Available on DVD Tuesday, January 26
Cast:
Rick Yune as Edward Carnby
Lance Henriksen as Abner Lundbert
Rachel Specter as Natalie
Bill Moseley as Dexter
Danny Trejo as Perry
Ralf Moeller as Boyle
Natassia Malthe as Turner
Directed by: Michael Roesch and Peter Scheerer
Review:
The first question you probably are asking yourself is: Alone in the Dark II, really? Because the first one was such a great film.
The first Alone in the Dark II movie – an adaptation of the video game of the same name – was a disaster. Widely panned as one of the worst video game films (and perhaps worst horror movies) of all time, it featured Tara Reid as a doctor helping Edward Carnby (played by Christian Slater) fight a paranormal demon with epic bad acting results. Tara Reid as a doctor, really?
It also helped to cement Uwe Boll as a director most everyone loves to hate.
Unfortunately, Alone in the Dark II isn’t much better. Although it is better, which in and of itself is saying something. But would you really expect it to be good? The fact that someone green lit a sequel takes a set of brass balls never before seen in Hollywood. Given the disaster of the first film, you’d expect them to at least try to make this somewhat enjoyable or scary or even close to the video games. Nope. Not even close on all accounts.
The first 20 minutes of the film takes place in a dirty gas-station-type bathroom. Obviously, this saves on the budget of the film but 20 minutes? Damn that’s pretty amazing. But perhaps the most amazing thing is that the film is such a mess and the story is all over the place that even the actors involved seem to realize the craptastic film they were making so they just threw whatever shit they had to work with at the wall and hoped that something good would come out.
It didn’t.
Alone in the Dark II shares virtually nothing with the first film save one character, Edward Carnby (Rick Yune), who returns as the main protagonist. But unlike the first film, Carnby only dabbles in the supernatural and is completely unaware of the paranormal circumstances he finds himself in. In fact, I’d go so far as to say he’s clueless as to any of machinations of the supernatural fighters that find him after he’s been stabbed with a supernatural knife that an ancient witch must possess.
The hilarious thing is that Yune is an Asian actor who starred in Die Another Day and The Fast and the Furious. He’s not even a close resemblance to Slater or the video game Carnby. Maybe they wanted to do it this way to separate themselves as much as humanly possible from the horrific first film. A bone to throw to fans as to say: “We know. So we are going in a totally different direction with the character.” The problem is that Yune’s Carnby is so wooden and clueless that he’s completely unbelievable as someone that should be fighting witches and the supernatural.
As said before, this ancient witch is after a supernatural knife that will (at least from what I can gather) give her supreme power in the world and allow her to have free reign on Earth. A group of supernatural specialists are all that stand in her way. But all they have is standard guns to defend themselves. The problem is that the witch is drawn to bullets, yet they still fire their guns at every opportunity.
Now, if I knew the witch was drawn to bullets and by firing a gun would target me, I’d put the weapon down and take my chances with a knife or a rock or a garden gnome, hell even harsh language. Yet, these idiots do nothing but fire their weapons like ammo is free.
This doesn’t even begin to detail how bad the special effects are looking like a cheap software package from some ex-Soviet bloc country. Or how Danny Trejo is one of the top billed actors in the film yet seems to have only come on set for one day for the free food and then left after an hour of work.
All-in-all, the sequel to Alone in the Dark is only slightly better than the original. Hopefully this will put the final nail in the coffin of this movie franchise that no one wanted to see again.
