Kai C.
ROTTEN TOMATOES
There’s no denying you’ve seen a lot of this before. Hapless space travelers find themselves in a tight spot trying to survive scourges of zippy, sharp-toothed aliens with long, sharp claws and spikes. There’s a leader, there’s an innocent, there’s a guy that breaks down and does something stupid that leaves everybody screwed, and there are the characters that may as well be playing their roles wearing body bags.
For Pitch Black has all of these, playing the notes and keeping the rhythm of a song that we’ve all heard before.
That said, it is perhaps one of the best recitals of this “song” in a long time. Like any recital, you generally know what to expect. It’s the presentation that you’re looking for. To that end sense director David Twohy’s Pitch Black delivers. The film moves along building and releasing its momentum at that right places, stressing some points and downplaying others, all while adding twists and turns to a now classic composition that surprises without violating reasonable license.
Though some of the characters borrow heavily from the pool of stock sci-fi characters, many hold secrets and conflicts that are revealed at just the right (or wrong) times in the story, adding new dimensions to what would otherwise be standard sci-fi scenarios. Like everyone else in the movie, you’re never entirely sure who to trust until that very last, crucial moment. The bottom line is ever-present, which makes for believable internal conflicts and decisions that are legitimately difficult for the characters to make.
But of course this isn’t Shakespeare. We want to see plenty of nasty looking things running around and eating people in these kinds of movies. Pitch Black offers lots of that, with plenty of suspense and more than adequate detail. The visual effects are solid. Of particular note is the crash landing, our first views of the alien swarms, and the film’s concept of what sonar might “look” like.
With able peformances from Vin Diesel, Radha Mitchell, and Cole Hauser, Pitch Black carries the sci-fi suspense genre competently into the new century.
© 2000 Rotten Tomatoes
Kai ] 
