Planetary alignment

Eight years after its release, David Twohy’s “Pitch Black” remains a small, effective space thriller. Revisiting the film recently, I found that the reasons for why the movie works are simple but potent (possible spoiler warning):

- a creepy antihero in the form of Richard B. Riddick, a character that didn’t know he was about to launch a small cult with this film (Riddick has the movie’s best lines);
- Riddick’s eye shine, a gimmick that enables him (and us) to see in the dark while other characters simply stumble on;
- a sympathetic female lead, an anti-Final Girl in a way, in accomplished Aussie actress Rhoda Mitchell who serves as Riddick’s counter;
- alien creatures that are wonderfully predatory although the creature design lacks some imagination;
- deaths don’t always occur on screen, employing the “less is more-rule” of scary movies that work well;
- a clear setup that is SF simplicity itself: crash survivors on desert planet need to get off of said planet but they encounter hungry aliens that swarm during eclipses (I guess this almost makes the film a survival horror but it’s too SF for that to be completely the case).
A pity that “Chronicles of Riddick” ended up being bloated and indulgent, a far cry from this lean, snappy escape movie.

Of course, the best Riddick story is the one told in “Escape from Butcher Bay”. (I have not seen "Dark Fury".)