Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

If you like super heroe action movies you must think about seen the Riddick triology. Well, don't! This one has the best plot and it' no good, but the special effects are the worst!!!

An alright film with a pretty decent atmosphere Pitch Black is a Vin Diesel vehicle and the start of the Riddick franchise. You can go and see to see where it all started and some scenes are pretty good but overall the film is a middling affair which should be getting the cult status in the future. David Twowy is in good form but could have done better.

A transport ship carrying around 40 passengers crash-lands on an unknown planet and only 11 people survive the crash. The survivors of the crash are initially concerned about one of the survivors of the crash namely Richard B Riddick (Vin Diesel) as he is a dangerous and violent criminal that they have been transporting who manages to set himself free after the crash. However, when the planet that they crash-land on is plunged into a month-long period of darkness, the survivors soon learn that Riddick may be their only hope of survival when a group of flesh-eating aliens try to take them all out one by one...To me, Pitch Black is an example of a potentially good film that unfortunately has been placed in the hands of the wrong director. In order to work, films like Pitch Black need to have tension, suspense, dynamism and strong characterisation and it's clear from a very early stage that you are not going to get any of that here.Pitch Black is clearly trying to set itself up as a modern day Alien type film, but Twohy has none of the skills that Ridley Scott or James Cameron were able to serve up with the first two Alien films. I'll admit that the first 20 minutes or so were relatively suspenseful, but it's clear that after Twohy's rather clichéd 'cloak and dagger approach' in respect of introducing Riddick to the story that he had nowhere really to go and completely fails to develop or improve upon the story. When watching Pitch Black there is just no spark, no dynamism and nothing interesting about the story or the characters. Even the character of Riddick is poorly developed and I'm sure that he could have been made more interesting with a better director or writing crew.The last few lines in the above paragraph really sum up the problems with this film; if your narrative's success is dependent on its characters then it's generally a good idea to make at least one or two of them interesting - this is what made Alien and Aliens both work because you cared about the characters and actually gave a damn about what happened, but in Pitch Black the characters are as lifeless as the planet that they crash-land on and if I'm honest I found it a bit of a struggle getting to the finish line with this one.The performances aren't great either with no-one really making much of an impact (no pun intended). Vin Diesel should have been great in this sort of role, but I felt that he was slightly hampered by being a rather poorly written character. Everyone else here was just as bland and unmemorable.One final thing that made me laugh about this film is its ridiculous plot contrivance; our prisoner happens to have had his eyes surgically altered so that he can see better in the dark after being denied sunlight for lengthy periods. He then finds himself crash-landed on a planet that ends up being plunged into darkness for a month??? I can suspend some disbelief, but that is quite a ridiculous coincidence don't you think??? Pitch Black is rubbish, but it's not even enjoyable rubbish and in my opinion you're better off watching either Alien or Aliens because they at least are both entertaining, tense and rewarding pieces of cinemas which are qualities that certainly cannot be attributed to Pitch Black.

The spaceship Hunter-Gratzner crashes on a desert planet. Pilot Carolyn Fry (Radha Mitchell) tries to take control after the captain is killed. Bounty hunter William J. Johns (Cole Hauser) is transporting prisoner Richard B. Riddick (Vin Diesel). There are also holy man Abu 'Imam' al-Walid (Keith David) and his young charges, antiquities dealer Paris P. Ogilvie, runaway Jack (Rhiana Griffith), John Zeke Ezekiel and Sharon 'Shazza' Montgomery (Claudia Black). They discover that the planet's 3 suns align to have a nightfall every 22 years and creatures from below rise up to massacre every creature on the surface. They are forced to rely on the killer Riddick and his night vision.This is great smallish sci-fi horror. Radha Mitchell does a nice Ripley. This reminds me a lot of Alien which I consider one of the greatest movies ever. It's got good desolate settings. Vin Diesel is the Man. This starts as an interesting character that turns into something great. The creature feature plus the darkness make this even better.