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.

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!

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

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.

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.