Alone in the Dark
While each year inevitably has its share of cinematic bombs, 2005 suffered from a few particularly rotten ones -- the winners of the Moldy Tomato Award all score under 10% on the Tomatometer! Although this year's stinkers included second-rate remakes ("Yours, Mine & Ours," "The Dukes of Hazzard," "The Honeymooners"), substandard sequels ("Son of the Mask," "Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo," "Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous") and awful actioners ("Stealth," "The Cave," "Doom"), none can compare to the worst of the worst. Without further ado, we present 2005's Moldy Tomatoes.
Leading the pack with an adjusted score of 17.67 and an impressive 1% on the Tomatometer is "Alone in the Dark" -- an adaptation of the Atari video game of old, in which a hardened paranormal investigator must save humanity from ancient evil creatures. With Tara Reid in the role of, um, a brilliant anthropologist, this clichéd, overplayed thriller generates more unintentional laughs than scares. Benjamin Strong of the Village Voice compared its cinematic quality to that of "an America's Most Wanted re-enactment that pays unexpected, side-splitting returns." Meanwhile, the San Francisco Chronicle's Peter Hartlaub called the flick "so mind-blowingly horrible that it teeters on the edge of cinematic immortality." Indeed, "Alone in the Dark" is a cinematic milestone so hackneyed and amateurish that we at Rotten Tomatoes proclaim it to be the most Rotten movie of 2005, and the true winner of the Moldy Tomato Award!
Earning the runner-up title of second-Moldiest movie of the year is the assassin-with-a-heart-of-gold actioner, "Elektra." This spin-off of 2004's comic book adaptation "Daredevil" offered Jennifer Garner another chance to show off her butt-kicking skills, though few were surprised when "Elektra" fell short of the mark of even its disappointing predecessor. With an adjusted score of 19.70 and a 7% on the Tomatometer, this sequel suffers for lack of one key element: an adequate plot. Colin Covert of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune lamented, "What might have been at best a Xena-style martial arts adventure meanders listlessly through swaths of relationship drama."
Coming in third with an adjusted score of 21.30 and a Tomatometer of 9%, "White Noise" takes on the modern urban legend of EVP, or Electronic Voice Phenomenon, in which the dead communicate with the living through the static of household recording devices. Despite employing the standard scares of the thriller genre, this Moldy Tomato has a plot as muddled as a message sent from the afterlife through a toaster, and a lackluster central performance by Michael Keaton. Writing for the Denver Rocky Mountain News, Robert Denerstein put it simply: "This movie stinks."
Check out the list below to see the rest of the, er, "winners."
Data collected on January 5, 2006 |