Review of Alone in the Dark (1982) by Lordnaseby — 26 Sep 2011

With movies like these, if you can handle then it's either a test of your manhood or just plain stupidity. If you finish it you're either a man or just stupid for having watched it in the first place. Take your pick. It could be both.

Acting/characters: Well, I don't need to tell you how bad it is because you've heard it a million times before. The characters are very laughable and they have no motive for doing what they do at all. They make the stupidest choices without any reason at all. The acting is just as bad as the characters. I normally cut actors a bit of slack because bad acting is usually (not always) 50% a bad screenplay and maybe 25% a bad director who controls all of the emotions and acting choices of the actors. But that still doesn't change the fact that everyone in this movie acts as stupid as their characters are. 0/10.

Plot: This plot is as nonsensical as you get. You're expected to know a lot of things that you are never told. They attach significance to a lot of things without telling the audience why they are important or what happens if things go wrong. Do the bad guys want to take over the world? Do they want to just kill the good guys and just leave it there? Who is behind it and why? Is the main villain we see just some pawn or a host body or is he the mastermind of all of this? Why do a highly trained army of government secret alien defense soldiers never have to reload and can't hit anything? The plot holes are bigger than George Clooney's head when he won Best Supporting Actor (the same year this came out actually). It was just a mess. Plus the ending just added another giant plot hole to everything. Nice going. I looked on 5 or 6 different websites trying to get a decent plot explanation for this film. I found pretty much nothing. I did find this though. It's as close as we're going to get. 0/10.

Http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/thatguywiththeglasses/nostalgia-critic/11343-alone.

Screenplay: This was the worst part. The screenplay of this film made the acting and the plot very bad. There were many many cringe-worthy lines. I expected to laugh at a lot of the 'serious' lines, but they didn't even deserve that. They sounded like they were written by a drunk 8 year old. 0/10.

Likableness: Like I said before, the plot was stupid, the acting was bad, and the screenplay was horrid too. I expected to come in at least laughing at the lines and getting entertainment value that way, but I didn't. Plus the special effects were some of the worst I've seen in a long time. I wouldn't suggest this one (although I don't mind that Irukandji suggested this one to me). It's fun to bash films like this. They certainly deserve it. 0/10.

Final score: 0/40 (H).

TRIVIA TIME: 1. The lengthy opening text crawl was added after numerous test audience members said they were confused by the plot.

2. After execs read the green draft of the shooting script, the film got an additional $10 million. Uwe Boll poured the money into special effects.

3. Every piece of body armor worn by the various extra foot soldiers during major battle scenes is paintball body protection made by JT USA.

4. Nuclear Blast spend $30,000 on the soundtrack rights to promote their bands.