Imagine how many people pass on a script before it gets to Christian Slater, Tara Reid and Stephen Dorff. There is no casting director in the world who shouts into his Motorola "Get me Slater!" That is, unless theyíre just emerging from a 15-year coma, and even then they yell "Get me Lou Diamond Phillips!" first.

All of the actors who passed on the script for Alone in the Dark smelled this heap of shit while it was still in the mail truck down the street. But Slater, Reid and Dorff either didn't smell it or thought it had the pleasing odor of their own farts. Iím wondering, if they had turned it down would "director" Uwe Boll have used puppets? Itís not like he could scrape any farther down in the barrel of desperate actors with no self-respect. The point, though, is that everyone else you can ever remember being in a movie, living or dead, turned down the chance to be in Alone in the Dark. Bogart? Turned it down. Divine? Said no. Brando? Considered it, but wanted it shot near his apartment in purgatory. Even the biggest modern hacks and grassfuckers in Hollywood all recognized how dick-in-the-zipper bad this movie would be; and they're famous for their bad taste.

It's bad because it opens with four long, small-font paragraphs of scrolling text that is also read aloud to prepare us for the next 90 minutes staring up at Uwe Boll's ass and watching the hair-filled shit trickle down. It's bad because those four paragraphs are supposed to provide a remotely believable background about an advanced North American Indian culture that was vaguely violent and one day simply vanished. But by the time the four paragraphs are over Alone in the Dark has already introduced such tired bits as rogue government experiments and abandoned mineshafts. How fucking lousy is a movie that bores you before the characters even show up?

It's bad because Tara Reid plays an archaeologist (I swear to God) who reads some of her lines phonetically, and mispronounces at least one simple word. It's bad because when Slater and Reid have their obligatory, awkward, poorly-edited fuck scene, the loud soundtrack is an anti-racism song about how people don't notice the color of a newborn's skin. What the fuck? It's bad because it makes no sense and I still have no fucking clue why there are zombies in only one scene, monsters made from Lego-brand Bionicles in others, a mad scientist, a renegade secret-government agency, and a rural abandoned mineshaft that apparently winds up right under a major city. Because Reid punches Slater in the face the first time she sees him and says "I thought you were dead," and this is how we're supposed to know they're in love. Because the most frequently used special effects are shattering glass and lights that flicker on and off.

It's hammer-to-the-shin terrible because of the huge gaps in continuity (in one scene, Slater and Reid pass by the same display cabinet at least twice while supposedly exploring a darkened museum). It sucks because it clearly was filmed for cheap overseas but is supposed to look American. It looks vaguely like Prague or some other cinematic sweatshop with a few exterior scenes in the US to trick us. It sucks the nuts out of donkey sacs because every scene first shows us what is going on and then has a character explain it again, using dialog that sounds like it has been translated from English to some primitive tongue and back again. It features dreadfully long and boring "action" sequences comprised mostly of repeating footage of men firing pistols in the dark. If you have a muzzle-flash fetish, this is low-grade masturbation material. You'd be better of with Candy Bottoms' Tits Blazing series, though.

Alone in the Dark is not a comeback vehicle; it's a cry for help. A desperate wail. I don't know what sort of demons and monkeys Reid, Slater and Dorff need to feed. Maybe heroin, meth, crack or actual monkeys, but there's no reason other than money to make a movie this fucking bad. And there can't possibly have been much offered. Even then, if your acting resume were underwear, this is the sort of shit-stain you get after too much coffee, beets and gin that never washes out, so everyone sees it out on the wash line. It's got to be the acting equivalent of the time I tried doing ventriloquism with a zebra puppet for my entire grade school: something so horrible you awake from your sleep for years shivering and sobbing with regret.

Supposedly this dungheap cost 20-million bones to make, but it looks a hell of a lot cheaper than that. It's filmed in dim light, not for style, but to hide the cheapness. The dialog is so routine that I could have predicted every single line after seeing Sci-Fi Channel Originals like Boa Vs. Python and Sabretooth, or the one about squids that can instant-message submarines. Other movies this reminded me of are the appalling Arizona Werewolf in which an Eastern European playing an American says in her best phonetic English "You and Dr. Noel is only in it for fame and forchoooon," and an old Golan-Globus disaster called Treasure of the Four Crowns that at least was in 3-D. All of these movies are notably lousy, but better than Alone in the Dark.

Auteur Uwe Boll not only directed but also produced this thing. I guess that way he could bilk the production. This fucker also directed the lousy House of the Dead and the upcoming craptacular Bloodrayne. All are Z-movies based on C-grade video games. Boll has no soul, no talent and no vision. He must be stopped.

One Finger for Alone in the Dark. Do not pay to see it, but holy shit, sneak in. Everyone needs to see for himself how fucking bad a movie can be. In retrospect, please add one finger to every other review I've ever done, because none deserve as low a rating as this.

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