Against the Dark

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.