10 Sci-Fi Movie Ideas Too Good To Fail (That Did It Anyway)

By Cathal Gunning / April 8, 2020

Sometimes a film has such a great premise that it seems as if it will be able to overcome any number of potential problems. This is particularly true of sci-fi flicks, since the genre has directors as diverse as George Lucas, John Carpenter, and Shane Carruth overcome limited budgets and timescales to deliver firecracker debuts which, whilst small in the scope of their world building, nonetheless managed to hint at the promise these filmmakers had in store.

In each of the above cases, THX 1138, Dark Star, and Primer were all bolstered by killer premises which seemed bulletproof even in the face of a limited budget. The lack of big money added to THX 1138’s claustrophobic feel, made Dark Star’s 2001 parody look appropriately corny, and ensured Primer felt as small scale and intimate as its stripped back story.

However, not every sci-fi filmmaker has managed to turn a great idea into a phenomenal flick. Despite, and in some cases because of, the backing of huge studios, these ambitious sci-fi flicks took genius ideas and turned them into middle of the road, subpar, and in a few cases downright atrocious movies. With that in mind, let’s look at the science fiction efforts which took an idea too perfect to fail, and still managed to fumble it.

10. Alone In The Dark - Lovecraftian Unease? Nah, CGI Monsters And Tara Reid

For those lucky enough to have never seen House of the Dead or, God forbid, 2007’s insufferable Postal, the name Uwe Boll is probably all but unknown. It’s hard to believe, a decade on, that the helmer was ever in the running for the title of Worst Director Alive considering how milquetoast and middle of the road his more recent offerings have been. Hell, his expansion into the world of fine dining was met with pretty positive reviews.

But back in 2005, Boll was one of few directors who could manage to turn a premise as cool as Alone in the Dark’s into an unexciting and derivative flick.

Adapted from the video game of the same name, the film was originally intended to follow a paranoid paranormal investigator as he uncovered a secret sect of demon-worshippers, skewing close to the game’s subtly claustrophobic atmosphere, leaving any monsters largely obscured in darkness and relying on a Lovecraftian sense of unease to fuel its scares.

Then Boll got his hands on the material, added some unconvincing CGI beasties, starring roles for bad horror stalwarts Christian Slater and Tara Reid, and voila—a bad movie masterpiece was born from a once deeply cool, quietly unsettling premise.