{"id":11327,"date":"2022-03-23T13:45:48","date_gmt":"2022-03-23T11:45:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/?p=11327"},"modified":"2022-03-23T13:45:48","modified_gmt":"2022-03-23T11:45:48","slug":"alone-in-the-dark-is-a-better-way-to-spend-your-time-than-watching-a-movie-with-the-same-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/alone-in-the-dark-is-a-better-way-to-spend-your-time-than-watching-a-movie-with-the-same-name\/","title":{"rendered":"Alone in the Dark is a Better Way to Spend Your Time than Watching a Movie with the Same Name"},"content":{"rendered":"

Seeing the article title, you might wonder why someone spends their time watching a 20-year-old film adaptation by Uwe Boll. Well, I had already made up my mind to watch some game movie, but it was hard to pick which one. It\u2019s especially hard knowing how bad most of them are, so I thought, I might as well pick something extra bad. Both are mentioned in the Guinness Book of World Records, the game, and the movie: Game for being the first survival horror game and the movie because it\u2019s so bad. If you are aware of Uwe Boll\u2019s track record this shouldn\u2019t be surprising \u2013 he\u2019s specialized in it: he has either written, produced or directed almost 15 straight-to-video game movies. I watch a lot of weird and trashy films but I can usually find films that are so bad and campy they are entertaining. Unfortunately, this isn\u2019t one of them.<\/p>\n

\"Main<\/a>
Not exactly the components of atmospheric horror…<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I have a very little history with the Alone in the Dark game franchise. I\u2019ve only played the first game, ages ago. I remember there being some hype about the game\u2019s 3D polygon graphics and atmospheric, Lovecraft-influenced game world. I hated the controls and fixed camera angles though so I ditched the game quick. Even with my limited play hours, I could say what the main themes of the film version\u00a0should<\/em> be: atmospheric, Lovecraftian, survival horror. Not that hard, right? It\u2019s not exactly the same as the main character doing roundhouse kicks and shooting shadow creatures with an assault rifle, while metal music is blasting in the background. According to what I\u2019ve read the film script has very similar themes as the game, but the director took some liberties to tweak it \u201ca bit\u201d.<\/p>\n

To elaborate more about the plot, Christian Slater plays a paranormal detective studying the ways of an ancient tribe and then there\u2019s an evil scientist who wants to use the same knowledge to open a portal to another dimension. A dimension filled with these shadowy monsters. A lot of badly edited fighting and shooting is involved, some car chases, explosions, awfully dumb dialogue, and bad acting.<\/p>\n

\"Actors<\/a>
Co-stars Stephen Dorff and Tara Reid, a veteran of six Sharknado movies.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After all this bashing and various movie critics claiming it is one of the worst movies ever made, I don\u2019t think it\u2019s that bad. Surely, it\u2019s a terrible film but it was also one of the first Boll\u2019s mainstream movies and it caught a lot of attention. Maybe people thought his career wouldn\u2019t last more than a couple of years. Why and how he\u2019s been able to continue in the movie business is because of some loopholes in the German tax system. It has been fixed since, but in short, the investors had to pay taxes only on returns the movie make, investments being fully deductible. Some other bonuses included being able to delay and reduce the tax weight in general.<\/p>\n

So, I\u2019ve seen worse movies, and Alone in the Dark might even be better than a common Asylum movie (the Asylum is a movie studio producing cheap straight-to-video mockups of well-known blockbusters). I\u2019m also thankful that after watching Alone in the Dark, the action scenes of the latest Matrix movie look much better.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Released: 28. 1. 2005<\/p>\n

Director: Uwe Boll<\/p>\n

Writers: Elan Mastai, Michael Roesch, Peter Scheerer<\/p>\n

Genre: Horror<\/p>\n

Available: DVD and Blu-ray, Amazon.com<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Pictures: Screenshots from the movie, taken by the author.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Director Uwe Boll is a gift that keeps giving and Alone in the Dark is one of his first video game
\nmovies. Unfortunately, not even masochists can enjoy these gifts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124,"featured_media":11329,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[1447],"tags":[1648,1650,1649],"class_list":["post-11327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-game-related-media","tag-aloneinthedark","tag-uwe-boll","tag-video-game-movie","entry","has-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/124"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11327\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}