Against the Dark

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.

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.

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.

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.