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Thank goodness! Pitch Black is a first-rate effort
that mixes thrills and shocks with really interesting, evolving
characters. There are also heaps of nasty, ooky monsters that
like nothing more than dragging people off and eating them
alive.
The basic plot for Pitch Black is that a spaceship
is badly damaged by meteorites and crash-lands upon a barren
planet scorched dry by three suns.
As the survivors scavenge for water to help them survive,
they come across an abandoned mining station and then, one
by one, they meet up with the monsters that only seem to operate
in the dark.
Thank God for three suns, you say. Hmmmmm, shame about solar
eclipses, I say. And that's what happens: an eclipse drops
the humans right in it.
Pitch Black has some of the best characters created
in sci-fi with almost all of the original impressions of them
cleverly switched about by director David Twohy and by film's
end you have completely changed the way you look at them.
There are two main roles - the pilot Fry (Radha Mitchell)
and convict Riddick (Vin Diesel) - but the support cast of
Keith David, as a Muslim cleric, Lewis Fitzgerald, an upper-class
hedonist, and Cole Hauser as a bounty hunter are all first-rate.
Pitch Black was filmed in Coober Pedy and better
country for a rock-dry planet has never been discovered.
Twohy does brilliantly with not only the landscape, but also
the over-exposed effect of the film stock, which gets across
the white-hot temperatures the humans have to survive in.
The approaching eclipse offers coolness, but also mass death
as the alien creatures swarm in for the kill.
The suspense during the movie is outstanding and there are
some scenes that will have you thinking "I'm glad that's not
me". Watch for Fitzgerald's fire-breathing moment as one of
those. Eeeeeeerk, I'm still shuddering.
Just why this did not do better at the cinema astounds me
as it is a highly original sci-fi tale that deserved a place
among the classics.
Now where's that light switch?
Conclusion: Movie 85%, Extras 75%
Continued:
DVD details at a glance >
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