Leave it to Steven Seagal to make a boring vampire movie. Worse, it’s not even the traditional vampires; instead, it’s the zombies from 28 Days Later… only they’re vampires here—Against the Dark is sort of like “Die Hard (with vampire-zombies) in a hospital.”
Crudo is a terrible director. The action sequences (the ones I saw, anyway) are poorly composed, poorly edited and possibly intended to be laughable.
However, he (or writer Mathew Klickstein, who might have turned in an interesting script if he spent as much time on it as his hipster IMDb biography) does come up with one decent sequence—there may be more but I’ll never know—with a vampire filing down her teeth as to pose as a human. Unfortunately, the human who kills her never even sees she’s filled down her teeth. Great setup, no followthrough.
The cast is awful. Seagal’s too overweight to do much, so he just stands around. Crudo tries to make it look like Seagal’s walking and fails. Tanoai Reed is terrible as the action star. Daniel Percival is a special kind of awful (the story’s split between Seagal and annoying younger survivors).
I suppose Jenna Harrison was okay. Linden Ashby’s around; he seemed better than the material. According to the credits, Keith David shows up at some point but I’ll never know.
How can you have Steven Seagal fight vampires and make it boring? Dark could never be good… but the absurdity factor alone should have made it watchable.
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CREDITS
Directed by Richard Crudo; written by Mathew Klickstein; director of photography, William Trautvetter; edited by Tim Silano; music by Philip White; production designer, Serban Porupca; produced by Phillip B. Goldfine and Steven Seagal; released by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.
Starring Steven Seagal (Tao), Tanoai Reed (Tagart), Jenna Harrison (Dorothy), Danny Midwinter (Morgan), Emma Catherwood (Amelia), Stephen Hagan (Ricky), Daniel Percival (Dylan), Skye Bennett (Charlotte), Linden Ashby (Cross) and Keith David (Lt. Waters).
