Game – Movie Review: Alone in the Dark II (2009)

The first Alone in the Dark was a terrible movie. It was barely connected to the game series & starred a few famous faces that were the absolute worst, sleep-walking through their roles on the way to their pay-checks.

Oh & it was directed by Uwe Boll….you can read a review we wrote for it here.

Thankfully this sequel isn’t…in fact the only connection this one has with the original is the name. A new cast & new story means you can go into this film confident that it already can’t be as bad as the first.

The film doesn’t hang about & from the start we are introduced to the films enemy…the witch. A deadly supernatural woman that is made up of smoke & seemingly can’t be stopped once she has set her eyes on you. The story revolves around an ancient dagger that is incredibly sharp. Should you cut yourself with it you will become her vessel.

It’s this sequence of events at the start that lead Edward Carnby to the dagger. He is stabbed with it but rescued by a group who have been dealing with the witch for a long time. They want to use Carnby to destroy the witch once & for all as she is hunting the leaders daughter as well.

The witch can’t be killed with conventional weapons though; to defeat her they will need a piece of her heart.

Alone in the Dark 2 has a fair amount going on & it can be a struggle to keep up with just what exactly is going on. One minute the dagger is to be destroyed, then it’s about finding a lab, then it’s about freeing the witch using the dagger…it’s all over the place but does result in a mildly entertaining movie.

Let’s talk about the acting….

Alone in the Dark has some serious heavy-weight actors. Rick Yune plays the role of Carnby & while it’s not the Edward Carnby I would have liked it excels in the roles & is very convincing. Bill Moseley as Dexter, the father fighting the witch for his daughter’s life is very good although the weird beard is distracting. Then we have Ralf Moeller & Danny Trejo with the latter being criminally under-used. Finally we have Lance Henriksen who is by far the best thing in the movie.

A cast this good couldn’t really get it wrong even with some questionable developments as the movie goes on. It begins to run out of steam after a while & characters never seem to learn any lessons from dealing with the witch. She is not a human being, she can turn into smoke yet they still persist in trying to shoot her with guns. It didn’t work the first time they did it…

The witch herself can be sinister at times, laughable at others. The jerky camera & strange sound effects add a lot to the mystique but by the end she’s become all too human-like & it’s hard to buy her threat anymore.

Being loosely based on the videogames it is hard to find really clear connections. It uses the franchise name better & will leave you feeling less dirty (compared to the first movie).

Hardly a sequel, more of a restart & good one at that. It has its problems & can become quite incoherent at times but it is entertaining. With a cast that good how could it not be?