It�ll be a long time before anyone gets me up in one of these spacecraft things which everyone is predicting will be public transport before long. Within 10 minutes of the start of the movie, another one has crash-landed on an unknown planet (in quite spectacular style), ditching its occupants on a deserted wasteland. Fairly soon they realize that getting back to claim on their travel insurance is the least of their worries when one survivor has that title revoked my some subterranean nasties. These aliens are wisely restricted to mainly glimpses in the dark, always a more scary option, and better for budget too.
The two original ideas in Pitch Black are, firstly that the creatures will emerge from their caves at night, or to be more precise the looming solar eclipse, and secondly that the only hope of salvation seems to lie with a dangerous murderer who was being transported on the ship (a good performance from Diesel). The rest of it comes a little too close to Alien for comfort, so it relies heavily on these two tricks to stand out (with dying light sources bringing the aliens ever nearer). Which it very nearly does, but with a bog standard ending it sinks back into the crowd of nearly but not quite great sci-fi action. |
