Upon release, the film was panned by critics for the story, dialogue, special effects, and Reid's performance. Holding a 1% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, Alone in the Dark is considered one of the worst films ever made. It was also a box-office bomb, grossing $12.7 million on a $20 million budget, although the home media releases were more successful. A sequel with a different cast and story was released to home media in 2008; Boll served as a producer.[3]
Plot
Edward Carnby, a paranormal investigator, has a nightmare in which he hides from alien-like creatures as a child. Carnby flies to an urban museum where his girlfriend, Aline Cedric, is an assistant curator. Carnby holds an artifact-puzzle piece of the Abkani, an extinct Native American tribe. A strange man follows Carnby and attacks him with supernatural strength, but the man dies after many escape attempts by Carnby. Simultaneously, a ship recovers a gold coffin from the ocean floor. After docking, the captain locks up the curator of the museum, Prof. Hudgens, while his crew opens the coffin. Hudgens escapes to find everyone killed by a mysterious creature and the coffin empty. Hudgens finds a secret compartment, collects an artifact from the coffin, and goes ashore.
Several people across the western US and Canada walk off into the night after hearing an ear-splitting screech, and Carnby passes out while studying his artifact. Bureau 713, where Carnby used to work, becomes aware of evidence of electromagnetic waves by a surveillance team. Carnby thinks it is related to the Abkani because everyone who disappeared was from the same location. Carnby arrives that evening at the museum with the artifact, and Cedric shows him another recently arrived Abkani artifact that she has been studying since Hudgens' absence. The mysterious creature from the ship attacks them inside the museum, killing a security guard. Carnby and Cedric hide in a storage closet until troopers from Bureau 713 arrive, and the creature retreats. Carnby attempts to relay information to their team leader, Commander Burke, but Burke tells him to stay out of it. Carnby asks his former co-workers, including staff surgeon and pathologist Sam Fischer, about the creature.
Hudgens returns to the museum with a captured creature. Hudgens uses a syringe to draw fluid from the creature to study it as part of his research in combining the DNA of man and beast. Carnby investigates his past by visiting his former orphanage to learn more about Hudgens' research.
While patrolling the museum, several creatures attack Bureau 713 soldiers. Several soldiers and most of the creatures, who are revealed to be people who disappeared earlier, are killed. Carnby arrives, and Burke again tells him to stay away. During a scuffle, Carnby picks Burke's pocket containing his security badge. Carnby goes to Bureau 713 and talks with Fischer in the morgue while looking at one of the corpses. Fischer shows Carnby a small, centipede-like creature in the dorsal spine of his old friend. Fischer also discovers that Carnby has one of his own in his body, but it is dead, presumably because of the electroshock Carnby had as a child. Burke and his men arrive and escort Carnby out of the building. That evening, Professor Hudgens ambushes Fischer at his home and inserts a baby creature into Fischer's mouth.
Carnby discovers that the Abkani had fought the creatures, which can be killed by light. They also disrupt electrical light, creating blackouts. The Abkani artifacts found all over the world open the gate to another dimension, where millions of creatures sleep, waiting to be freed. Hudgens further experiments, injecting himself with the blood of one of the creatures, which allows him to control the monsters. Carnby, Cedric, Burke, and Burke's military squad go to an abandoned gold mine near Carnby's orphanage, where there are strong electromagnetic disruptions. They are attacked by dozens of the creatures; only Carnby, Cedric, and Burke survive. They reach the underground surgery room where the baby creature was transplanted into Carnby. There, Hudgens takes Carnby's artifact and opens the gate. Millions of creatures awaken and run towards the gate. Burke kills Hudgens. The group places a bomb and runs away, only to realize that they cannot detonate it remotely. Burke returns and sacrifices himself. Carnby and Cedric rise to the surface at dawn but find the city evacuated. As they walk down the street, something runs toward them.
Cast
Christian Slater as Edward Carnby: Raised at an orphanage under Sister Clara, Carnby lost his memory when he was ten years old. At twenty, he was recruited by Bureau 713, gaining knowledge on the paranormal soon after. His current assignment is investigating his past along with researching the disappearance of the Abkani. Due to the experiments conducted on him as a child, he has the ability to sense paranormal activity and has increased strength and speed, which allow him to perform acrobatic moves that a normal human could not do.
Dustyn Arthurs as Young Edward
Tara Reid as Aline Cedrac, an archaeologist and museum curator; Edward's girlfriend who knows about the Abkani and their culture.
Stephen Dorff as Commander Richard Burke, the Commander of Bureau 713, formerly worked under Carnby's direction.
Frank C. Turner as Agent Fischer, the head of the medical unit of Bureau 713; he is one of Carnby's few trusted allies and friends.
Karin Konoval as Sister Clara, owner of the orphanage which cared for Edward. In the '80s, she was persuaded by Hudgens to allow experiments on the orphans. She keeps this secret from everyone but is inwardly guilty for her immoral actions.
Ed Anders as James Pinkerton, a former Agent of Bureau 713 who went missing in action in the 1980s. He and Hudgens were in charge of the investigation of the disappearance of gold-miners at Brutan Goldmine. Pinkerton became an experiment for Hudgens, who attached a Xenos creature to his spine. His abilities included increased awareness, strength, speed and willpower.
Blair Erickson came up with the first drafts of the script for Alone in the Dark. According to Erickson, Uwe Boll suggested through various e-mails changes that would turn it from a thriller into an action film. Erickson stated his disgust at the treatment and spoke negatively of his working relationship with Boll on Something Awful:
The original script took the Alone in the Dark premise and depicted it as if it were actually based on a true story of a private investigator in the northeastern U.S. whose missing persons cases begin to uncover a disturbing paranormal secret. It was told through the eyes of a writer following Edward Carnby and his co-worker for a novel and depicted them as real-life blue-collar folks who never expected to find hideous beings waiting for them in the dark. We tried to stick close to the H. P. Lovecraft style and the low-tech nature of the original game, always keeping the horror in the shadows so you never saw what was coming for them.
Thankfully Dr. Boll was able to hire his loyal team of hacks to crank out something much better than our crappy story and add in all sorts of terrifying horror movie essentials like opening gateways to alternate dimensions, bimbo blonde archaeologists, sex scenes, mad scientists, slimy dog monsters, special army forces designed to battle slimy CG dog monsters, Tara Reid, "Matrix" slow-motion gun battles, and car chases. Oh yeah, and a ten-minute opening back story scroll read aloud to the illiterate audience, the only people able to successfully miss all the negative reviews.
I mean hell, Boll knows that's where the real scares lie.[4]
As a result, there were seven distinct scripts in circulation without a consensus to which one was used.[5]
Tara Reid starred in the film opposite Christian Slater.[6] Artisan Pictures picked up North American distribution rights to the film in June 2003.[6]
Release
Alone in the Dark was released in Canada and the United States on January 28, 2005.[7] It was released in Germany on February 3, 2005.[8]
The film was released on VHS and DVD on 10 May 2005. An unrated director's cut was released in Germany, France, and Australia and was #1 on the German DVD market for three weeks.[9] It was released on DVD in North America on 25 September 2007.[10] In the newest version of the film, the sex scene between Carnby and Aline has been removed.[11]
Original film and game tie-in concept
Originally, the film version of Alone in the Dark was to be released with Alone in the Dark (2008); however, the developers of the game, Eden Games, delayed and reworked it entirely from scratch. Boll stated his disappointment on the region 1 DVD commentary but also said that Atari had face shots of Christian Slater for Alone in the Dark, which was released on June 26, 2008.
Reception
Box office
Alone in the Dark grossed $2.8 million in its opening weekend, ranking at #12; by the end of its run, the film had grossed $12.7 million worldwide.[2]
Critical response
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Rotten Tomatoes gave the film a rating of 1% based on 123 reviews, with an average rating of 2.2/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "Inept on almost every level, Alone in the Dark may not work as a thriller, but it's good for some head-slapping, incredulous laughter".[12]Metacritic gave the film a 9 out of 100 based on 25 reviews, meaning "overwhelming dislike".[13] Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film an F grade.[14]
Scott Brown of Entertainment Weekly gave the film an F grade, commenting that the film was "so bad it's postmodern".[15] In the film's only positive review listed by Rotten Tomatoes, Michelle Alexandria of Eclipse Magazine wrote: "Alone in the Dark isn't going to set the world on fire, but it largely succeeds with what it has to work with. Just don't take it seriously and you'll have a fun time".[16]
