying things that make me want to slap him.
First of all, he keeps explaining all the characters’ motivations. Call me crazy, but perhaps it would have been better to, you know, actually have that in the film or something.
Second, he keeps stating what is going on. “And then he goes over to her and then talk…” I suppose that blind people appreciate that, but the rest of us are watching the film, Uwe. We don’t need you to describe it for us.
Third, he keeps bragging about all the product placements he got for the films. He has no shame!
Fourth, he actually admitted that he gets to make movies because of German tax shelters. (OK, that’s actually pretty funny. He comes this close to actually admitting that he’s only in it to make money. Too bad for Boll that Germany has changed their tax laws)
Fifth, he blames videogame companies and fans for the film’s failure. He talks about how he doesn’t understand why the owners of Alone in the dark wouldn’t release an Alone in the Dark game when the film came out and says that it would have helped the film. He also says that videogame fans are too picky.
Sixth, he calls other horror films that have came out recently cootie-cutter and all the same and is mad because he doesn’t understand why people didn’t go see his super original film. He says it isn’t straight horror, or straight action, or whatever.
And that’s the problem with the film. Not only is it not just a single genre, but it is actually several of them put together. Now I said that Silent Hill was like Super Smash Brothers in that it mixed up elements from a bunch of other films. Well, Alone in the Dark does that too, but where Silent Hill uses the differnt elements like paint and mixes them together to create something that at lest hangs together, Alone in the Dark just smashes them together. The result is less like a painting made up of a bunch of different colors, but more like a kid trying to build something with a bunch of different colored legos. Sure you can put red, blue, green, white, and yellow legos together to make something, but you can still see all the individual elements because they don’t go together in any coherent way.
THe film throws todether pseudo-archeological adventure with zombies, with one random fight scene whose setting is an ice factory straight out of Bruce Lee’s Fists of Fury (yes, it even takes place in a random Chinatown location for some reason!), with Starship Troopers complete with soldiers in black outfits and helmets and House of the Dead’s Ona Grauer with redish hair that makes her look like Dina Meyer of Starship Troopers, the end of Resident Evil (or a million other movies, for that matter)and finally fancy light bullets from such films as Blade and Underworld. (Oh crap, he just mentioned Body Snatchers and he said that the people who have these slug-like things in them were puppets!! He has no shame! And he just called the creatures Xenomorphs)
It does have a nice 80’s era Scorpions-esque euro-hair-metal theme though. It’s very European.
Anyway, if you are going to see a film called Alone in the Dark, go see the one starring Jack Palance and Martin Landau. It has a great twist towards the end.
Alone in the Dark
Uwe Boll does not have shame
Watch the other one.