MOVIES: Alone in the Dark

Yesterday on the Mark & Brian show, Christian Slater called in promoting his new film, Alone in the Dark. Here is how he described it:

"It's like Raiders of the Lost Ark meets The Matrix meets Aliens*."

Let's take a moment to absorb that.

Now, I realize that no matter what film you're plugging, you're forced to spew the same hyperbolic, mealy-mouthed promotional garbage regardless of how you actually feel about it. You can't just say, "It's crap, but it paid well."

But people. This is Alone in the Dark he's talking about. Alone in the Frickin' Dark. A movie whose description at IMDb begins, "Based on the video game..." And as Mike** has recently, and accurately, said, there has never been a good movie based on a video game. In fact, there has never been a not terrible movie based on a video game. (And this is from a Jean-Claude Van Damme fan!)

This thing was directed by Uwe Boll, the auteur responsible for inflicting House of the Dead on an unsuspecting public, which is quite possibly the shittiest movie I've ever seen. And if it's the shittiest movie I've ever seen, then in all likelihood it's the shittiest movie ever made. (I've seen a lot of bad movies. For example, all the ones starring Jean-Claude Van Damme.)

My point is, when you're promoting a low-rent horror film based on a video game, and co-starring Tara Reid -- a movie which in all fairness I can not say will suck, because of course I haven't yet seen it... but let's face it, it will suck, long and loud -- you might not want to compare it to three of the most popular and influential movies of all time. Maybe you might want to dial it down just a notch, there, Kuffs.

A final note -- I usually beat up on the idiots who post at IMDb, but I loved this line from a review on the Alone in the Dark page: "If anyone were pondering what Ed Wood would be like today if he were armed with foreign financing and computer effects, look no further than Uwe Boll." Which, frankly, is extremely unflattering to Ed Wood. But it's still funny.

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*I may be misremembering the third one. He named a classic monster movie of some kind; it may have been Night of the Living Dead, or something else along those lines. But he definitely said the first two.

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**EDIT: I was wondering why I couldn't find the quote about no video game movie ever being any good in Mike's archives. As he points out in the comments to this post, that's because it was Dorian who said it. And he said it about Alone in the Dark: "It's based on a video-game. There is no such thing as a watchable movie based on a video game." Too true, Dorian, too true. Sorry about the mix-up!