Alone in the Dark II

Okay. Well, while the first "Alone in the Dark" movie, you know, the one with Christian Slater and Tara Reid, was hardly a masterpiece, then I had expected the sequel to at least be equally 'good', if not better.

That was not the case.

"Alone in the Dark II" was even less interesting in story and plot than its predecessor, however unlikely that was. But alas, it was.

I will say that they had an interesting cast, which included Bill Moseley and Lance Henriksen! Two of the more iconic names and faces in the horror genre. But even their appearances did little to lift up the train wreck that is known as "Alone in the Dark II".

It should be said, though, that the movie had rather good special effects, which at least added some element of enjoyment to it.

The evil force that was supposed to be threatening the world in the movie, was just simply not interesting enough to even present anything even remotely worthwhile to the story.

"Alone in the Dark II" is simply just not worth it. And if you are a fan of the game franchise, do yourself an immense favor and stay well clear of this one.

I always rate films I turned off as the lowest possible, and with Alone in the Dark 2, I could bear no more after only 35 minutes!

I'm not a harsh judge of films, and I like to give them a chance to improve (hell, I sat through the entirety of the first one), but when the writing is such an absolute mess as this was, I knew already after 10 minutes that it had the go, and had totally given up on it after 20. The next 15 minutes were spent on me trying to use The Force to get the controller from the table.

Hmm, so what's this film all about?

Who cares? No, seriously, if you're curious or dumb enough to give it a go, you'll soon realise that this is a spot-on assessment.

Some people die, there's some CGI mist, meant to be a ghostly witch, a dagger, some kind of infection, some weird racial transformation of the lead from the first film, some boring stuff, some nonsensical stuff... You get the point.

Anyway, my summary above really does sum it all up, but for those who still need further warning: AVOID!

Uwe Boll's original video game adaptation of ALONE IN THE DARK was bad enough, but this sequel reaches new levels of low. Gone are Christian Slater and Tara Reid from the original film, jettisoned in favour of an entirely cheaper cast and an even more nonsensical storyline involving the hunt for a magical dagger and an evil witch.

Bizarrely, the central character of Edward Carnby has changed race, now being played by the Chinese-American actor Rick Yune. Carnby's very soul is in peril thanks to a sinister infection that causes some dodgy-looking veins to stick out of his chest, so a crack team must infiltrate a haunted manor and lay to rest the spirit of an evil witch who's causing all kinds of trouble.

This is a poorly-directed, poorly-written mess through and through, reliant on sub-par CGI and bad acting from beginning to end. All it can offer the viewer is a string of celebrity cameos from various personalities, so we get the likes of Bill Moseley, Jason Connery, former CONAN Ralf Moeller, and CARRIE's P.J. Soles. Even Danny Trejo shows up for just a single scene. Best of the lot is Lance Henriksen, who bags something of a meatier exposition-spouting role, but even he's on autopilot, and nothing about ALONE IN THE DARK 2 is good.

So this film was like a B-Movie that didn't know it was a B-Movie. So it's playing everything really straight, and serious when the script is kind of ridiculous.

The special effects are awful, if some of them would have spent time alone in the dark. Then maybe they could have hid some of the bad CGI. They were so bad I was shocked by how late the film is, because the overall quality also seems like it was filmed years ago.

I think if you like terrible films, you might find it a little entertaining. Some moments do seem really over the top, and the music choices are often over dramatic as well. I don't think it was a complete waste of time, but I do wish I would have been drunk with friends whilst watching it.

With a DVD follow-up of the original "Alone in the Dark" movie, my prejudgment whispered in my ear that this will be just another worthless follower. Actually, it wasn't that bad. The film had a much smaller budget than the original, but you could probably guess that since this was a straight to video movie. The cast is great and fun to watch. OK, this film is never going to win an Oscar. It takes itself to seriously, the effects are occasionally ropey (but good considering the budget) and the acting is not always up to De Nero's standard. But this is a great B movie. The cinematography is actually quite good considering the shooting time and the lighting in extremely good.