In a short period of time German director Uwe Boll has become one of the most hated filmmakers on the face of the planet. After directing the disastrous video game adaptation House Of The Dead, Boll jumped right back to video games for the topic of his next movie, Alone In The Dark.

Based on a series of games published by Infrogrames dating back to 1992 (the last, fourth entry, The New Nightmare, arrived in 2000) that followed the adventures of paranormal investigator Edward Carnby as he hunted down various monsters and solved mysteries. Here one time good actor turned second-rate schmuck Christian Slater takes up the Carnby role and after a scrolling introduction that runs about three excruciating minutes (and pretty much explains the entire back story, seemingly added once they found out test audiences couldn't understand the movie's plot) we're thrown into the middle of a hyperactive action sequence that finds Slater brawling with an obviously possessed bruiser. It's definitely cheesy and Boll resorts to borrowing "bullet-time" from The Matrix yet again, but at least it's better than every action scenes that follow it.

From there we're brought a whole slew of sloppy plotting as it mixes in a secretive bureau called the 713 (as we're reminded more than once), some CGI generated monsters called "Zeno", a mad scientist, and Tara Reid as an archeologist (who is obviously smart because they've given her glasses and tied her hair up!). In the middle of it all is Slater's Carnby who is called in to stop our nutty scientist from trying to take over the World with these dark creatures he's unleashed from underground catacombs. Yeah, as you can read the story is all over the place and doesn't make a lick of sense.

However it's not just the story that sucks Alone In The Dark into unwatchable territory. Boll's direction, while improved from his last film, is still pretty inept and just when we're saying to ourselves, "well, at least it's not boring and that security guard death wasn't too bad...", along comes a horribly staged scene set in a museum that consists of strobe light effects, gun muzzle flashes, zombies, and grating heavy metal music. It effectively derails what little momentum the film had. At least Boll doesn't cut in footage of the games this time like he did with his last movie, but he has a lot more to answer for because the Alone In The Dark games actually had a fairly decent plot behind them whereas House Of The Dead was just your typical "rail shooter".

Slater looks truly pained most of the film, Stephen Dorff gets to wildly overact as head of Bureau 713, and Reid is her usual awful self - but even the weak acting has to contend with barely adequate CGI monsters, loud and obnoxious action, and that terrible, terrible script.

Is this as bad as Boll's previous film? Nope. But it still manages to take its place among the worst horror films of 2005 and if you haven't had enough of Boll's video game adapting madness he's been attached to direct no less than five(!) video game adaptations including Bloodrayne, Dungeon Siege, and Far Cry. Pray for us all.

Followed by a sequel. (Chris Hartley, 8/8/05)

Directed By: Uwe Boll.
Written By: Elan Mastai, Michael Roesch, Peter Scheerer.

Starring: Christian Slater, Tara Reid, Stephen Dorff, Will Sanderson.