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 Post subject: Alone In the Dark
PostPosted: Fri Jan 28, 2005 4:36 pm 
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Talk about ripping the hell out of a movie. This review is from the NY Post. It's really funny though.

"FORGET creepy demons, shadowy conspiracies and ancient evils. The only real mystery about the in competent and unscary new horror movie "Alone in the Dark" is why Tara Reid doesn't show her boobs.

Yes, we've seen them before, but if you're going to hire Reid — a truly awful actress — for your B-movie, isn't half the point to show some skin?

But "Alone in the Dark" director Uwe Boll apparently couldn't convince Tara to show her goodies in the movie's obligatory sex scene — even though he already had an R rating for the film's almost continual violence.

And that shows you just how limp this "X-Files" wannabe is. It doesn't even qualify as "so bad it's good," although by that standard it does have its moments.



At a recent screening, the audience hooted in derision during a ridiculously long voice-over prologue, as a narrator droned on and on about a gate into the world of darkness, a 10,000-year-old Native-American civilization that had mysteriously vanished and a secret government agency doing dreadful experiments on orphaned children.

The giggles just kept coming when paranormal investigator Christian Slater showed up to lay some heavy dialogue on us. ("Fear of the dark," he opines, "is what keeps most of us alive.")

Slater's nemesis (played by Pamela Anderson's new boyfriend, Stephen Dorff) also earned snorts and mock applause when he started emoting like he was gunning for an Oscar. ("My guys up there are dying for nothing, f - - -ing nothing," Dorff yells at one point, and then tips over a table.)

But the hilarity reached its peak once Reid finally arrived onscreen, playing Slater's ex-girlfriend, a brainy(!) anthropologist in glasses and enormous diamond earrings.

Unfortunately, Reid doesn't play smart very well.

For one thing, she doesn't know how to pronounce the name of the Canadian province Newfoundland. (It sounds like "Newfundlund," not "New-FOUND-land.")

For another, she spends the whole movie with the same expression on her face — it's supposed to convey awe and blood-curdling fear, but mostly suggests constipation.

It's easy to pick on Reid, but, sorry, she really is a bad actress — although the lame script doesn't do her any favors. ("You all right?" Slater asks at one point, to which she replies, "The hairs on the back of my neck just stood up.")

"Alone in the Dark" does have a plot — a completely incomprehensible grab bag of tricks from "Raiders of the Lost Ark," "Dawn of the Dead" and "Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan."

It also features lots of gunfire, which is appropriate for a movie based on a popular video game (like Boll's last effort, 2003's "House of the Dead.")

At one point, Boll gives up on telling the story and launches into a long and bloody music-video sequence in which Slater, Reid and a posse of cops (most of whom look like Victoria's Secret models) blow away monsters to the sound of crunching German heavy metal.

As it turns out, that's the most original part of the movie — totally unrelated to the rest, but at least it has a pulse.

The rest of the time, you'll wish the monsters would just eat Tara and get it over with."


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PostPosted: Fri Jan 28, 2005 4:38 pm 
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woah, this is based on the computer game Alone in the Dark?!?!? i used to LOVE that shit!
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 28, 2005 4:48 pm 
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The only Alone in the Dark I ever need to see is the one that stars Jack Palance, Donald Pleasance and Martin Landau as a trio of psychotics terrorizing one Dwight "Howlin' Mad Capt. Murdock" Schultz, thank you.

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PostPosted: Fri Jan 28, 2005 4:53 pm 
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That Godsmack tune in the trailer is sweet, though.

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PostPosted: Fri Jan 28, 2005 5:02 pm 
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One of those rare instances of a movie being so bad … it’s still really bad. [Hollywood Reporter]

·So inept on every level, you wonder why the distributor didn’t release it straight to video, or better, toss it directly into the trash. [NYT]

·Just Tara-ble. [NYP]

·No better than whatever you might pick up while wearing a blindfold at Blockbuster, even if you happen to reach into a trash can. [NYDN]

·Reid seems to have learned each long sentence in segments, so she wouldn’t be overtaxed. [Charlotte Observer]

·Think of the lamest horror movie you’ve ever seen. Now think of Tara Reid in the lamest horror movie you’ve ever seen. See how much worse it could have been? [Boston Globe]

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PostPosted: Fri Jan 28, 2005 6:08 pm 
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i don't know if anyone else is familiar with mr. boll's cinematic masterpiece "house of the dead", also based on the videogame, but that, too, only existed to demonstrate its hilarious ineptness. there wasn't even a fucking house! ok, well, there's a lot more than that, but it's terribly good. emphasis on terrible.

as such, i look forward to this disaster.

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PostPosted: Fri Jan 28, 2005 6:11 pm 
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i like how "house of the dead" included shots from the video game itself at random to remind you that, were you really stoked about the movie, there was an almost totally unrelated video game that you could buy.


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PostPosted: Fri Jan 28, 2005 6:21 pm 
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If Tara Reid were to come up and ask me for a date, I would say something like, "yes."


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PostPosted: Fri Jan 28, 2005 6:22 pm 
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Normally I can't stand the Post, but I haven't enjoyed hearing a movie ripped apart like that in quite some time.

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PostPosted: Fri Jan 28, 2005 6:26 pm 
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The New York Post is shit, and is not worth the paper on which it is printed.

*reads Mad magazine*


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PostPosted: Fri Jan 28, 2005 6:34 pm 
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Jerk. Wrote:
One of those rare instances of a movie being so bad … it’s still really bad. [Hollywood Reporter]

·So inept on every level, you wonder why the distributor didn’t release it straight to video, or better, toss it directly into the trash. [NYT]

·Just Tara-ble. [NYP]

·No better than whatever you might pick up while wearing a blindfold at Blockbuster, even if you happen to reach into a trash can. [NYDN]

·Reid seems to have learned each long sentence in segments, so she wouldn’t be overtaxed. [Charlotte Observer]

·Think of the lamest horror movie you’ve ever seen. Now think of Tara Reid in the lamest horror movie you’ve ever seen. See how much worse it could have been? [Boston Globe]
:D Dude, that's harsh. If I were her, I don't know which I'd be more embarassed about -- popping my titties out, or this.

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PostPosted: Fri Jan 28, 2005 6:37 pm 
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hot. wax. Wrote:
The New York Post is shit, and is not worth the paper on which it is printed.

*reads Mad magazine*


Why all the hate for the NY Post? It has the best sports section in town.


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PostPosted: Fri Jan 28, 2005 6:41 pm 
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OPA! Wrote:
Why all the hate for the NY Post? It has the best sports section in town.


true.....

even if the rest is made up! :D

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PostPosted: Fri Jan 28, 2005 6:46 pm 
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OPA! Wrote:
hot. wax. Wrote:
The New York Post is shit, and is not worth the paper on which it is printed.

*reads Mad magazine*


Why all the hate for the NY Post? It has the best sports section in town.


Have you read any one of their "articles"? The language in that "newspaper" is directed at people who seem to read at the first-grade level. And don't get me started on their slanted politics.

Having said that, their gossip column is pretty hot.


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PostPosted: Fri Jan 28, 2005 6:52 pm 
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NY Post is the In Touch Weekly of daily newspapers.

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PostPosted: Fri Jan 28, 2005 8:58 pm 
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I liked this quote from The Boston Globe:
Quote:
Reid is a brainy anthropologist named Aline, which is totally believable because she sometimes wears glasses and has her hair pulled back in a bun, plus she purses her lips before she says such informed things as, ''Some doors are meant to stay shut."

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PostPosted: Fri Jan 28, 2005 10:24 pm 
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This is from the Toronto Star:

Alone in the Dark is so awful, anyone who spends 10 bucks seeing it ought to get 11 bucks change and a written apology from the director and cast. There also ought to be crowd-control barriers positioned at the exits to prevent injuries from the stampede of people leaving the theatre. Don't say you weren't warned.


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PostPosted: Fri Jan 28, 2005 10:49 pm 
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I am sooooo seeing this -though it's probably already out of theatres. Guess it's going into the Netflix queue...

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PostPosted: Sat Jan 29, 2005 12:45 am 
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i saw it.

literally the funniest movie i've seen in months.

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PostPosted: Sat Jan 29, 2005 1:41 pm 
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Cotton Wrote:
The only Alone in the Dark I ever need to see is the one that stars Jack Palance, Donald Pleasance and Martin Landau as a trio of psychotics terrorizing one Dwight "Howlin' Mad Capt. Murdock" Schultz, thank you.



I remember seein' that one as part of one of those holiday all-niter horror crapfests at the ol' Parsons (KS ) Drive-In...along with "Xtro" , "Evil Dead" & a couple others.


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PostPosted: Mon Jan 31, 2005 10:48 am 
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I just noticed that this movie made the "Stinker Alert" over at metacritic.

Have to say that I'm a little bit intrigued by this now.

This movie may be entering Battlefield Earth/Showgirls territory, in which case I may have to see it.


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