starship crash strands a handful of survivors on a desert world that is burning under orange,
blue and yellow suns. Several of the survivors have something to hide. Docking pilot
Fry (Mitchell) tried to jettison the passenger section to save herself during the crash.
Bounty hunter Johns (Hauser) nurses a morphine habit. Their alliance is a shaky one,
and the planet has secrets of its own
The group thinks that the biggest threat to their survival is Johns' missing prisoner,
the amoral murderer Riddick (Diesel). But they're wrong. Hordes of bloodthirsty
predators lurk beneath the sunbaked ground, hiding from the light that hurts them.
They're waiting for one of the planet's periodic eclipses to plunge the surface
into darkness so they can hunt.
The survivors find a deserted encampment, and also a small spacecraft that can
get them off the planet to safety if they can power it up. But they also discover
that the next eclipse is about to take place, and learn what will happen when it does.
They race to their wrecked ship to retrieve the power cells they need, but can't
get back before darkness falls. The creatures emerge from their hiding places.
It's been 22 years, they're very hungry, and the survivors are the only prey to
be found.
To escape, the passengers must survive a harrowing trek overland through
the darkness. The creatures swarm around them, filling the night with the
eerie cries they use to echo-locate in the blackness. The survivors' only
protection is the light they can generate to keep the hunters at bay.
With his eyes altered to see in the dark, and some sharp predatory instincts of
his own, Riddick suddenly becomes the group's best hope for survival--if they
can trust him.
Not just another Alien clone
When Pitch Black was released in 1999, it made just short of
$40 million at the box office. Not a flop, but not a runaway hit either.
One reason may be that viewers expected one more example of an overused
formula: Trap some cardboard characters someplace with a nasty monster,
then kill them off one by one until only the hero and love interest are
left to destroy the creature and escape.
That's too bad, because Pitch Black is one of those rare films
that works its formula to tell a more ambitious story. These survivors
aren't there just to be eaten--even the ones who eventually are. The supporting
cast, including Farscape's Claudia Black, are nuanced and intriguing.
And the main characters burn in moral crucibles even more dangerous than the
creatures.
Similarly, the special effects are mostly excellent, but always exist to
serve the story rather than for their own sake. A great example is the
harsh lighting that washes out exterior scenes with different colors as
the suns shift. It's a simple effect, but does a lot to place viewers in
the alien setting. The opening starship crash, shots in Riddick's
night vision and the creatures' static-filled echo-location sense are also
highlights. And then there are the creatures. They exist in darkness, and
are brilliantly painted with sudden flashes of light, or seen as lurking
forms in the shadows. They are always moving, always enigmatic.
Not everything is perfect. The ecology of the alien world doesn't
stand up to scrutiny, the dialogue can become overwrought, and Vin Diesel's
Riddick is so dynamic that he sometimes overwhelms the other characters.
But those are minor quibbles. Every frame of Pitch Black shows how
much its creators love making movies, which makes viewers feel it as well.
Pitch Black is available in both its R-rated theatrical version and
this unrated one. The differences are very minor, adding up to an
extra four minutes in the unrated version. A couple of scenes run a few
lines longer, adding dimension to some minor characters. One
character's death is slightly gorier than it appeared in the R-rated
cut, showing a monster biting off the victim's head. This represents
about a second of film and, like Obi-Wan Kenobi
cutting off a foe's arm in Star Wars, appears to be there solely to
manipulate the rating.
