Average Rating: 5.6/10
Reviews Counted: 101
Fresh: 56 | Rotten: 45
Despite an interesting premise (and a starmaking turn from Vin Diesel), Pitch Black is too derivative and formulaic to recommend to sci-fi or action fans.
Average Rating: 4.9/10
Critic Reviews: 26
Fresh: 10 | Rotten: 16
Despite an interesting premise (and a starmaking turn from Vin Diesel), Pitch Black is too derivative and formulaic to recommend to sci-fi or action fans.
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Average Rating: 3.4/5
User Ratings: 253,815
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In this science fiction thriller, a spaceship is transporting a disparate group of people to a far-away galactic outpost called New Mecca. Mechanical failures cause the craft to crash-land on an abandoned planet that has three suns and no night. The only member of the crew to survive is junior pilot Carolyn Fry (Radha Mitchell), while the passengers who climb from the wreckage include a police officer (Cole Hauser) and the prisoner he's transporting, Riddick (Vin Diesel). As Fry and the other
R, 1 hr. 48 min.
Feb 18, 2000 Wide
Oct 24, 2000
Gramercy Pictures/ USA Films
All Critics (102) | Top Critics (26) | Fresh (57) | Rotten (47) | DVD (38)
The script is a compendium of science-fiction clichés, familiar in Hollywood movies since the early fifties.
Pitch Black is so jaunty, so limber, and so visually self-assured that art peeks through where crap has traditionally made its home.
The film works because it's strong on fundamentals: fear of the dark, fear of helplessness, fear of the unknown, and fear of unpredictable human behavior.
Barely intermittent, reminding us that the B-movie is still very much with us.
In the movie's last hour, writer-director David Twohy pretends to explore his stick figures' moral choices, and he forgets to deliver the thrills.
The screenplay, credited to Twohy with Jim and Ken Wheat, for a scary movie hasn't a scary idea on any of its pages.
contains unpredictable nuances that make for thrilling amusement
...your typical run-for-your-life-the-monsters-are-coming science fiction adventure that requires one to park his brain at the front door of the theater before entering.
Very simple and basic plot with alot of bad acting (Not including Vin Diesel, one of the higher points to this). This wasn't as good as I hoped it would be.
[Blu-Ray DVD review] Ff you don't already own the movie and you've got the tech, this is a can't miss package
A fairly efficient science fiction monster film, somewhat in the mold of an old 1950s B-movie.
If only there had been as much time spent on creating believable aliens as there obviously was on the landscape.
Under the circumstances it's not really fair to blame the actors, whose amateurishness seems appropriate to the material (although Diesel's stolid machismo is so over-the-top as to be pretty laughable).
A smart, suspenseful sci-fi movie from director Twohy, whose underrated 1996 film, The Arrival, also brought visual imagination and intelligence to the genre.
Manages to surprise and delight, thanks to its small-scale attitude.
Hey man, it's February. You've already picked through all the leftover Oscar-bait you can take, so it's no time to be picky.
PITCH BLACK deserves to be recommended as a solid piece of genre entertainment.
The derivativeness of the script keeps any tensions from building into any kind of scariness.
Lackluster both as science-fiction and horror.
One of the best of the sci-fi spectacles cut from the Alien cloth.
A solid entry in the genre of science fiction horror.
The action scenes are good, if sparse.
Some hard-core science-fiction fans might nit-pick over details in Pitch Black, but for the average moviegoer looking to be entertained, this roller-coaster of a film should not be missed.
Low budget sci-fi with lotsa CGI about surviving the threat of bloodthirsty creatures that only live in the dark ... and the planet we just crashlanded on is due for a four day eclipse. Luckily Vin Diesel (thief, brigand, murderer, guy w/o a shirt) crashlanded in the same spaceship, known far and wide for his acts of
July 21, 2007Super Reviewer
"All you people are so scared of me. Most days I'd take that as a compliment. But it ain't me you gotta worry about now."A group of marooned space travelers struggle for survival on a seemingly lifeless sun-scorched world. REVIEWA space ship carrying a cargo of commercial passengers is forced to crash land on
March 20, 2012
Super Reviewer
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