Film Club Review: Pitch Black

Pitch Black is the story of a a spaceship full of people who crash land on an unknown planet inhabited by dangerous alien creatures. Even though the planet has three suns, they happened to have gotten there at a time where a particular planet alignment blocks the suns, and allows these creatures to come out in the dark. How creatures who only survive in the dark evolved on a planet with three suns, who knows.

I’ll be honest with you, the first half of this movie is pretty dull. Its a pretty basic survivalist story with small hints of the horror to come later building up. Most of the first half revolves around the msytery of Vin Diesel’s Riddick character. Now while Riddick is a very interesting character who you are constantly trying to figure out (and seems to be the perfect role for Diesel), the rest of this first half falters. The dullness is accentuated by poor acting in the style of mediocre network television, and a bad decision on using a faded colour palate which saps the picture of visual life.

However, with all that being said, the movie really shifts gears in the second half when the eclipse happens and the creatures come out to terrorize the survivors. At this point, the movie becomes a gripping action thriller which captivated me and allowed me to have a lot of fun with it. And at the end of it all, I found myself enjoying it. Enough to give it…. oh, maybe a 6/10.