It's sometimes amazing how bad a movie can be. This reviewer had low expectations going into Alone in the Dark, and the film still managed to be worse. So in a way, it managed to exceed expectations. This also puts a black mark on the name of Uwe Boll. Boll directed this piece of junk, and also directed last years abysmal House of the Dead. Both are adaptations of video games. Boll also has at least two more video game adaptations in the pipeline, so please mark all calendars now as to plan something else when those movies hit theaters. The Alone in the Dark series is popular because it is so creepy. The game relies on eerie surrounding and a lack of light to create an intense mood. It's actually scary. Alone in the Dark the movie is just an orgy of fake looking CGI monsters, never-ending bullets, and lame acting.
The three headliners are Christian Slater, Stephen Dorff, and Tara Reid. Not exactly a stellar cast. Reid (My Boss's Daughter, Van Wilder) suffers the most as Aline Cedrac, museum curator. Casting Reid in the role of a brainy scientist is just as bad as Denise Richards in The World is Not Enough and Natasha Lyonne in Blade: Trinity. Hey Tara, it's New-fund-land, not New-found-land. She does not come off as smart. Her line readings are painfully awkward, but that's also the fault of Elan Mastai (21st Century Scott, MVP 2), Michael Roesch, and Peter Scheerer. It's a goofy, incomprehensible script full of holes that nobody cares about because they are either asleep or already gone. Slater and Dorff are better, but again, everything is relative.
The plot is basically Edward Carnby (Slater, Masked & Anonymous, Windtalkers) and Cedrac running around shooting things. Commander Richards (Dorff, Cold Creek Manor, FearDotCom) runs around and shoots too, but not as much. Carnby is one of twenty orphans, experimented on when they were children. Because he managed to escape, he did not finish whatever the experiments were. Now, he travels the globe looking for artifacts from the ancient Abskani, an ancient people that mysteriously disappeared. But something is happening with the other nineteen orphans, and it's up to Boll (House of the Dead, Heart of America) to put everything together.
He does explain the entire plot, but it still makes no sense. Some nasty looking CGI creatures are trying to make their way back into this dimension and blah blah blah. Basically, Carnby runs around in a big trenchcoat shooting big things with big guns. Boll never makes the viewer care about any of the main characters, or care why they are running around looking for artifacts. Things happen haphazardly and Boll moves the story forward because he has to. All of the aura of the video game is gone, and Alone in the Dark is so bad that it's not even fun to mock it.