Whatever You Do, Don't Watch Alone In the Dark
I don't mean to insult you. It's not that I don't think you can't recognize a bad movie when one comes along. My thinking is that some people might, one day in the near future, rent this movie for a few laughs. Well let me tell you, my friend and I went to see this movie this weekend. Our reasons were complicated. In part, I think it was that were just so amazed at the fact Christian Slater, Tara Reid, and Stephen Dorff were all appearing in the same movie. Surely, we thought, this movie is going to be hilariously bad.
Oh how wrong we were.
I think we first realized we were in trouble during the film's opening crawl. It's true that some movies have used a text crawl to successfully set up some background in a few expository sentences. The opening crawl for "Alone in the Dark" was no less than 6 PARAGRAPHS LONG and was accompanied by a voice over which read the text for us. From the crawl we learned the following:
At this point, I was starting to wish I had brought along a pen and some notecards.
As if the crawl hadn't given us enough backstory, we are next thrown directly into a flashback. A young boy is hiding in an electric utility shed as uniformed men search around with flashlights. Inside a nearby house, a nun stares at some empty beds. She is apprehensive, but a man in a suit tells her to stick to the plan and tell the police what they discussed. A scene later, the nun is standing in front of a police officer, telling him that when she woke up, all the children were missing. Once again, we are shown the boy sitting inside the tool shed. There is a flash of light and the sound of an electrical zap; we cut to:
The present: Edward Carnby (Christian Slater) is sleeping on an airplane. He wakes with a start. A small blond boy sitting next to him asks if he had a nightmare. Slater is all, "Whatever, kid," but the kid tells him, "My mom says we shouldn't be afraid of the dark, because there's nothing there in the dark that we can't see in the day."
This causes Slater to launch into an internal monologue about how we are naturally afraid of the dark for a good reason. How he can't remember anything that happened to him until the age of 12, and how he used to work for the 713, investigating this Dark Earth thing until he realized that he could learn more on his own. In other words, MORE FUCKING BACKSTORY! We're only about 2 minutes in at this point, and already I need a diagram to understand what's going on.
Unfortunately, once the story actually starts moving forward, it's all downhill. Apparently, the monsters from Dark Earth have gotten through the gateway to our world somehow. They die when sunlight hits them, and they hate bright lights, but that's okay, because this ancient race of creatures has the ability to interrupt electric signals, thus knocking out all the lights in a joint before they attack. Oh, but FLASHLIGHTS STILL WORK because the power source is so close.
So Carnby and his girlfriend (Tara Reid) -- who happens to be an archaeologist who can read all the monster writing since she is cataloging these mystical artifacts (which the 713 would surely want to get their hands on but for some reason hasn't) for a museum, and who also has thought that her boyfriend has been dead for the last 5 weeks, since he went out of the country without telling her, but is still willing to have sex with him the moment he comes back -- learn that Tara Reid's boss has actually been trying to bring these monsters back, and injects himself with monster blood so he can get super-strong. (Phew.) Also, all the people from Carnby's orphanage suddenly turn into zombies and start trying to kill him and his girlfriend. The guys from the 713 show up out of the blue and help defeat the zombies. Carnby & Stephen Dorff (the head of the 713 troops) have a dick measuring contest, and then Carnby saves Dorff's life and they become friends. Apparently this enough to convince Dorff to bring two civilians along when the 713 raids the cave that the monsters are apparently coming from.
There is a lot of shooting at monsters and a lot of troops end up half-eaten. Dorff, Slater, Reid and a couple of soldiers head into the cave, and the entrance gets sealed behind them. Eventually, Slater, Reid, Dorff and the one remaining soldier find an underground laboratory. In this lab there are gurneys with the names of each of Carnby's fellow orphans on them. The nameless soldier flips a switch on the wall and a secret panel opens to reveal a stone door. Dr. Reid reads the inscription on the door and deduces that they need a key. Carnby pulls the gold trinket out of his pocket. OMG! THAT'S THE KEY! The trio discuss for a few seconds whether or not they should open the door.
Just then, Reid's boss shows up with a machine gun and shoots the nameless soldier just to show how bad he is. He demands that they give him the key, then starts monologuing about how he was the head of the 713 and was behind the experiments performed on Carnby & the other orphans. He doesn't explain how he got into the sealed cave, or why he wants to reopen the door between the two worlds, but that doesn't stop him from doing so. Then he dies. I forget how. I imagine that Christian Slater shot him.
So there they are, watching all these monsters coming towards the gateway, but mercifully taking their sweet time about it. They plant a bomb with a remote detonator and then try to get to safety. They find a ladder that leads back to the surface, and decide they are a safe distance away to detonate the explosive. Dorff pulls out his detonator and presses the button...
Nothing happens. Oh shit, I guess they forgot that the monsters could interrupt electrical signals! Dorff selflessly goes back and detonates the bomb manually. Who the fuck cares?
The movie ends with Carnby and Dr. Blond walking around an empty city. A subtitle tells us that the city has been evacuated, but the music and the expressions on the two characters faces suggest that they're the only ones left alive. There's another voice over here about how it's too late, and some monsters have already been unleashed, and humanity is doomed, blah blah blah. The last shot in the movie is right out of Evil Dead: P.O.V. an unseen monster as it dashes up behind the heroes. They turn around to face the camera seconds before it is upon them. This, of course, makes no sense, because it's the middle of the fucking day, and it's been well established that sunlight kills these monsters.
Now, I've seen some pretty awful movies in my day. In high school I founded a club that deliberately went to movies that nobody in their right mind would go to see. I'd say that the worst movies I've ever seen in a theater are, in no particular order, "Tarzan and the Lost City," "Black Dog," and "Kull the Conqueror". "Alone in the Dark" surpasses all of these films in suckitude. I honestly can not get over how fucking terrible this movie was. Everything about it was utter shit. Even the sex scene was awful! I have been completely unable to get any work done for the past two days, so dominated are my thoughts of how bad this movie is. It is ruining my life!
HEED MY WARNING! DO NOT SEE THIS MOVIE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES!
Oh how wrong we were.
I think we first realized we were in trouble during the film's opening crawl. It's true that some movies have used a text crawl to successfully set up some background in a few expository sentences. The opening crawl for "Alone in the Dark" was no less than 6 PARAGRAPHS LONG and was accompanied by a voice over which read the text for us. From the crawl we learned the following:
1) There are two Earths.
2) The Earth we live in is filled with light and the other Earth is filled with Darkness
3) The Dark Earth has monsters in it.
4) The dark monsters have been sealed away by an ancient civilization.
5) In the 1960's, a government agency tried to create some uber-humans by combining humans with these Dark Earth monsters.
6) A different government agency, called the "713" (or some damn number) exists to investigate paranormal activity.
At this point, I was starting to wish I had brought along a pen and some notecards.
As if the crawl hadn't given us enough backstory, we are next thrown directly into a flashback. A young boy is hiding in an electric utility shed as uniformed men search around with flashlights. Inside a nearby house, a nun stares at some empty beds. She is apprehensive, but a man in a suit tells her to stick to the plan and tell the police what they discussed. A scene later, the nun is standing in front of a police officer, telling him that when she woke up, all the children were missing. Once again, we are shown the boy sitting inside the tool shed. There is a flash of light and the sound of an electrical zap; we cut to:
The present: Edward Carnby (Christian Slater) is sleeping on an airplane. He wakes with a start. A small blond boy sitting next to him asks if he had a nightmare. Slater is all, "Whatever, kid," but the kid tells him, "My mom says we shouldn't be afraid of the dark, because there's nothing there in the dark that we can't see in the day."
This causes Slater to launch into an internal monologue about how we are naturally afraid of the dark for a good reason. How he can't remember anything that happened to him until the age of 12, and how he used to work for the 713, investigating this Dark Earth thing until he realized that he could learn more on his own. In other words, MORE FUCKING BACKSTORY! We're only about 2 minutes in at this point, and already I need a diagram to understand what's going on.
Unfortunately, once the story actually starts moving forward, it's all downhill. Apparently, the monsters from Dark Earth have gotten through the gateway to our world somehow. They die when sunlight hits them, and they hate bright lights, but that's okay, because this ancient race of creatures has the ability to interrupt electric signals, thus knocking out all the lights in a joint before they attack. Oh, but FLASHLIGHTS STILL WORK because the power source is so close.
So Carnby and his girlfriend (Tara Reid) -- who happens to be an archaeologist who can read all the monster writing since she is cataloging these mystical artifacts (which the 713 would surely want to get their hands on but for some reason hasn't) for a museum, and who also has thought that her boyfriend has been dead for the last 5 weeks, since he went out of the country without telling her, but is still willing to have sex with him the moment he comes back -- learn that Tara Reid's boss has actually been trying to bring these monsters back, and injects himself with monster blood so he can get super-strong. (Phew.) Also, all the people from Carnby's orphanage suddenly turn into zombies and start trying to kill him and his girlfriend. The guys from the 713 show up out of the blue and help defeat the zombies. Carnby & Stephen Dorff (the head of the 713 troops) have a dick measuring contest, and then Carnby saves Dorff's life and they become friends. Apparently this enough to convince Dorff to bring two civilians along when the 713 raids the cave that the monsters are apparently coming from.
There is a lot of shooting at monsters and a lot of troops end up half-eaten. Dorff, Slater, Reid and a couple of soldiers head into the cave, and the entrance gets sealed behind them. Eventually, Slater, Reid, Dorff and the one remaining soldier find an underground laboratory. In this lab there are gurneys with the names of each of Carnby's fellow orphans on them. The nameless soldier flips a switch on the wall and a secret panel opens to reveal a stone door. Dr. Reid reads the inscription on the door and deduces that they need a key. Carnby pulls the gold trinket out of his pocket. OMG! THAT'S THE KEY! The trio discuss for a few seconds whether or not they should open the door.
Just then, Reid's boss shows up with a machine gun and shoots the nameless soldier just to show how bad he is. He demands that they give him the key, then starts monologuing about how he was the head of the 713 and was behind the experiments performed on Carnby & the other orphans. He doesn't explain how he got into the sealed cave, or why he wants to reopen the door between the two worlds, but that doesn't stop him from doing so. Then he dies. I forget how. I imagine that Christian Slater shot him.
So there they are, watching all these monsters coming towards the gateway, but mercifully taking their sweet time about it. They plant a bomb with a remote detonator and then try to get to safety. They find a ladder that leads back to the surface, and decide they are a safe distance away to detonate the explosive. Dorff pulls out his detonator and presses the button...
Nothing happens. Oh shit, I guess they forgot that the monsters could interrupt electrical signals! Dorff selflessly goes back and detonates the bomb manually. Who the fuck cares?
The movie ends with Carnby and Dr. Blond walking around an empty city. A subtitle tells us that the city has been evacuated, but the music and the expressions on the two characters faces suggest that they're the only ones left alive. There's another voice over here about how it's too late, and some monsters have already been unleashed, and humanity is doomed, blah blah blah. The last shot in the movie is right out of Evil Dead: P.O.V. an unseen monster as it dashes up behind the heroes. They turn around to face the camera seconds before it is upon them. This, of course, makes no sense, because it's the middle of the fucking day, and it's been well established that sunlight kills these monsters.
Now, I've seen some pretty awful movies in my day. In high school I founded a club that deliberately went to movies that nobody in their right mind would go to see. I'd say that the worst movies I've ever seen in a theater are, in no particular order, "Tarzan and the Lost City," "Black Dog," and "Kull the Conqueror". "Alone in the Dark" surpasses all of these films in suckitude. I honestly can not get over how fucking terrible this movie was. Everything about it was utter shit. Even the sex scene was awful! I have been completely unable to get any work done for the past two days, so dominated are my thoughts of how bad this movie is. It is ruining my life!
HEED MY WARNING! DO NOT SEE THIS MOVIE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES!
posted by matthew at 10:32 AM
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