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

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.