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| I feel this image speaks for itself. |
Imagine for a moment that you're the head
of a production company, and in this hypothetical let's just say that this
company is Dimension Films. Purely just hypothetical though. Let's also say
that you green-light a crime thriller about young FBI students undergoing
training as criminal profilers called Unsub (bureau shorthand for Unknown
Subject). Nothing out of the ordinary so far, right? Now you turn to casting.
When Ryan Phillippe, Christopher Walken and
Gary Busey all turn down offers to star in your film, that should be a red
flag. But hey, you persevere - because you're a hot shot producer and you know
better than some has beens. So, who can replace that sort of talent? Why
Christian Slater and Val Kilmer of course. But that's not enough, so you get
that guy who played the retard in The Last Castle. Now you're getting
somewhere. But there is still something missing... Aha! It definitely needs a
little bit of that guy from Hackers! Remember that movie? Wasn't it fucking
awesome? Throw him in for good measure.
Now you need a director. But who could
bring this script and ensemble to life with the poetry and emotion it truly
deserves? How about that guy that fucked up Die Hard 2? Yeah. Good. Great. I'm
liking where this is going. What else did he do? Well he's in the Guinness book
of world records for directing the "biggest box-office flop of all
time". Done. He's hired. Give him whatever he wants. We simply must have
that raw talent.
But it doesn't feel quite ready yet.
Eureka! Throw a little LL Cool J into the
mix and voila! A masterpiece is born. This scenario could venture nothing but
success, right?
Right?
The plot revolves rather poorly around
these 7 students, their instructor and LL Cool J on a final exercise taking
place on a small island off the coast of North Carolina. This turns out to be
the creepiest fucking island ever, complete with fake a town full of burn out
vehicles and mannequins.
Man, I fucking distrust mannequins so much,
with their perfect hair and their lifeless eyes. It's like trying to talk to an
Italian person.
Anyway, it's here in this terrifying ghost
town (that looks eerily like Fallout 4's Boston) that they must track down a
make believe serial killer calling himself "the Puppeteer". But
things go terribly wrong when people start dying for realsies. Now it's down to
the team to discover the identity of the killer by using their training and
skills, but there's a catch - the killer is one of them.
There's a plot that sounds like it's never
been done before.
The first crime scene they find involves
what is clearly a silicone fuck doll hanging from the ceiling of a toy store.
Sounds like they just showed up to my last birthday party. Then a radio goes
off, and Christian Slater turns it off - setting in motion a Rube Goldberg
machine that lasts for 40 seconds; during which time he does absolutely nothing
but watch it. Maybe move two feet to your left or right, bro, because you're
about to get fucked up by a giant tank of naval grade liquid nitrogen. Then
Christian Slater eats shit hard with a spoon as his legs freeze and splinter
under his own weight, causing his torso to hit the ground and shatter. This
whole process takes another 20 seconds, during which no one tries to help him.
THAT'S WHAT YOU GET FOR 'ALONE IN THE DARK' SLATER! THAT'S WHAT YOU GET!
I should also point out here that whoever
wrote the screenplay was probably wearing sunglasses the whole time they were writing
it because it's full of brilliant one liners like LL Cool J shouting "Lights
out!" as he flips a circuit breaker, quite literally turning the lights
out. But wait, it gets better. He also throws a watch at someone and says
"time's up, asshole". Then, just to prove a point he finishes off
with "I guess we found his weakness... Bullets". Seriously LL Cool J?
Bullets? Man's only natural predator. And then because he hasn't been enough of
an absolute bastard throughout the film he kicks a cripple out of their
wheelchair.
Then the wheelchair guy kills himself with
a backfire from his weapon, but whoever was running the continuity department
had clearly left early that day because his weapon switches between a Beretta
and a Glock (read: two very distinct pistols) about 12 times in the 5 seconds
of film before he paints the inside of an elevator with his scalp. Did no one
check this, or did no one care? I'm opting for the latter.
At one point they find Val Kilmer's body
strung up like a marionette that is then forced - thanks to an elaborate system
of ropes, pulleys and fish hooks - to dance to a nursery rhyme while 3 people
look on in wonder at how, for the first time ever, his acting was natural and
human. The make up team was inspired by Robert Redford's face for this
particular death scene.
This movie sucked pretty badly, but I won't
lie and say I wasn't entertained by it. It was like watching someone give a
speech to the class while they sweat and talk fast and lose their place. It's
tragically amusing in its awfulness. That said I don't recommend it.
It would be a fun movie to play a drinking
game to where you take a drink every time it's stupid, or LL Cool J says
something obnoxious, and you have a drinking problem.
I give it 4 and a half obnoxious Cool Js out of 10.
