Against the Dark

I was intrigued by this film and it's premise. You have Steven Seagal fighting vampires, I mean that alone should interest any martial arts movie fan since he hasn't really done anything like that before. The film also stars Linden Ashby who can hold his own in action movies such as Mortal Kombat. But within the first five minutes of this film I came crashing back down to the reality that this is 2009 and Seagal has been relegated to the direct-to-DVD market. This movie is so low budget that almost the entire movie takes place in a hospital that is crawling with "vampires"; although we are told at one point that they are more like mutants. Actually they are more like a hundred extras running around with pointy teeth and fake blood around their mouths. This movie is so low budget that it makes Jean-Claude Van Damme's direct-to-DVD movies look like summer blockbusters. Linden Ashby and veteran character actor Keith David spend all of their scenes yelling at each other in a military tent. Ashby's character wants to give Seagal and his vampire hunters time to clear the building and get the survivors out while David's character wants to blast it ASAP. If these scenes took more than one day to film I would be surprised. Seriously though, if I had Linden Ashby and Steven Seagal in the same movie I would at least have them in a scene together, not to mention a fight scene. Ahh, the fight scenes. Seagal walks around holding a sword for most of the movie. When he uses it, it's mostly close-ups of him swinging it at the camera. He uses a couple of guns too, but it's nothing special. He throws a few mutants around towards the end of the movie as well, but again it's nothing special. One member of his hunting crew who is on the show American Gladiators actually steals the show as far as action goes. His action scenes are actually pretty good and the only reason to watch this poor man's Blade. However it's not enough to recommend this movie.

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.

After seeing many of Seagal's movies, this one just doesn't seem to fit in with what I have grown to expect in a "Steven Seagal Movie". I felt that it put Steven Seagal in a lower class of films than he deserves. However, if you want blood, gore, and dead bodies, this is a movie for you. Definitely a low budget film and many actors names that I do not recognize, but everyone has to start somewhere to be seen or found. I don't feel that the purchase of the DVD movie was worth the money. I'm not into this type of movie. I purchased it solely because it was a Steven Seagal, but ended up disappointed. I do not recommend this movie, unless you're just collecting "Seagal Movies" and want to be able to say that you have all of them. You might wait and see it on TV, before you buy it.

I have noticed that some people are glad to see Steven Seagal move his career in a slightly new direction by leaving behind his traditional style of roles in favor of something of a vampire hunter in his new film Against the Dark (or "Last Night," depending on whether you're looking at the cover box or watching the cast and crew interviews), in which he is the leader of a small group of people who stalk through the night dispatching the vampires that the entirety of the human race have transformed into as a result of a viral epidemic.

Really? Someone was glad about this? Seagal has been one of my guilty pleasures for almost 20 years now, and while the vast majority of his movies are undeniably awful, there is always an element of fun in them that manages to come through even the stupidest story lines, but not this time. There isn't even any of Seagal's traditional style of ass-kicking prowess to be had here, he just walks through dark hallways occasionally hacking vampires to death.

Oh, and don't get me started on the vampires. The movie was written by a Mathew Klickstein, whose work displays a massive lack of even the slightest bit of writing talent. The movie begins with the explanation that a virus wiped out nearly all of mankind and that there were no vaccines and no immunity. Minutes later, a voice-over explains that "some of the wounded were immune, others just changed."

Nice. I like the narrative consistency. Later, after meeting several examples of what the human race have transformed into, one character explains, "Everyone thinks they're vampires, but they're not. They're mutants."

Is this for real? Vampires. Does anyone think these things are vampires? These are typical, badly performed zombies straight out of any cheap zombie movie. To suggest that they are vampires is to display a spectacular lack of understanding of one of the most basic tenets of horror movie lore. Vampires, among other things, drink blood. They don't tear out entrails in mindless feeding frenzies.

In one scene, one of the "vampires" tells one of the uninfected characters something like this, "We have evolved. We think, we talk, we plan…"

Yeah, but we know all about our evolutionary history, but we don't understand that we're zombies, not vampires. Consider, for example, Brad Pitt's and Tom Cruise's brilliant vampire performances in Interview with the Vampire, an immeasurably better movie. They are educated, they're philosophical, they radiate class and style. To say that the things in Against the Dark have evolved from them is quite a statement indeed. So let's just refer to the creatures by what they really are, shall we?

Steven Seagal's first line in the movie, by the way, comes after he and his team rush on screen and cut up a bunch of zombies that are closing in on a young boy. After killing all of them, Seagal says, "We're not here to decide what's right or wrong, we're here to decide who lives and dies."

What does that even mean? It doesn't matter, the entire script is stupendously dumb, and the movie reduces the destruction of all of mankind to a handful of people wandering around a darkened hospital trying to avoid getting eaten while they wait for Seagal and his crew to come save them. The United States Military, headed by Keith David (the movie's one completely wasted talent), waits outside for Seagal to do all the hard stuff.

If you were to make the sad mistake of watching this thing, I would actually recommend watching the extra feature on the DVD that talks about the making of the movie. Sometimes these making-of featurettes can be helpful in slightly changing your opinion of a bad movie, but in this case it is more interesting than the movie itself just to watch how completely deluded everyone seems to have been in making it. I can't understand how anyone at any moment of production could have tricked themselves into thinking that they weren't making a spectacularly bad movie, but they did it, man. They really believed they were onto something with this mess. Miss it!

This will be a strange review. Objectively this is a terrible film. Two bland locations are used to portray a world over-run by vampire/mutants. There is no real context just a short voice-over by one of the main characters explaining that the world has been overtaken by a virus.

A film made on the cheap, with an appalling script written by a literate infant. At one point a key character is explaining to the others just how bad things are, at least that's what he says he is doing... In truth he is stating the obvious and in fairly mild terms. Later he is wandering around and runs into the vigilante group led by Seagal and he is told that luck is liable to run out! No sh** Sherlock, the guy is locked in a manky hospital with an army of raging mutants inside and out.

The acting is mostly okay, but Steven Seagal is so wooden it is hard to distinguish him from the scenery.Otherwise it's reasonable especially at some have no lines at all, aka attendants one and two :) There is horror and action in good measure but overall the film is a stinker. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

HOWEVER, I don't mind it. In fact I've seen it a few times. The score reflects an objective review not what I think entirely. I like the feeling of being under siege by ravening monsters, I quite like gory scenes and a bit of action. In this sense it's a fair effort for me,largely because I'm weird and easily pleased, but most people will undoubtedly hate it.