Pitch Black (2000)

An alright film with a pretty decent atmosphere Pitch Black is a Vin Diesel vehicle and the start of the Riddick franchise. You can go and see to see where it all started and some scenes are pretty good but overall the film is a middling affair which should be getting the cult status in the future. David Twowy is in good form but could have done better.

A crippled spaceship lands on a planet with three suns that only experiences darkness once every 22 years, things come out in the dark, and the crew must fight for survival, or die - that pretty much sums up "Pitch Black". The concept of a planet bathed in (almost) continuous light was the premise of Asimov's classic short story "Nightfall", but rather than being our own worst enemy, the "Pitch Black" planet is home to fierce, flying nocturnal carnivores. As space adventures go, this one is pretty good. The look of the glaringly illuminated desert planet is very well done and the various backgrounds (the bone filled canyon and the hollow towers for example) look great. The acting is what one would expect for this kind of movie, lots of gruff tough-guy posturing, semi-comic relief from the less-heroic characters, and the usual alien-chow that only live long enough to establish the threat. Vin Diesel's 'Riddick' character was so popular that he front-lined a couple of less-than-stellar 'sequels', but I didn't find that he was any more interesting that the rest of the main cast. Of course, the raison d'etre for this kind of film are the aliens, which, although usually only seen briefly, in the shadows, or through Riddick's enhanced eyes, are excellent. The plot does hang on some coincidences such as the crash occurring just hours before one of the rare eclipses and the abandoned geology base having an orrery (a somewhat archaic tool for an interplanetary mission) that conveniently explains the whole three-sun eclipse scenario, but those are minor problems in an otherwise pretty good story.

David Twohy is one of my favourite directors/writers today. He makes only movies he wrote himself, and they are always unique in some way. He often takes scientific ideas and uses them to make movies which are in a special genre and does something different with it.And Pitch Black is one of the many times where this premise worked perfectly. It's a sci-fi-horror film about a ragtag group of survivors who crashed on a desert planet and have to survive.SOunds simple? Well it is, and that's a strong point of the film, because the premise is simple and doesn't seem that original at first, but the mystery aspect of this film is what makes it great. Nearly every character has something to hide, and so does the planet which isn't as lifeless as one might think...The actors are all very good, most of all Radha Mitchell and Vin Diesel. Mitchells character feels guilty the whole way through, because she wanted to drop all of the passengers to get a better chance to land the ship, but it didn't worked and now everyone greets her for saving them, and want her to be the new leader. And Diesels character is by far the most interesting Anti-Hero since Snake Plissken (who Diesel said he used as a inspiration. You can't take your eyes off the screen when he's there.But one of the things you have to talk about in a David Twohy movie is the unique style. The movie is edited like all of his movies in a kind of "push it to the Limit!" mentality, which is never too distracting, but underlines the intensity of the scenes effectively. Also the cinematography and colors are amazing. The day scenes with the three suns look like you would dry out, and breakdown instantly because of the heat, and the night scenes are fantastically realized (which is very hard to do) and the movie really earns it's title.Also very great: The movie is mostly centered around the characters and how they will get out of the situation, or even if they won't kill each other beforehand, and not so much focused on action, or horror. There are also no jump scares in the film or any other horror-bull crap, it's fairly suspenseful and character driven.That the movie was a fairly low budget doesn't hurt it in any way, the creative way the film is directed by Twohy, prevents it from looking cheap, and the visual effects are just used then needed and aged incredibly well, most of all, of the way they use them.All in all, one of the most intense, dark and unique Sci-Fi-Horror movies you'll see...

A transport ship carrying around 40 passengers crash-lands on an unknown planet and only 11 people survive the crash. The survivors of the crash are initially concerned about one of the survivors of the crash namely Richard B Riddick (Vin Diesel) as he is a dangerous and violent criminal that they have been transporting who manages to set himself free after the crash. However, when the planet that they crash-land on is plunged into a month-long period of darkness, the survivors soon learn that Riddick may be their only hope of survival when a group of flesh-eating aliens try to take them all out one by one...To me, Pitch Black is an example of a potentially good film that unfortunately has been placed in the hands of the wrong director. In order to work, films like Pitch Black need to have tension, suspense, dynamism and strong characterisation and it's clear from a very early stage that you are not going to get any of that here.Pitch Black is clearly trying to set itself up as a modern day Alien type film, but Twohy has none of the skills that Ridley Scott or James Cameron were able to serve up with the first two Alien films. I'll admit that the first 20 minutes or so were relatively suspenseful, but it's clear that after Twohy's rather clichéd 'cloak and dagger approach' in respect of introducing Riddick to the story that he had nowhere really to go and completely fails to develop or improve upon the story. When watching Pitch Black there is just no spark, no dynamism and nothing interesting about the story or the characters. Even the character of Riddick is poorly developed and I'm sure that he could have been made more interesting with a better director or writing crew.The last few lines in the above paragraph really sum up the problems with this film; if your narrative's success is dependent on its characters then it's generally a good idea to make at least one or two of them interesting - this is what made Alien and Aliens both work because you cared about the characters and actually gave a damn about what happened, but in Pitch Black the characters are as lifeless as the planet that they crash-land on and if I'm honest I found it a bit of a struggle getting to the finish line with this one.The performances aren't great either with no-one really making much of an impact (no pun intended). Vin Diesel should have been great in this sort of role, but I felt that he was slightly hampered by being a rather poorly written character. Everyone else here was just as bland and unmemorable.One final thing that made me laugh about this film is its ridiculous plot contrivance; our prisoner happens to have had his eyes surgically altered so that he can see better in the dark after being denied sunlight for lengthy periods. He then finds himself crash-landed on a planet that ends up being plunged into darkness for a month??? I can suspend some disbelief, but that is quite a ridiculous coincidence don't you think??? Pitch Black is rubbish, but it's not even enjoyable rubbish and in my opinion you're better off watching either Alien or Aliens because they at least are both entertaining, tense and rewarding pieces of cinemas which are qualities that certainly cannot be attributed to Pitch Black.