Alone In The Dark (2005)

Alone In The Dark (2005) was supposed to be based on the first installment of the 1992 video game, in which a plot is set in 1924. It revolves around the main character--Edward Carnby or Emily Hartwood-- who investigates the suicide of Jeremy Hartwood, Emily's uncle. After either of these playable characters braves through various monsters and lethal hazards in the mansion belonging to the late Jeremy Hartwood, it is then revealed why he killed himself: he prevented his corpse from being assumed by the spirit of Ezechiel Pregzt, a former occult pirate, and regenerating himself from the dead. This is the very plot of the game which this movie should have based itself on. In fact, this plot is also prevalent in its sequel, Alone In The Dark 2 (1993), although more action-oriented as was this movie. Alone In The Dark 3 (1994) dwells on a plot similar to the last two games, but dwells on ghosts from the wild west instead of pirate ghosts.

 Alone In The Dark: The New Nightmare (2001) must be where the movie supposedly derived its plot. I have found out on Wikipedia that the plot of the game and the plot of the movie were almost similar. But adhering to the title, I can see why this movie was a critical failure and a box office bomb. This movie was, again, supposed to follow the plot from at least one of the titles from the 1990s, but did not as it wanted to be more, should I say, contemporary. Even that did not work as its plot elements contradicted the plot elements from The New Nightmare, which took place in a forest and a manor where each of the playable protagonists lands. It has, instead, been discovered to be a sequel to the game--which defies the basic understanding of adaptations of movies of this kind.

Did you know that these games are all of the horror survival genre? Anyone who plays this game would quake in their seats as though they were in the game, because 'fear does awaken'. But in this movie: it is more of an action thriller than horror-based, which is contrary the games. Thus it does not deserve the t as line, "Evil Awakens". By the way, when was a car chase ever reminiscent of any one of the games? This isn't Sega Dreamcast's Crazy Taxi.

In addition, I have uncovered several other flaws with this movie: the blatant plot holes, the acting, the roundabout plot, the background music, the dialogue (even where masked or drowned by the background noise in the scene, making it unintelligible), the editing, and the crude 'special' effects. In order to grasp the current situation, I had to look through Wikipedia to study the source material, which was critically acclaimed, as opposed to this sorry excuse for a video game movie. This movie had no comprehensive plot that resembles any of the plots from the games: here, it's all about a mad professor who controls all the 'creatures of darkness', even though we are repeatedly informed of a gateway which nobody in this film seems to focus their attention on. In fact, we only see the aforementioned gateway near the end, but only learn that the monsters known as Xenos were already created by the paranormal agency, Bureau 713. This gives us the notion that these monsters who attack throughout the movie are not supernatural, and do not come from another dimension, making the prologue at the beginning totally needless. These Xenos also look like ripoffs from the critically acclaimed Alien series (I am surprised that Uwe Boll was not sued for stealing other people's ideas).

Well, there is a multitude of reasons he is dubbed the new Ed Wood, and it won't get better.