Pissy Princess Pinkie: Alone In the Dark.. an Uwe Boll Film

Hear ye hear ye!   Princess Pinkie  is here with a new movie post!

My loyal guest and subjects, it has come to my attention that at times the blogosphere can be a bit sweet!  We avoid negative posts, yet at the same time we avoid having overly sweet posts as well! Since I do sometimes really hate things and sometimes REALLY REALLY love things, I made two new columns, the one in the near future to discuss things I blindly adore… and one where we just rant on how bad something is! That can be really fun after all… luckily dear mister Boll can always provide content for the latter.

Boll Bingo!

I am back to watching video game adaptations.. but I now am passing on the very mediocre ones, I am now only taking my anger out on the bottom of the barrel. Because sometimes being negative can be fun as well.. So I created a game called Boll Bingo. A series of ideas I expect from a Uwe Boll movie by now. I have become quite familiar with the abominations that Boll calls “work” . Just like you can recognise Tarintino by his dialogue style, character types and music chocies. This also applies to Mr Boll! God Bless his lack of skill! So there are   ten signals that this is a shitty Uwe Boll Movie. These are the points I chose:

1. This Movie will be set in no specific location, and never will be.
2. The movie will feature a skimpily dressed female/and or objectifies women.
3. Fight Choreography will employ a lot of jump cuts and will not make any sense.
4. Stuff happens because the plot needs it to happen rather than a natural progression.
5. This movie is historically rather inaccurate!
6. Some scenes will look extremely ugly and fake… think “Original Sci-Fi Channel Movies
7. The main villain will not make sense. 
8. There will be a LOT of bad writing and nonsensical scenes.
9. There will be a guy in it Boll uses for all his movies.
10. It has little to nothing to do with the source material.

With these ten points we were well armed to take one of the most notoriously bad Uwe Boll movies ever. Alone in the Dark! Scoring a 2.4 on IMBD, and holding a 11% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.. this is the Uwe Boll movie that not even Uwe Boll fans seem to like…and yes there are Boll fans out there! This movie gets the least amount of love! Which is a good thing for me.. because I HATE … and I mean HATE Uwe Boll’s sense of humor. So perhaps this one will be tolerable for me!  Like many of Uwe Boll’s first movies in a series this starts some fairly famous actors in the form of Christian Slater and Tara Reid but also that main villain from the first Blade movie in the form of Stepehn Dorff. That usually doesn’t mean these movies are any good though.. but see why this movie sucks so much!  Time for bingo. Let’s find out the score! Oh and speaking of cast Will Sanderson is in this movie! He plays in just about every Uwe Boll Movie so that is one point already! Woop!

The Joy of Horrible Writing

So let’s check point one?! Is the movie set in a location?! No! In traditional Uwe Boll fashion it is set in “the city”  and “mines’ where are those mines? Somewhere in the USA , apparently both on helicopter distance AND walking distance from the city! Because set pieces need to happen and helicopters are all cool and military I guess. We also get treated to a ship out in the middle of the ocean, salvaging another ship that gets pilotted back to said city.. as soon as noises get quiet and AFTER the entire staff has been killed…neatly docked at a minor little peer as well! Even in the opening credits.. which are narrated by a very trailer guy sounding voice.. we never get a location. He mentions stuff.. but I am none the wiser. Thanks Mister Boll.. that is some horrible writing already done! Clever though.. this way you can swap between all sorts of sets and string them together by any mode of transport available! Dark Souls World Building for the win!

Point number two is however where we miss a point. The Story follows Christian Slater, playing Edward Carnby and Tara Reid portraying Aline Cedrac two characters that actually are in the game. Carnby grew up in an Orphanage..much like the games and has been infused with a parasitic life form that could turn him into a zombie like creature working for the forces of evil…but that parasite is dead cause he sat in a high voltage box thing when he was a kid. Aline Cedrac instead of being an archaeologist this time is an anthropologist. I have to admit, this is a smart choice as you can bind her more to the location she needed to be bound to. That being said.. she wears a white science coat, a pair of glasses and has her hair tied up. So she looks like a clip-art of a female scientist. 

She studied Abkani most of her career and can read their ancient scriptures like it is nothing (But more on that later) .. yet is unable to correctly pronounce Newfoundland..and despite knowing this civilisation died out 10.000 years ago , and she is being chased by monsters released from Abkani tombs, she has NO idea why the Abkani would split a relic in four pieces and hide it on opposites site of the world.  So she isn’t the brighest of scientist. To make up for it she does know how to be 100% accurate with an SMG despite probably never ever having held a gun. She has no sex scene with Carnby though.. so instead of a porn character we get a cardboard cutout based on female scientist clipart… A lot better.. but no point for me!

Luckily point number 3 is mine indeed best illustrated by the opening sequence. Carnby lands in the USA and the bad-guy who we see put out a kill order on Carnby.. tries really hard to convince us he is a good guy! Yet one of these zombie people that are a big plot point in the movie.. somehow managed to hijack a taxi with no one noticing and he begins ramming Carnby’s taxi. To escape a guy that clearly is trying to kill him at all costs Carnby orders the taxi to drive onto a crowded fish market.. so we can get breaking market stall footage. Edwards car crashes and he orders the taxi driver to allow himself to be rammed by the other taxi.. while Edward escapes.. punches a cop and takes his gun.  Which is a revolver..because all cops carry those.  It’s powerful as heck because next Edward shoots through a massive block of ice.. sitting on conveyor belts of an Abandoned ice factory.

The guy doesn’t die from being shot in the heart. So Edward decides he is best off punching this guy real hard. They randomly slide each other on these conveyer belts.. at the still abandoned lot, rather than killing him in the shadows the Assassin drags Carnby out in the open.. where there is a spike conveniently placed at the spot where normally a truck would park to be loaded up… but here there is a rusty spike..implying this plant ..filled with ice blocks has not been used in years. So of course Edward impales the bad guy.. which kills him .. and Edward walks off.. without the cop he punched and stole his gun from ever bothering him again. He is dressed in this really specific trench coat as well so it’s not like the cop would not be able to recognise him.. he just decided to let him go. All shots look kinda neat in theory.. but it tells no story at all and does not feel like a natural fight at all.

Thanks for the point Mr Boll!

Guns go Brrrrrrr

The last scene already illustrates point four is in as well but it gets a lot worse. The monsters of this movie are dark alien looking creatures that can turn invisible and disrupt the light because they emit some sort of emp…emp that only disrupts electrical currents that are far away from it’s source.. like lights on the grids but not flashlights. It would be annoying if the heroes could communicate through so clearly Walkie Talkies.. are too far from their power source so they get disrupted. The blood of these creatures that REALLY look like H.R. Giger’s Iconic Alien are called Zenoe…(such an orginal name)  and their blood can cause kids to grow parasites that can brain control them when it is injected into them. When you inject the blood of a Zenoe into your system…when you are the bad guy it works differently however.. then you control the Zeno!  To get an adult under control fast.. and turn them into a parasyte zombie, you can also make them swallow a Zenoe larvae which causes the creature to latch on to your spin and brain control you.. within a second after swallowing it.

So they sound like really powerful creatures yet they have a few weaknesses. They can hurt by certain specific frequencies of light and elements 75 to 79, the latter being gold. Ah they got the atomic number of gold correct!  Gold can disrupt their electro communication and will instantly kill them…so of course to shoot them the government developed some sci-fi hi tech bullet which is made out of trapped photons and will a luminescent film. Basically.. weaponized light.. in ultra specific frequencies.  Gold Bullets would work.. but that sounds way more expensive right?!  The biggest weakness these creatures have however is that they seize to exist at the end of the movie!  We get a lot of shoot outs filled with machine guns (that had their power source destroyed yet still work)  and one overstylised duke nukem like clip with everyone killing  the Zenoe and their zombie humans.. but in the end… a million Zenoe survive…On the surface there are at least a dozen left.. except when the movie is over.. they are all gone. That is one lucky weakness! And plot convenience point in the bag.

Is the movie historically inaccurate?!  Yes, the Abkani are classified as a native American tribe, which in many ways they are but Boll more often than once associates Cherokee like artifacts with them, while in actuality they were closer to the Mayan’s and aztecs, and while the McGuffin of the movie does fit that style.. the museum the first half o this movie is set in misses the mark completely… but I guess that makes sense as Aline is not a good scientist. Now I am nitpicky here..but if your movie is about an Abkani artifact and 70% of the movie is about deciphering some Abkani artefact, I’d use actual Abkani script. Boll doesn’t do that, in fact he uses a font so blatantly non native American I really REALLY noticed. As a European we do not get a lot of American history.. but I could tell whatever that script was it was not Abkani. So I googled it to see if it might have been lost to the Annals of time.. but no it’s not. Not a single letter resembles Abkani. The games do a much better job! But who cares about the mystery and the creepiness.. this is Alone in the Dark movies! Guns go Brrrrrr! And when they do… they look ugly as heck! So yay for more points!

What am I watching here?!

So you may have noticed I haven’t really told you yet what this movie is about… and that’s not because I did not want to.. but because I do not know. Carnby finds a relic.. and discovers his history is filled with mystery.. while an evil scientist wants to collect all four artifacts.. to open a gateway to a dark realm. He wants to open this gateway because ……….. he found a door I guess?! Carnby goes on a journey to discover he was an experiment and the organisation he once worked for created these alien type things.. except seconds later we see they did not.. they just exist in the dark realm as well. Aline tags along because.. she was there. Yet the best thing is the villain.  He needs a coffin to be opened to unleash the Zenoe..but he doesn’t want it opened or the Zenoe released..

He wants the relic piece that is hidden in this sarcophagus..because he needs it to release the Zenoe from that door thing. He also manages to capture one.. despite hiding on a ship to weak to fight them.. cause their blood in his system makes them control them! So with all of them he might be able to rule the world or something?! He never tells his goal.. just that he wants this portal/door opened… which is located in his secret base by the way.  Which was build in an ancient Abkani trap thing filled with evil worm things…which is located in a mine somewhere near San Francisco I think.  So I guess that is the bad villain point obtained! As I really have no clue what he was about! Like none!  Everything contradicts itself.

Are there any other nonsensical scenes?! Yes.. just about everything! There is a war against the Zenoe going on top of the mine.. but it doesnt contribute anything to the story, the events do not change at all from it… AT ALL. But I know guns gotta go BRRRRR because Alone in The Dark is such an action heavy guns go BRRRR kinda franchise.  The best scene we get right at the end though. Carnby and Aline need to get into the secret base so an ally blows up a wall for them with a packet of explosives.. they casually stroll away as the package leaves a perfect door shaped hole for them!  However mere moments later when the gate to darkness has been opened and a million or so Zenoe come running towards the group to destroy the world.. the rival character takes out a single packet of explosives and throws it and now he blows up seemingly himself and the entire mine! Only Carnby and Aline escaped. The soldier lived as well is later revealed.. but they leave him for dead anyway and the movie doesn’t bring him up again so probably he died.. and the movie ends with Edward and Aline being attacked by a Zenoe.. or seemingly so.. in broad daylight.. the one thing that killed the,. So I guess a point for stupid scenes as well.

GG Mr Boll

Dear Mister Boll, you have really outdone yourself this time.. sure the movie is not as gross and toxicity masculine as your other flicks, but this might be one of the worst written movies I have ever seen… and I have seen Birdemic and the Room… this feels than either of those! There is also NO style to this movie. It’s  about a native american tribe yet the main music theme has arab style instruments to it, one combat scene is hyper stylised filled with heavy metal music while the second battle scene is shot  like a war movie with yet a whole other style of music. The acting is god awful as well, especially from Tara Reid. She is just there and goes from dork to badass and there is no character there. 

So many scenes could have benefitted from a second take, and there are so many inconsistencies throughout this movie. Aline has a wound that constantly changes position,  Edward I am pretty sure has a shape shifting gun, no one notices a museum being shot up, ice is sitting at an abandoned plant! You know Ice melts right Mr Boll?! You know  ice doesn’t completely disintegrate from a single revolver bullet right? A sheet of ice would.. but this thing was massive. You know that building a ladder directly next to a pitfall trap isn’t a good idea either right? Also the fact that this pitfall has not been discovered in an active mine or a formerly active mind would beg the question how much work these mine workers actually did.  

This is a horrible HORRIBLE movie! It isn’t even so bad it’s good.. it’s more of an enjoyment that something can be so fundamentally wrong! I always claim good and bad is just a matter of opinion, and I stand by that, this in the eyes of the (VERY VERY) drunk beholder might be mindless entertainment.. but you really need to be practically braindead if you think this is a cohesive story. Everything pulls you out of it.. so just for a moment Mister Boll, you made me think that factually bad movies exist!  If there is one.. besides Manos Hands of Fate,  your movie might be the one! You are the Ed Wood of your generation! Guys if you want to see a disaster without people actually dying go watch this movie! It is complete and utter Bollshit!

Have you ever seen this movie?! What is your “favourite” Uwe Boll movie?! Do you think Uwe Boll will come and beat me up?! Do you know a bad movie you want me to review? Let me know in the comments! Let’s talk a bit because you know! Friendship is Magic! Time for a little princess nap! *Quack* Oyasumi!