Against the Dark

The horror genre has always been an unstable collection of subgenres stuck together by gore, blood and occasionally tits. But the most recognizable common denominator is the unlikable, mentally retarded main characters. Take a random horror movie and you will see one of our protagonists carrying a knife and when the baddy comes rushing in, the dumb little twat drops her knife, falls on the floor and crawls on her back into a corner. This hilariously absurd combat strategy goes against any primitive survival instinct and makes me want to murder everyone myself and set their pets on fire.

Of course, I am generalizing now, because there are horror movies where the protagonist is a master swordsman with boulimia nervosa, like in Against The Dark, one of the latest Seagal films.

Steven Seagal, who has been eating too many pies recently, has been using stunt doubles in all of is movies since 2004, but it appears that he has reached a new level of laziness this time, because it seems he is using a stunt double for scenes where he is just walking. You never see his face when he is moving, it kind of feels like I am watching Jake and the Fat Man.

Against The Dark is a movie about vampires/zombies, or actually mutated people that now eat other people and tear them apart for giggles. Their only weakness seems to be that they conveniently fall unconscious when they get pushed against a wall. Thank God for that, for it is the only fight move our unarmed characters can do.

Ah yes, our main characters. There is not much to say about them, they are just as bland as always and the only thing they do is running around in a hospital waiting for Tao the master swordsman to save them or incidentally get eaten by the zompires. Looking back, Tao doesn't actually do anything, he always lets his sidekick Tagart do all the crazy stuff like storming in a dark room filled with zombies. In fact, Tao is so redundant, that on the Dutch DVD box they credit Seagal for playing Tagart. Maybe it is a good thing that Seagal's role is so easily overlooked, because his performance is as good as it can get, so Tao has the personality of a sock puppet played by a man with an amputated hand.

I love how the movie at some point tries to be deep and philosophical while actually it is as shallow as North Korea's threats for war. There is one moment where they say that now they are the crazy people and not the diseased cannibalistic murderers, because humans are a minority. It's what Emmanuel Kant would say, after someone lodged an iron pipe into his head. You'd be better off learning life lessons from Kermit the Frog.

Maybe I should send a letter with all my complaints to the people involved in the film production. And if my suggestions don't have any effect, I am sure the added Anthrax will.

In conclusion: Against The Dark is a film you will forget faster than your repressed memories of child abuse. It is totally empty and has nothing to offer for anyone, like the rotten carcass of Paris Hilton.

I am expecting the next good Seagal movie by the time there's peace in the Middle East and by the time Micheal Jackon comes flying by my house, moonwalking on his magical carpet.

This movie gets a 3/10.