Uwe Bolls follow-up to House Of The Dead wants to be another good bad movie look, theres Tara Reid playing an anthropologist but stumbles too many times to appeal to the connoisseur. Even Plan 9 From Outer Space veers dangerously close to coherence in a few scenes, but AITD is more interested in car chases and CG monsters than in having a comprehensible plot. In a 2005 interview, screenwriter Blair Erickson explained that Boll wanted an action film with a mysterious central character not unlike Blade or The Crow, but after expressing his disappointment at Ericksons draft in a harshly-worded e-mail (your story is an authors piece, a drama, where we spend time with people!!!), the writer dropped out. Boll eventually handed writing duties to producers Michael Roesch and Peter Scheerer (who also scripted the in-name-only sequel), but they were unable to lick the central problem: rather than tell an origin story, the film had to follow on from Alone In The Dark: The New Nightmare, the fourth entry in the videogame franchise. In other words, the movie was only ever going to appeal (or make sense) to hardcore gamers. It was setting itself up to fail.
Ian Watson is the author of 'Midnight Movie Madness', a 600+ page guide to "bad" movies from 'Reefer Madness' to 'Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead.'
