Pitch Black: Movie Review, DVD Review (2000)

Directed by David Twohy, written by Twohy and Jim and Ken Wheat, 107 minutes, rated R.

(Originally published 2000)

David Twohy’s sci-fi thriller “Pitch Black” sees clearly through the dark, murky world of less successful sci-fi movies.

It’s a good student who has learned from the pitfalls of the genre--weak premise, messy plot, terrific special effects at the cost of thinly drawn characters--and uses that knowledge to create a world filled with believable characters, genuine suspense, and creepy moments of horror that grab and linger within the gathering darkness.

Nothing in this film is new -- audiences have seen much of this before in other movies, particularly “Alien” and “Mad Max,” the latter of which has obviously inspired Twohy’s vision of a desolate future filled with lost souls. But Twohy (“The Arrival,” “Disaster in Time”) is nevertheless able to make it all seem fresh, sometimes startlingly so.

His film opens with a spaceship falling from space and slamming spectacularly into an unknown planet with three suns (this sequence alone is worth the price of the rental). There, the ship’s nine survivors, including the female pilot, Fry (Radha Michell), lawman Johns (Cole Hauser) and the dangerous prisoner Riddick (Vin Diesel), learn they must take cover from the darkness of a rare solar eclipse--or else.

Indeed, as they learn early on in one particularly bloody scene, this planet holds a carnivorous secret--one that’s only let loose in the dark.

Shot in the same bleached tones as “Mad Max” and “Three Kings,” and punctuated throughout with Graeme Revell’s stirring tribal score, “Pitch Black” knows what “The Blair Witch Project” knew so well--real horror is best realized in the dark.

Grade: B+