| Alone in the Dark | |
|---|---|
Theatrical release poster |
|
| Directed by | Uwe Boll |
| Produced by | Uwe Boll Wolfgang Herold Shawn Williamson |
| Written by | Elan Mastai Michael Roesch Peter Scheerer |
| Based on | Alone in the Dark by Infogrames |
| Starring | Christian Slater Tara Reid Stephen Dorff |
| Music by | Reinhard Besser Oliver Lieb Bernd Wendlandt Peter Zweier |
| Cinematography | Mathias Neumann |
| Editing by | Richard Schwadel |
| Studio | Boll KG Entertainment Herold Productions Brightlight Pictures |
| Distributed by | Lionsgate |
| Release date(s) | January 28, 2005 (United States) February 24, 2005 (Germany) |
| Running time | 96 minutes |
| Country | Canada Germany United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $20 million |
| Box office | $10,442,808 |
Alone in the Dark is a 2005 horror film, loosely based on Infogrames' popular video game series of the same name. It is directed by Uwe Boll, and stars Christian Slater as supernatural detective Edward Carnby and Tara Reid as the scientist assisting him. The film's tagline is Evil Awakens.
Contents |
Blair Erickson came up with the first drafts of the script for Alone in the Dark. According to Erickson, Uwe Boll changed the script to be more action packed than a thriller. Erickson stated his disgust and his working relationship towards Boll on Somethingawful.com.
The original script took the Alone In the Dark premise and depicted it as if it were actually based on a true story of a private investigator in the northeastern U.S. whose missing persons cases begin to uncover a disturbing paranormal secret. It was told through the eyes of a writer following Edward Carnby and his co-worker for a novel, and depicted them as real-life blue-collar folks who never expected to find hideous beings waiting for them in the dark. We tried to stick close to the H. P. Lovecraft style and the low-tech nature of the original game, always keeping the horror in the shadows so you never saw what was coming for them.
Thankfully Dr. Boll was able to hire his loyal team of hacks to crank out something much better than our crappy story and add in all sorts of terrifying horror movie essentials like opening gateways to alternate dimensions, bimbo blonde archaeologists, sex scenes, mad scientists, slimy dog monsters, special army forces designed to battle slimy CG dog monsters, Tara Reid, "Matrix" slow-motion gun battles, and car chases. Oh yeah, and a ten-minute opening back story scroll read aloud to the illiterate audience, the only people able to successfully miss all the negative reviews. I mean hell, Boll knows that's where the real scares lie.[1]
An Unrated Director's Cut was released in Germany, France, and Australia and was #1 on the German DVD market for three weeks.[2] It was released on DVD in North America on 25 September 2007.[3] In the newest version of the film, virtually all of the scenes with Tara Reid in them have been removed by Boll himself.[4]
Originally, the film version of Alone in the Dark was to be released with Alone in the Dark 5, the fifth title in the series; however, the creators of Alone in the Dark, Eden Games, delayed the game and reworked it entirely from scratch. This appears to be one of the causes for the public backlash from gamers on how the film version of Alone in the Dark appeared to deviate from the Alone in the Dark game franchise save for the fact that the film was in some ways a sequel to Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare. Uwe Boll stated his disappointment on the region 1 DVD commentary but also said that Atari had face shots of Christian Slater for the newest game - Alone in the Dark 5, which was released on June 26, 2008.
Alone in the Dark was panned by nearly every film critic. Rotten Tomatoes ranked the film 15th of the 100 worst reviewed films of the 2000s with a rating of 1% based on 116 reviews. At Metacritic, it was a score of 9/100. It's widely considered one of the worst films ever made. Reviews frequently singled out the film's blatant plotholes, bad acting, poor visual effects and lack of any relation to the video game series.[5]
Alone in the Dark was given several accolades highlighting this poor reception:
Alone in the Dark won three 2005 Stinkers Awards:
It also won one Calvin Award:
Alone in the Dark received two Golden Raspberry Awards nominations:
Game Trailers ranked the film as the third worst video game movie of all time; among other things, it was emphasized that "the inadvertently hilarious action-horror flick had little to do with the series and even less to do with common decency!"
Alone in the Dark grossed $2,834,421 in its opening weekend, ranking at #12; by the end of its run, the film had grossed $10,442,808 and was a box office flop, considering its $20 million budget[7], but was significantly more successful on DVD.
The 2-disc soundtrack was released by Nuclear Blast, with Wolfgang Herold as executive producer. The German band Solution Coma's contribution was the title song. Finnish symphonic metal band Nightwish had a music video of "Wish I Had an Angel" directed by Uwe Boll, with clips from the film.
|
||||||||
|
||||||||||||||