Against the Dark

Oh dear, Steven Seagel has been starring in very mediocre to poor straight to DVD films in recent times… and the digitally shot low-budget horror / action "Against the Dark" is another terrible outing. Actually I was expecting more Seagel, but really he's nothing more than a support character. Who does nothing much than wandering around, kicking in with some slaughter by samurai sword and whispering out inane dialogues.

The future is looking grim as the earth's population has succumbed to a virus that turns its victims into zombie-like vampires. The story mainly centres on a group of survivors held up in an abandon hospital; trying to get themselves out before the generator dies meaning they would find themselves trapped. Their only chance of survival seems to rest of a small group know as hunters led by Tao (Seagel in glory) who go around finding the non-infected and slice and dice those who are.

The premise feels like a sloppily dull mixture of ''Resident Evil", "Blade" and "28 Days Later". The predictably clichéd story has been done to death, but it's poorly drawn up (characters and situations with a script that thinks its got something insightful to say… no worthless drivel) consisting of senselessly dumb plot devices that it grows wearisome by feeling much longer than it is. What's going on is a lot of posing and little imagination to back it up. Ah there's a lot of walking/running here and then over there as the confined elements find themselves getting smaller. The gloomy visuals aren't too bad with some decently ghastly images, but when the action hits (with that overwrought music score)… it's a blotchy mess of purposely unfocused editing. The performances stand-up better (Jenna Harrison and Linden Ashby) than the pitiful material, but I found the characters reactions completely annoying.

Against the Dark staring Steven Seagal is certainly a departure from the standard formula employed in his passed movies. In this nonsensical yarn, the rotund Seagal plays the urban legend street fighting hero as always, but instead of battling drug dealing thugs or terrorists, Seagal is out saving the last vestiges of humanity from blood thirsty cannibal plague mutants. Seagal and a party of mostly lethargic companions prefer to make use of swords and knives to slice and dice their mutant antagonists which makes little sense since if the mutants were contagious with a dangerous communicable disease, drenching themselves in their blood would seem to be unwise. However, the courageous multi-chinned Seagal braves the endemic risks to rescue a pitifully helpless band of plague survivors (one has to wonder how in the world they managed to survive at all given their utter helpless condition).

As usual, Seagal's marshal arts skills are showcased and he demonstrates that even the likes of Orson Wells or Raymond Burr could have been marshal artists despite their physical handicaps. The real stars of this movie are the mutants and you might find yourself routing for them before it is over.

What with the correlation between Segal's weight gain and the increasingly ridiculousness of his films. To point out what wrong with this film would just be shooting fish in a barrel. Watch it to learn how NOT to make a film

Continuing my plan to watch every Steven Seagal movie in order, I just watched Against The Dark (2009)

Well, this one sucked. I thought it sounded fun Seagal fights vampire zombies after a plague and must escape, before the army plans to nuke the area. But it's all so poorly done. Seagal and his team are not the focal point of the movie, despite him being the lone actor on the cover (not unusual in land of dtv movies) it's more about a group of survivors who need to escape the hospital where Seagal's stunt man and his team are killing all the zombie's/vampires (what were they?? Only one had fangs, and she did that to herself) they can find.

Seagal only has about five or six scenes in the movie and he does very little in these scenes and he might utter a total of fifty words, which are mostly not him. I should find out who his stand in, stunt double is, as he did most of the work here. The movie is carried by Tanoai Reed (who, looking at his IMDB credits is Dwayne Johnsons stunt double) and an impressive Jenna Harrison, and these two do a good job carrying what little movie there was. If it were not for them, I would have turned it off.

If you want to see a movie that moves fast, has lots of zombie/vampire killing goodness with just barely enough plot, dialog and story to link all this murdering together, then this is the one for you. Otherwise stay away.

Well I watched this movie last night with my girlfriend.... And Ill say right now one reason it might have seemed worse to me is because I was watching it with my girlfriend and she sat there the hole time saying how bad it was, and how much weight Seagal has put on lol. HOWEVER this movie straight up was just horrible.

I am a huge fan of Seagal HUGE... I even liked some of his movies most people didn't, like Mercenary For Justice, Shadown Man, and Attack Force... lol OK jk about the last one.

But this movie........ there just was nothing good about it. It started off VERY boring, showing these people walking through a hospital and the one guy who played the Stonner (I thought) did a terrible job of acting. It would show a little piece of Seagal and his crew just to remind you that they are still in the movie... The final I would say... 20 minutes was decent with some good fighting. However the movie was SOOOO dark you couldn't see a thing which was very annoying.

I could get into every single detail, but you catch my drift. This movie (as lots have mentioned) Is NOT a Seagal movie. I actually heard from a few people that he took the script just for fun and support this movie.

Skip this piece of crap and wait for Ruslan to come out, as that actually looks like it could be in comparison to Urban Justice and Pistol Whipped.