White-Knuckled Terror in Pitch Black

Here is the promotional slogan for Pitch Black, a new sci-fi flick opening today: "Are you afraid of the dark? You will be..." Now, let's think about this: are you scared or bemused? Silly as the phrase is, it's also a little misleading. What makes Pitch Black into something you don't anticipate-a nice surprise-has nothing to do with darkness.

Pitch Black is a sort of low-budget production, and though there's good reason to be skeptical of things sci-fi or low- budget in general, the film does surprisingly well given its familiar premise. Besides some interesting visual techniques (what kinds of colors are you supposed to see in a desert?), it also manages to deliver all the fear and anxiety that tempt you to pay $8 for a movie in the first place.

The nice part is, it's not just a mindless adrenaline rush brought about by your fear of the dark. Sure, people are dying off one by one and you never know who'll be next, but the real drama (yes, there is drama, surprise, surprise) is how the characters slowly reveal their true selves.

At first glance, Pitch Black might seem like your standard sci-fi fare: after a crash landing on an environmentally hostile planet, the survivors encounter a scary alien enemy and then start to die off. For some added fun, this particular planet has no sunsets-it has three suns. At first he survivors' biggest problems are finding water and keeping an eye on a convicted murderer named Riddick who escaped from the ship during the crash.

Played by Vin Diesel (you might recognize him from Saving Private Ryan), Riddick is a huge mass of raw strength; the most spectacular things about him are his...eyes. Yes, that's right, not the huge muscles or that deep, scary voice. It's the see-in-the-dark eyes (contact lenses that Vin Diesel described as similar to "hubcaps off a 1960 Plymouth, painted blue") and the mysterious goggles he wears to protect them in broad daylight.

Eyes aside, however, Vin Diesel is still intense-he smoulders, intimidates and scares the crap out of everyone even as he wears those ridiculous goggles. He and Australian actress Radha Mitchell, as pilot and acting captain Caroline Fry, steal the show from the carnivorous alien creatures and the rest of the survivors.

After crawling through a spectacular desert wasteland the group stumbles upon a mysteriously abandoned scientific settlement. Meanwhile, group membership has started to decrease. Apparently, something on the planet likes to eat people alive, which gives us the warning about being afraid of the dark: these creatures are physically hurt by the light and will only eat you alive in the dark. Good thing it's never night because there are three suns, remember.

Oh, but wait, a convenient planetary model in the abandoned settlement shows us that there is a total eclipse every 22 years-and dated scientific samples tell us it's been 22 years since everyone mysteriously disappeared. Talk about bad timing. Pretty soon it starts to get dark and the skies are filled with flying, freakish alien creatures that like to eat anything that is alive, including one another.

It's after this disturbing discovery is made that things get really intense. This is not just because it's getting dark (although things obviously do get a little scarier). The real tension is found among the group that survived the initial crash landing. A deal is made to make the convict Riddick a full partner in the group. You can imagine the issues of trust and mistrust that are going to come up here.

What makes it all so thrilling to watch is that no one knows whom to trust. Who's been reformed, and who needs to be reformed? You certainly have no idea. You think you know who the bad guy is, you think you will make it to the end, but you're probably wrong.

We get to watch these people deal with emotional and moral dilemmas. Pitch Black's greatest strength is that it actually has a story to tell, and characters that develop and change. Seems like a simplistic idea, doesn't it? But it makes for a cool combination of primal and sophisticated tension and suspense that's wonderfully nerve-wracking to watch.

Of course, it's not all character development. Director David Twohy co-wrote the screenplay, and his other writing credits include Waterworld, The Fugitive, and G.I. Jane.

Pitch Black can be smart, and it knows that you can be too. The survivors include a group of devout Muslims on their way to "New Mecca" whose faith adds an interesting, if somewhat puzzling dimension to the movie. Disaster forces the question, "where is your God?" The answer turns out to be, like so much else in this film, a welcome surprise. B+