Review of Pitch Black (2000) by Jonathan B — 09 Dec 2010

This is a passable and entertaining sci-fi thriller which owes a lot to the 'Alien' movies. The story is fairly pulpy. A motley crew of space travellers crash onto an unknown planet about to be plunged into darkness as its 22 year long daylight period comes to an end. They are not alone however. With the night come the nocturnal creatures that have been holed up in caves, biding their time and as night falls, they emerge and are rather hungry.

In one of those massive coincidences that this kind of movie often relies upon, the space farers include Vin Diesel, a contortionist criminal who has had his eyes surgically altered so that he has built in night vision.

As the monsters pick off the characters one by one, the group's leader has to try to repair a space shuttle with a dud battery and take the risk to rely on Vin and his shiny eyes or go it alone.

As a high action thriller, this is fairly formulaic but what saves it is some surprisingly interesting characterisation and taught direction by David Twohy. Visually too, this movie holds up well and the monsters, which are sort of hybrid Alien franchise/bat/shark affairs are well realised.

Diesel is almost an anti-hero here and this movie is probably best known for bringing his face (if not his voice which featured in the Iron Man some years before) to a wider audience. The character he played here, Richard Riddick later appeared in the sequel The Chronicles of Riddick and I think it is a shame we've not seen more of him since as, although not totally successful, this character was at least an attempt to try to do something interesting with the muscle-bound action hero archetype. One has the impression that Riddick may have read the odd book or two, something that you can't say for any of the characters Arnie played.