Brian Vs. Movies

Well, I did it again.  Despite the fact that Uwe Boll has made some of my least favorite movies of all time, I once again chose to watch another of Boll's directorial efforts.  This one, Far Cry, like so many of his movies, is an adaptation of a video game.  So, right off the bat, this movie has two strikes going against it: an awful filmmaker and a video game pedigree.  On the bright side, I didn't see this movie listed as one of the worst of 2008, so maybe the man has progressed a bit.  Or maybe it never had widespread theatrical release.

The film opens with the camera serving as a point of view for an unknown attacker; the screen looks somewhat digitized, but that will actually make sense later.  The fact that I can make that assurance already makes this far better than the last Boll movie I reviewed.  The attacker is going after some soldiers in a jungle area; the attacker is strong, beyond fast, well-camouflaged, and extremely deadly.  What's going on with all this?  Well, it seems that a mad scientist, Dr. Krieger (Udo Kier), is experimenting on humans in an attempt to create a genetically enhanced soldier.  Oh, those mad scientists...those rascals sure do love to make affronts to God, don't they?  Kreiger has succeeded in making a deadly and nigh-indestructible creature that is bulletproof (except for the eyes and mouth) and super-strong, but these former men are now uncontrollable homicidal beasts.  "Uncontrollable" and "homicidal" are two adjectives that the military doesn't like to hear when applied to their soldiers, so Krieger's funding is halted until he can figure out how to make these things follow orders.  Creating desperate mad scientists by withholding funding is usually a sure-fire way to have consequence-free scientific advances, so this can't possibly go wrong.

Meanwhile, Valerie (Emmanuelle Vaugier), a reporter, is on her way to Dr. Krieger's island; her uncle Max (Ralf Moller) is going to leak her some information so they can blow the lid off Krieger's inhumane experiments.  To get to the island, she charters a boat from Jack Carver (Til Schweiger), an ex-military bad-ass who now spends his time drinking and chartering his boat for tourist whale watching sessions.  It seems that Krieger knew of Max's treachery, though, and was ready for Valerie's arrival; they try to kill her and somebody has the wise idea of firing a missile at Jack's boat.  Bad idea; they have, unsurprisingly, messed with the wrong temporarily retired bad-ass.  Now, Jack has to search the island for Valerie, because...um...she's on the way to another boat?  I'm not sure on that one.  When Krieger discovers that Valerie is still alive, he sets his super soldier monsters after her, which has the unintended side effect of having the uncontrollable homicidal creatures killing everyone they come across.

I will give credit where it is due; this is by far the best Uwe Boll movie I have ever seen.  The action sequences are almost decent and some of the special effects shown (like the close up of the super soldier's bulletproof skin) actually looked good.  The action scenes, while pretty generic, are competent, I can actually tell where characters are in relation to each other, and I can even get the gist of what is going on in the plot.  Of course, these are pretty basic filmmaking skills, but Uwe Boll is arguably a less competent version of Ed Wood (no offense to the late Mr. Wood).  So, consider my support for his work here in the same way you would applaud the efforts of a child who no longer has to wear protective goggles when using a fork.  

Aside from the almost mediocre action sequences, Far Cry does a halfway decent job with its cast.  Til Schweiger (who you may have seen in Inglourious Basterds) has the potential to be a pretty good action hero.  That isn't too surprising, since he has drawn more audiences to German theaters than any other German actor; take that with a grain of salt, though, since there are still over one hundred American and British actors that are bigger stars in Germany.  Still, Schweiger is believable as a tough guy, and that is what his role demands.  Udo Krier, while not a great actor, always makes a pretty decent villain; that's probably because his hollow eyes show the emptiness of his soul.

Eat all you want, Udo.  Nothing will fill the void where your heart should be.

Of course, those are only two of the film's actors.  There are many bit parts in the film, and they are all played by amateurs (I assume).  Emmanuelle Vaugier doesn't have that excuse.  Her job in this film is to be the predictably sassy reporter, or a damsel in distress at the very least.  As far as her "distress" goes, her "I'm scared" face is suspiciously similar to my "is this cheese moldy?" face; she often looks somewhat inquisitive, while frowning slightly.  As for her sass...well, it's not her fault that the dialogue is terrible, but she has zero comedic timing and couldn't hit a punchline with a big, red wiffle ball bat.  And what was going on with her face?  Vaugier is normally a reasonably attractive woman, but she has some unflattering swollen lips, Vulcan-style eyebrows, and what I can only assume is clown mascara.  Gross.

The biggest problem with this film is its tone.  Sure, you can argue that the lackluster direction and acting makes this a bad movie, but the tone is what sets it apart as truly awful.  I don't know how familiar you are with German humor.  It supposedly exists, although I imagine that it is often paired with the punchline "YOU LAUGH NOW!"  Well, this movie, like all Boll films, is largely a German production.  Unfortunately, this film tries to be a funny action movie.  It doesn't work out well.  To give you an idea of the "humor" in this film, I don't think it is a spoiler to announce that the hero has sex with his female lead.  After the dirty deed, though,  Jack asks her how he rates, on a scale of 1 to 10; she gives him a 2.  Hilarious, right?  Well, they go back to that joke at least six more times and, eventually, Jack explains the joke out loud.  Even worse, this guy is a supporting character:
He's the guy who supplies this island with sandwiches.  But guess what?  He loves to eat his own sandwiches more than he likes to work!  Because he's fat!  And he talks to his sandwiches like he's seducing them.  BWA-HA-HA!  And his catch phrase seems to be "Oww...my back!"  Get it?  He's fat!  And somehow, despite dozens of armed soldiers and some nigh-indestructible super soldiers, this character survives.  These attempts at humor are not sporadic; the script is filled with them.  Not a single actor in this film makes any of these lines work, either.  If you, like me, cannot stand comedic failures in cinema, be warned that this film might cause you to vomit through your eye sockets.

Sure, there's more wrong with the movie than just the humor, but that is certainly the worst of it.  Oh, you want to hear more?  Fine, here are the low-lights.  The super soldiers are far deadlier in the opening scene (when you don't see them) than in any other scene; he evil doctor gives the plucky reporter the dime tour of his highly illegal operation before trying to kill her; the super soldiers look like buff versions of Powder; the super soldiers are unkillable, except when you shoot them in the eyes or mouth...unless the plot decides that some soldiers can survive being shot in the eye.  This is a terrible movie, so none of this should be surprising.  Still, some of the movie is almost watchable, so kudos to Uwe Boll for his first not completely unwatchable film.

How might you know Alone in the Dark is going to be a bad movie before you watch it?  Well, perhaps you know that it is a film adaptation of a video game franchise.  Those always make for good movies, right?  Or maybe you noticed that Uwe Boll is the director.  Or perhaps you saw Tara Reid's name above the title.  All of these are good reasons not to watch this movie.  The only reason you should watch this is if you want to see just how bad it gets.  Here's a hint: pretty bad.

For those of you unfamiliar with the video game series, Alone in the Dark is a suspense/horror game.  Basically, you wander around creepy buildings, looking for clues as to what has made everything so creepy, until you encounter a monster.  At this point you can either mash your controller buttons frantically, hoping that your character will shoot the damn thing, and/or you can soil yourself.  That basic concept makes this series sound like a natural fit for the supernatural thriller movie sub-genre.  So, should we expect a lot of eerie sets and the kind of suspense that has you waiting and for something to happen, and nothing happens and nothing happens and nothing happens and then the music gets real loud and LOOK OUT there's nothing there?  Repeat three times, and on the fourth time, exchange the "nothing" for "a zombie frothing at the mouth."  Actually, that might not be a terrible movie.  Too bad that's not the direction the filmmakers took.

The film opens with a lengthy prologue, which is immediately followed by a reenactment of the lengthy prologue.  That prologue must be pretty important to the story, right?  Actually, no.  It feels like some poor soul watched an early cut of the movie and asked "What the hell was the beginning all about?"  Instead of taking this as a hint that the plot and script are pretty bad, they just had someone do a voice over summary of the first scene.  Brilliant save, Mr. Boll!  It then turns out that the prologue and the reenactment were just dreamed by Edward Carnby (Christian Slater), paranormal investigator.  So...his dreams have voice overs?  How very meta.  Carnby was asleep on an airplane, when he wakes with a start.  The child sitting next to him helpfully tells him that there's nothing to be afraid of in the dark.  Not that the airplane was dark.  When Carnby lands, he is then followed by a creepy dude, and they eventually fight.  The creepy bad guy clearly has super powers, because he can jump high, run fast, and punch through bricks.  Carnby also appears to have powers, because he can hold his own in the fight.  That's never explained, but at least it's shot in slow-motion.

Meanwhile, we are introduced to the assistant curator of a museum, Aline Cedrac (Tara Reid).  She doesn't speak, but instead acts intelligent by wearing glasses and writing on a clipboard.  Instead, an unusually well-informed security guard discusses how awesome she is to a delivery driver within earshot of her.  He also explains that the stuff being delivered is a bunch of Abkani artifacts.  The Abkani were a super-advanced culture that vanished 10,000 years ago, and their relics have been found in the most remote parts of the world.  You've probably heard of this not-at-all fictional siciety, so I won't bother you with any more information about them.  Neither will this film.

What does that have to do with anything?  Well, Carnby shows up at the museum with an artifact for Aline to check out.  The two are apparently lovers, but Carnby vanished for several months without contacting her.  Aww...but they seemed so right for each other!  Aline scans the artifact into her computer (How?), and it immediately builds a three-dimensional image of the artifact (No, really...how?) before telling her that the artifact is definitely Abkani (What?!?  Now you're just messing with me!).  How did Carnby get his hands on this artifact?  In his exact words,

"I was in the Amazon for six weeks, tracking poachers across their transport lines and I fell in with a group of ex-Chilean military that were selling artifacts on the black market."  

Dude, if you don't want to tell me the truth, just say so.

So, I guess the super-powered bad guy was after the artifact?  It's never explained, really, but not explaining that at least avoids explaining how the bad guy knew Carnby had the artifact to begin with.  Anyway, these weird kind of, sort of, sometimes invisible monsters that look like a blend of a dog, reptile and scorpion break into the museum and chase Carnby and Aline for a while.  Then a military group shows up, shoots the dogorpions, and the field leader, Burke (Stephen Dorff), belittles Carnby for being involved.  If that makes no sense to you, congratulations, you're sane.  Apparently, Carnby used to be part of this military group, but he quit for the exciting life of the paranormal investigator.  Burke hates him for that.  Or something else.  You never find out.  But he hates Carnby and refuses to accept his help.  Until he changes his mind.  And then more super-powered people show up and kill a bunch of soldiers.  And then Carnby, Aline, and Burke figure out where the dogorpions are coming from and go there to attack the source.  Will they succeed?  Or will they just suck?

Here are just a few ridiculous things about this movie:

• The main characters are never actually alone in the dark.
• All travel scenes are done with long shots of vehicles and voice over.  Cheap.
• Christian Slater and Tara Reid have a sex scene, where she keeps her bra on.  I certainly don't want to see her mangled boobs again, but that's just weird.  It's not like she was cast for her acting ability, so the lack of nudity is absolutely befuddling.
• How do they find the location of the dogorpion source?  By combining Abkani artifacts so that they make a tower, which somehow indicates a constellation, which helps pinpoint a geographic land mass, which appears to be the United States.  Pin and point!
• An abandoned scientific lab has power, twenty-odd years after being abandoned.

This is just a mess.  Characters come and go, with no points of reference to indicate how close they are to danger.  The super-powered bad guys turn out to be sort of zombies, which somehow connects to the prologue, but not very well.  The special effects are cartoony, and even the lack of light on the set doesn't disguise it.  Characters change their personalities on a dime and randomly prioritize things.  Hey, Stephen Dorff, you've left dozens of your soldiers after they've died, but when time is a factor in the plot, you all of a sudden have to save an undoubtedly dead guy?  C'mon!  These obvious flaws are kind of funny, but the movie isn't any fun to watch.  I can like me some Lefty Gold when I find it, but this was just a draining experience.

This was a bad movie from start to finish.  And, when I say "start," I am referring to the start of pre-production.  It didn't stay true to the tone of the games and it doesn't feel like a horror movie.  The action sequences are boring and stupid.  The plot was unintentionally incomprehensible.  On paper, you would think that casting Tara Reid as the resident smart person in the movie would be the film's biggest mistake, but that pales in comparison to all the story problems.  I'm convinced that Uwe Boll doesn't understand the concept of storytelling.  In the unrated version (which I have not seen), Boll allegedly re-cut the film radically, virtually eliminating Reid from the final product.  Now, I'm not going to lie and say that Tara Reid is a fine actress, but her involvement was far from the worst thing about Alone in the Dark.  The fact that Boll would misunderstand his product's shortcomings that much makes me hope never to see another of his movies again.  I probably will, because they all look hilarious, but I should probably see this film as a lesson in how bad movies can be.

Movies that are based on video games are not usually very good.  Double Dragon?  Super Mario Bros?  Street Fighter?  These are movies that make you shake with self-loathing after watching them, because you know you would have enjoyed yourself more if you had just sat in a bathtub filled with butterscotch pudding and ate raw bacon all day.  Again.  House of the Dead makes those movie watching experiences seem like viewing Citizen Kane while getting a body massage.


The first clue that this movie will unabashedly suck?  Clint Howard gets third billing.  Yeah.  This guy:
When you make Ron Howard look like a Chippendale's dancer by comparison, you know you're ugly.  Well, let's not pick on a guy for being less than pretty.  Ugly people often make positive contributions to society, right?  Ron Perlman and Willem Dafoe are good examples of this.  Maybe Clint will turn in a surprise break-out supporting role in this movie.  Let's see...Clint's costume is a Gordon's fisherman outfit with a hook hand.  Not a good sign.

Maybe the story is better.  It takes place off the coast of Oregon on the Isla de Muerte, which translates into "Island of the Dead."  Apparently, this is an educational film, because I didn't know that the Spanish had ever colonized, named, or even visited any part of the Pacific Northwest.  No wonder the British could never find the Isla de Muerte in Pirates of the Caribbean --- they were looking in the wrong ocean!  A group of roughly college-age kids are trying to get the the Island of the Dead for a rave.  Unfortunately, they missed the last boat leaving for the island and are forced to charter a boat (the one that Clint Howard works on) owned by Victor Kirk (Jurgen Prochnow); yes, that means that he is called Captain Kirk, and yes, the script notices that hilarious joke.  The boat gets them to the rave a little late, but it is still daylight, which makes me wonder how awesome this rave was if it was outdoors and started around lunchtime.  Aren't raves supposed to have deafening levels of music and trippy light shows?  How does that translate well into an island setting?  I guess I'm just not a raver.  The kids show up to the rave site, only to find it absolutely deserted, with a lot of the tents and equipment knocked over.  How you respond to a deserted party where many people went to great lengths to attend indicates the type of person you are.  Do you...

• A) look around and conclude that the party doesn't start until you walk in!
• B) say, "He-e-e-y, Scoob, looks like we got a mystery on our hands!" 
• C) decide that, despite the total lack of blood, that something very wrong has happened here and needs investigating!
• D) thank God that there is still lots of beer left in the kegs!
• E) go home as fast as you can, THE END.

Well...?  What kind of person are you?  Here's the answer key: (A) - a mangy, scabby whore and/or a Marmaduke fan (B) - a typical stoner and/or Casey Kasem (C) - a horror movie idiot and/or an insurance liability (D) - alcoholic and/or a frequent user of the term "Dude" (E) - a survivor.  The only correct answer is E, but this group splits between C and D.    Stupid rave kids.  

Some of them opt to wander around the island in the dark (because it got dark all of a sudden), while some decide to stay behind and have sex in a random tent.  Not to be overly prudish, but isn't that kind of what got Goldilocks in trouble?  "Somebody's been sleeping in my bed and...eeewww!!!"  In accordance with the Horror Movie Ethics Code of 1978, those lusty young adults that partake in premarital sex and/or abuse drugs are the first to die, so zombie-ish creatures attack the tent-sex girl and drag her body away, while the tent-sex guy is off peeing in the woods.  I wonder if the National Park Service has statistics for how often peeing on trees saves lives.  As this is happening, the others find a shack in the woods and decide to check it out.  After all, is there anything more inviting at night in an unfamiliar place than a dilapidated shack?  Or maybe this the titular House of the Dead?  Actually, no.  It's the place where the remaining original ravers took refuge, including the main character.  That's right...the main character has not even made an appearance in the movie so far.  The only reason you know it's the main character is because he delivered an ominous monologue (in the past and present tense) at the beginning of the film and gave brief insights into the other characters, so the script didn't have to waste time developing them.  Anyway, these ravers explain that zombies attacked the rave (killing future television actress Erica Durance) and suggest leaving the island on Captain Kirk's boat.  The rest of the movie has the kids trying to leave the island and fighting the zombies.


Obviously, this is a movie where several normal people try to kill zombies to save their own lives.  How can that possibly go wrong?  Well, for starters, you need cool zombies.  The zombies in House of the Dead are not your typical zombies.  They switch between the shuffling, moaning, classic movie zombies and the running zombies of 28 Days Later.  Oh, and then there are the water zombies.  Apparently, some zombies just spend their freetime just chillin' in the water by the island's only dock, waiting for some suckers to try and leave by boat.  Or, maybe all the zombies go to the dock to wash up after a messy kill.  That would explain the complete lack of blood anywhere on the island after the zombies attack.  That prissiness would also explain why the zombies seem to die, no matter where you shoot, punch or kick them.  This is a rare zombie movie where the headshot is hard to find.  I can't remember any, but sometimes I lose my short term memory after a trauma like this.


So the zombies aren't classic zombies, or even remotely cool.  This is based on a video game, so action is the key.  So how is the action?  It sucks.  Sucks.  It sucks worse than a kid that had a Novocaine shot to the lips and then tried to drink a thick milkshake through a coffee stirrer.  I would like to pause and congratulate myself for a great "sucking" analogy that was not vulgar; that brings my score up to Brian: 1, Rest of the World: presumably several million.  Here's a hint to the quality of this movie's action: despite dozens of explosions, the same result is seen every time --- some dude flying through the air in front of the explosion, flailing his arms.  And yet, the majority of the budget was clearly spent on the action.  Well, at least a few key scenes.  You will notice a few shots that suddenly jump into a low-rent version of The Matrix's bullet time, where everything freezes around an actor and the camera does a quick 360-degree spin around them.  That might sound totally awesome, but that's because I'm a damn poet; it is random, pointless, and doesn't even look that good.  And if you just couldn't get enough of those bullet time shots, don't worry --- when characters die, their character has another bullet time 360 spin, but this time, they aren't shooting zombies and just look sad.  Aww.


If you decide against following my (and probably your doctor's) advice and watch this movie, you might notice some symptoms of hallucination.  Don't worry.  Those two-to-three second jarring interruptions to your concentration are not actually your brain trying to punish you for watching this movie.  That will come later.  No, those interruptions to the film are actually snippets of somebody playing the House of the Dead arcade game.  The snippets do not have a direct correlation to anything in the movie; the environment and action in the game is completely independent of that in the film.  I would like to point out that the game footage includes instructions for a second player to insert quarters and press start to play.  I realize that this movie had a small budget, but a second player would have cost maybe five bucks.  It's not like they bought the arcade console; they probably just took a video camera down to Dave & Buster's.  Five dollars.  That's all it takes to make a crappy idea to insert video game footage in a movie look like it's not a cheap crappy idea to insert video game footage in a movie.


Sadly, one of the most redeeming features for this movie comes as bonus material with the DVD case.  The DVD insert has a character breakdown page, listing each character's position within the group (leader, scout, etc.) and their weapon of choice.  Hilariously, the brains of the group (according to the insert) is described as a moron by the main character.  Oh, and I'm pretty sure several of the weapons of choice aren't used by those characters in the movie.


That is the highlight of the movie for me, and it's not even a part of the movie.  How did this celluloid abomination get made, you ask?  Thank the Germans.  There is (or at least, there was in 2003) a law that allowed Germans to finance movies as a tax write-off; if the movies made money, then the investors had to pay tax on the profits, bu if it tanked, they got the entire investment written off.  Uwe Boll, you are a terrible director, but a brilliant man.  But this...this is a bad, bad, bad movie.  It's not even funny-bad.  This is, without a doubt in my mind, the most poorly made movie in the past decade to have widespread theatrical release.  Please.  Don't watch it.