Alone again, naturally

Lousy corporate bigwigs, always interested in the bottom line, never in the integrity of an artist's vision. Thank goodness we can finally pick up the unrated Director's Cut of Alone in the Dark, on DVD this week. Along with a new commentary, Uwe Boll adds eight minutes of new footage and removes five (reportedly mostly Tara Reid), achieving his vision. (On this count I am with Boll; my artistic vision tends to involve removal of Tara Reid as well.) Hopefully this is what the film needs to salvage it from its 2.2 IMDb rating (currenly #44 worst), its 1% critics' freshness rating at Rotten Tomatoes (currently #2 worst!), and its generally accepted status as one of the most laughable movies in recent memory.

Alone in the Dark, like much of Boll's ouevre, is based on a videogame, a Lovecraft-inspired mystery that helped launch survival horror as a game genre and paved the way for the Resident Evil games. Very successful and still respected today, the game spawned three sequels; a next-gen adaptation is in the works.

A quick look at the IMDb bottom 100 films indicates that Alone in the Dark will soon be the third lowest-rated film to receive a sequel. In second place is Baby Geniuses. The lowest-ranked film to receive a sequel is, unsurprisingly, Boll's earlier "effort," House of the Dead. For Alone in the Dark 2: Fate of Existence (a working title), Boll-related writing/producing team Michael Roesch and Peter Scheerer (who wrote the first film, along with House of the Dead 2) will share writing and directing duties.

As with BloodRayne 2, which we discussed a few days ago, Boll has a perplexing ability to lure well-known and even talented actors into his films, and even his sequels. While not-too-famous Rick Yune takes over the lead role from Christian Slater (playing the same character), Boll has also assembled genre standouts Lance Henriksen, Bill Moseley, P.J. Soles, and Michael Paré. Somewhere down the line, Time magazine will ask every single one of these people what they were thinking.

Alone in the Dark 2 is currently filming, expected for a 2009 straight-to-video release.