Review of Against the Dark (2009) by Kevin O — 28 May 2010

How long way can people walk in a storehouse (or hospital)? Maybe, 80 miles or something.

'Did you hear something?' says someone. Mostly nobody heard nothing. Then someone sees silly looking zombie-characters, which often look threatening because they are cannibals. Steven Seagal walks around in a thick leather jacket saying 'check out that corner'. Thats it.

Were I to list pluses and minuses, well, mostly I wouldn't know where to begin.

- The storyline is bad. It allows no character development at all. Tao, probably the most interesting character, is not allowed any background either. Why is he a tough character? Who are the people in the film and why are they there? Et cetera.

+ One can see that Seagal has handled a katana before and lots of the fights in general in the film are well done. And theres quite a lot of them.

- Yet one thing bothered me with the moves Tao makes with his blade. I couldn't quite pin it down, until it struck me - theres no "Chiburi". In Iaido there is a move called 'chiburi' where the swordsman removes blood from a sword blade. In this film it would certainly be necessary, yet I saw none - mr. Seagal simply put his bloody katana back in its sheath - or in one instance, he held its blade on under his left armpit, plain against his expensive looking leather coat. Hmm. If one advertise there to be masterful swordsmanship, how can one allow even a beginner green-behind-the-ears swordsman like me to notice what the film is lacking?

- The camera is handled a bit oddly in the fights though. Its not shown (not that I wanted such things to be necessarily be shown mind you) how someone kicks a lying zombie in the head, which creates the image of people being spared from too much violence - yet its shown when Tao cuts its throat and blood & guts are all around. Also one sees these - 'check this out - just his feet' situations where people are not shown the entire Mr. Seagal, only his hands or feet swooshing around - unnecessarily silly and it doesn't work.

- Too much walking around in near empty corridors.

- The lines are too simple and too silly. Seagal walks around. And then he walks around a bit more.

- The plot leaves one wanting. Not for more, but for the film to end. Not that I want to sound mean, but seriously, I mean, come on. It does make a nice basic template of sorts that the film.. 'borrows'.. from more known movies such as John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars, Blade films and Resident evil movies, BUT that is not used to its full advantage.

+ Nice shots of lurking horrors having sharpened teeth, its the 'scariest' part of this movie. However,.

- whoever was designing the story, should have allowed more room for indirect violence and scares, rather than blood & guts. It would have worked much better with all the shots of them ole' crazy cannibals doing their ole' crazy things, instead of playing over and over the same blood & guts scenes.

- its just ..ah, well, silly, that when the zombies start to talk suddenly in english, they themselves call it evolution.

- oh and one small thing. Everything in the movie area is a mess, then someone finds a fully operational, clean and tidy laptop computer with numbers showing the countdown when the building is going to be bombarded by the army.

Some of the things in the film are just simply plain insulting to the viewer's intelligence. They're just all in the range of 'dont do it' to the viewer. Don't bother seeing this film if you want to see Seagal movies. If you like horror flics, Ghosts of Mars or Resident Evil (not Blade, though) then one might find something interesting in the movie but I didn't really. Its not an absolute disaster as a movie, but it gets pretty darn close to being just that.