Cheap Pitch Black (Unrated Version) (DVD) (Vin Diesel, Radha Mitchell, Cole Hauser) (David Twohy) Price

Related Products

Customer Reviews of Pitch Black (Unrated Version)

Wicked & Fun
It's amazing how much fun an under hyped sci-fi movie can be. This movie delivers on a lot of different fronts. For a B movie the special effects are good (not great), the pacing is quick enough to cover up for some plot holes and Vin Diesel is the perfect non-hero. I watched the unrated version but I could imagine the studio heads doing a hatchet job on the movie version, which might explain some of the early negative reviews. Like 'Event Horizon' two years ago, this movie was definetly under rated when it came out and has a great blend of horror, action, and a good casting job with actors that know how to play their appropriate roles (i.e first to die, bad guy, hot chick, etc). What is sad is that Pitch Black with its medium budget and straight forward plot is just so much more enjoyable than so many high budget or highly hyped sci fi movies like Red Planet, Red Mars, Planet of the Apes. Of course it won't replace Alien (s) as a classic but you will definetly feel you got your money's worth.

---

Thrilling, entertaining, slick film.
Pitch Black features a fairly common sci/horror plot about a spaceship crash landing on an apparently desolate planet that happens to be inhabited by flesh-eating creatures. There's nothing unusual to this plot, and it offers basically no surprises. This would seemingly offer up a boring movie, or at least one that doesn't rise far above made-for-TV status.

In fact, just the opposite is true of Pitch Black. It is exciting and thrilling, and occasionally even a little scary. The actors are all really, really good in their roles. And the screenplay is written to allow even minor characters a bit of fleshing-out. The visuals in this move are also very, very good with scary creatures that look like the old "Aliens" film and hunt like the raptors of "Jurassic Park", a character with strange but cool shiny eyes, and computer graphics that are light weight enough not to distract. The cinematography in this movie is awesome! With light shifts of red to blue, and back again, it gives the wonderful anticipatory thrill missing in many of today's sci/horror flicks that rely solely on explosions and blood drenching scences. The direction is also very good in this movie. Basically, what the makes of Pitch Black did was take an old story and clean it up with great acting, cinematography, direction, and writing. The total of their efforts brings us a movie which thrills, even though the plot is old news, because perhaps for the first time, it was done well enough that we could believe it.

My only complaint about this movie is the vagueness of the Riddick character and what he is about. At the end, it is left unsure whether he really was an evil criminal that somehow 'became' good on this planet, or if he was a misunderstood character. Because of this unclearness, it leaves the viewer in doubt about his character even after the movie is over. It would have been nice to get more inside the head of this character at the end. I can only hope that the coming movies will give us a little more.

DVD contains a typical, boring 'making of' and some interesting commentaries. Nothing spectacular or worth making a buying decision over.

---

muddled and dark.........
When I saw the previews recently of The Chronicles of Riddick,
I thought it might be interesting to see Pitch Black. Wrong.
From the first part of it, it looked cheap. That was my first
clue and from there it goes downhill. I frankly think Diesel
was much better in Fast and Furious than he was in this.
But I must say that he alone was the incentive to last as long
as I did. As far as the monsters, that go bump in the night,
anybody who compares them to those in Alien must be blind and
deaf......I found them interesting but definitely not scary, or maybe you needed to be there to see them in person? They reminded me in a way of the raptors from Jarassic Park particularly when they are congregating on the launch pad at the end of the film.
Total waste of time.
Perhaps 'Chronicles' will be different?
It definitely looks a bit more polished.