Pitch stupid

>> Pitch Black drags sci-fi to new depths

by MATTHEW HAYS

Every once in a while, a science fiction film comes along that really shakes things up. I'm thinking of films like 2001, Alien, Star Wars... Unfortunately, Pitch Black ain't one of those movies.

A rather paltry effort to play on our "primal fears" (or so the press kit tells me), the film has a disparate group of people on board a spaceship crash-land on a strange planet. Among them is Riddick (Vin Diesel), a convicted criminal whom the other castaways put in chains out of fear for what he might do. But soon enough, it appears some nasty nocturnal aliens are out to gobble everyone up, so they must learn to trust this fellow they previously thought of as evil.

It's not too novel, but then again, something like that might have disrupted the aura surrounding Pitch Black, which is of one gigantic ripoff. Everything smacks of something that's been done before. The press kit's opening line reads "Don't be afraid of the dark. Be afraid of what's in the dark." (No kidding, you idiots.) And that's the film's main premise--do you get it yet?--that at night, all sorts of spooky, scary things start coming out, and you'd better get a good hold on your cinema seat's upholstery, because those ornery critters are coming after this poor posse of stranded types, and some sort of screenwriter somewhere actually thought this might come off as unnerving.

The ravenous creatures themselves are perhaps the film's only remotely redeeming feature. Created by John Cox (who won an Oscar for his effects work on Babe), they're dinosaur-like, but still smack too much of the creatures in James Cameron's Aliens. Watching them, I was left feeling the same way I did watching Bats, another sub-standard genre entry: weren't horror/sci-fi creatures more fun when they weren't all computer-enhanced or generated?

Stranded amid the alien scenes are the various human actors, who struggle through some thankless dialogue and intentionally choppy editing. Ultimately, their expressions don't seem to me to say: "What's out there in the dark?" but rather, "Who do I have to blow to get out of this movie?" and "Who am I going to hire to replace my agent after I fire his sorry ass?" :

Pitch Black opens Friday, February 18