Alone in the Dark

Lame monster movies like this adaptation of the popular Atari video game are scary for all the wrong reasons. Christian Slater plays a paranormal investigator. Helped by his ex-girlfriend (a zombie-like Tara Reid) and hindered by a paranormal SWAT-team honcho (a slumming Stephen Dorff), he tracks down a malevolent scientist (Mathew Walker) to an abandoned gold mine from which the madman resurrects the power of an ancient culture to open a portal “between light and darkness” and unleash homicidal beasts upon the world. A long, blandly read, confusing scroll of back story at the start of the film is only the tip of the iceberg of the incessant ineptitude at work here. Directed by Uwe Boll (House of the Dead).