Laikals
The greatest movie ever made..!
Huievest
Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.
CookieInvent
There's a good chance the film will make you laugh out loud, but if it doesn't, there's an even better chance it will make you openly sob.
Philippa
All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.
DigitalRevenantX7
Paranormal investigator Edward Carnby is approached by a drug dealer who claims to have information on a rare occult dagger that can grant its owner powers & who wants to see the remains of three people in the hospital morgue. Carnby assists him in visiting the stiffs but is stabbed with the dagger in the process. As soon as he is stabbed, a group of mercenaries led by the family of an old witch hunter arrive & rescue Carnby before his wound gets too severe. Once at their fortified compound, Carnby begins to see visions of a witch who haunts the family, trying to claim the body of the family's daughter Natalie. At night the family & most of the mercs are attacked by the witch & almost wiped out, but only Carnby & Natalie survive. Seeking help from a former occultist who has renounced his past & now works as a vet, the pair try to find the witch's body & destroy it before Natalie's body becomes the host for her.Uwe Boll's Alone in the Dark was the second film in Boll's now infamous "Unholy Trilogy" of video game adaptations (the others were HOUSE OF THE DEAD & BLOODRAYNE) that were widely pilloried for their lack of finesse & poor filmmaking. Having said that, the films made a surprising amount of money & all the negative press has worked wonders for Boll's career, to the point where he is now a sort of cult icon in his own right (sort of a 21st Century version of Ed Wood). All three films have had sequels done & this is also the case with Alone in the Dark.Alone in the Dark II is, if you want a capsule definition, an occult thriller with shootouts thrown in for novelty value. The plot was the same kind of stuff that wouldn't look out of place in an old 1970s Hammer film but conducted here with a smidgen of science fiction in order to give it some leverage. Of course, the problem here is that the plot is too ordinary & too passé to work for these days. Not just that but the original Alone in the Dark became famous for its lack of writing skill, which made gave it an almost instant cult profile, something the sequel has bettered but given its mediocre script makes it sort of pointless.The film's one redeeming aspect is that the cast recruited all give professional performances. In fact, the film is very low-key, giving the actors plenty of room to stretch their theatrical legs. Lance Henriksen, an actor who is legendary in the profession due to his consistent batting average in many classic & cult genre films, gives the film a quiet dignity as the former occultist who assists in chasing the undead witch.
thehandofguido
because it was so bad. I felt that I could not in good conscience allow many of the other reviews that have showered this travesty of a film in praise stand as the only accounts of the work.I have been trying to think of a reason that someone would like this movie. I personally have a broad range of interests in film; I am obsessed with a lot of the current and older horror and slasher-type films in addition to blockbusters, documentaries, art films, and so on, but this film lacks appeal to any demographic I can think of. Film snobs obviously will think it sucks, but people who love a good campy horror film will be bored out of their mind as well. I saw shorts and full-lengths at the Philadelphia Terror Film fest last fall that had an eighth of the budget of this film, and they blew it away, so any commentary about the smaller budget Alone in the Dark II had is null and void.I will cede that the first Alone in the Dark was pretty bad, but that a lot of people liked this film simply because it was not directed by Uwe Boll is beyond me. Perhaps we have traded out the bad from the previous film (actually, everything aside from the name has been taken out of the last film and the games), but what have we gained in return?In this story, Edward Carnby has somehow transformed from Christian Slater into Rick Yune, whose only relevance to the Alone in the Dark universe seems to be his name. He accidentally gets stabbed by some crazy guy with a magic knife (it looks like a decorative butter knife), An immortal witch stalks Carby in "visions," and some random family and their animal husbanding friend decide to protect him owing to family history. Despite being Carnby's protectors, they threaten to kill him, some generic "captain of the guards" type goon talks tough to him, and everyone generally yells at him at a moderate volume; I've never seen so many people so angry at random things yelling so quietly. Then again, I've not seen many films with acting this bad.What baffled me most of all about the reviews I read was the acclaim for Bill Moseley. I love a lot of things he has done, but a combination of the worst character and a general lack of enthusiasm made his role one of the least appealing parts of this film. He is constantly angry at the most moronic things (like at Carnby for getting stabbed and being hunted by an immortal witch), and deals with it by speaking loudly in a monotone at everyone.The bottom line: the plot is stupid and barely justified, the script amateurish, the acting ranging from acceptable to atrocious, and there isn't even enough gore or jumps in the dark to make it fun to laugh at. As others have noted, nobody is alone because they all stand around in bovine-like herds, the sets are rarely very dark, and everyone unloads machine guns into the walls separating them from ephemeral ghost witches. Dumb.
ajohan-1
This movie was bad, but not horrible.I enjoyed Bill Moseleys performance, because, well he's awesome, but besides that, the movie was pretty shite. Plus they kill his character off pretty early on(Yeah, they kill the one interesting character in the movie less than half way through!!!) The main thing that ticked me off was that the characters made stupid choices that no logical person would think were a good idea. It was established pretty early on in the movie that bullets don't work against ghosts, so why do the the Protagonists fail to realize this, constantly trying to mow down the witchy phantom with machine gun fire?! Its like trying to kill the Blob with a knife, it ain't gonna work folks.I didn't see the ending because I was watching it online and once I reached 70 min in the movie the website showing it pulled the good ol' you must pay to watch the rest of this movie. I assume the remaining characters all die horribly and in a manner so that an Alone in the Dark 3 can never be made.
Aka_Who
Because, you know...Alone in the Dark 1 was such a great film and all. Was it really necessary to make an even worse sequel to an already horrible film? This one is shockingly good at being completely worthless. The special effects were a complete mess. The acting was very hit or miss (some did a fairly decent job however it's not worth sticking up for them as they agreed to work on this filth). The story is all over the place. I've never seen a movie that felt like those involved realized nothing good was going to come of it so they just gave up and threw together what had been done and submitted it as a finished product. Now I have.