Blair Erickson - Behind the Scenes: Uwe Boll and Uwe Boll's "Alone In the Dark"

A few years ago I came out of the video game industry to work on the first draft of Uwe Boll's newest film "Alone in the Dark." We had secured the rights for the license from Infogrames and pitched him a few story ideas on it. While he was still in post-production on the critically-acclaimed "House of the Dead" he asked us to write a script around the game "Alone in the Dark." At that point we hadn't seen any footage from any of his films he was worked on, but we heard "House of the Dead" - and I quote - "wasn't going well." I later discovered that was one of this century's biggest understatements.

Since we were going to be screenwriters for him, we decided to see if we could find any footage from his previous films online. We found the trailer for "Sanctimony" and immediately grew very nervous. Did he really just blatantly steal the entire plot and dialogue from the film "Se7en" and repackage it into some inept, half-assed, cliched pile of confusion? Was this guy for real? Who in their right mind would give him money to make anything except possibly trips from a pizza delivery store? And oh, let's not forget that he had big A-list stars in these films. Like Casper Van Diem. And Eric Roberts. And Clint "Car Wreck Face" Howard.

We had already written our story treatment and sent it off to him. He and his loyal team of Boll trolls seemed to like it and asked us to write a full script. It was only after this agreement when Uwe finally decided to send us a few of his wonderful films on VHS for us to watch. He was eager to impress us with his talented work, no doubt. But If you've ever mistakenly stumbled into one of them, I'm sure you will believe me when I say that we sat through some of the most incompetent and retarded films known to man. And I've seen "Feeders."

First we endured "Blackwoods," an incomprehensible straight-to-cable "psychological thriller" crapfest about evil rednecks who put this yuppie guy on trial in their parents' basement for a drunk driving murder. I don't want to spoil the ending, but his deceased girlfriend was actually Bruce Willis, whom he drunkenly killed with his car years ago, and her evil hillbilly parents in the woods were all part of the main character's guilty conscience. Or something. Really. That's really how it ends. Also he cast yet another actor from "Starship Troopers" in the lead. I think Uwe secretly lusts after Euro B-movie maker Paul Verhoven's lucrative career, which is really kind of sad if you think about it.

Soon Boll wanted to prove to the world he didn't need to solely exploit other films for his movies, as he could also exploit real-life people's deaths. He churned out a cheap Columbine school shooting movie called "Homeroom: Heart of America." I can't really ruin too much of the angsty plot for the film, particularly since we all know how Columbine ended, but I must say one thing about it: this was the first movie I've ever seen featuring gratuitous tit-shots during a scene where a retarded girl is raped. One critic sarcastically called it "the absolute best film Uwe Boll has ever made" and and another cracked "imagine the Columbine tragedy as translated into coloring book form." Unfortunately, this powerful movie failed find an American distributor, and I don't foresee this changing unless the retard rape market suddenly picks up.

Then came "House of the Dead," the film that would finally put to rest the eternal debate over whether Boll was as gifted a director as Scorcese, Kurosawa, or Schumacher. This is really the point where the terror of truly bad cinema sets in; we kept hoping the previous films were just terrible errors that were mistakenly titled and sent to us in some kind of cosmic accident. In his behind-the-scenes shoot on the promotional video, Uwe described this zombie opus as "an action-tour-de-force" and compared it to "a serious violence movie like 'Saving Private Ryan.'" You'll notice this film doesn't really have a "house" of the dead as much as an island and a old mine... of the dead, I guess. This is because apparently Uwe gets these two locations very cheap and therefore they must become central parts of every story he directs. We were cracking up and waiting for the punchline that never came throughout the entire movie, occasionally glancing around to see if we were being filmed by a Candid Camera revival. We heard the premise: "a rave... on an island... with zombies... TERRIBLE zombies," but we had no idea he was telling it with a straight face.

It was a mess. We knew we were in a terrible situation, and had written a script that was only going to confuse this poor guy. He kept asking us why the character in our script "Alone in the Dark," Edward Carnby, didn't have any special powers to battle monsters. We explained that the story revolved around suspense and a believable detective, based off the game. He replied by telling us he wanted to blatantly rip-off characters, as well as the tone of the films "Blade" and "The Crow." Here are some actual quotes from e-mails directly from the cinematic mastermind Uwe Boll himself in 2002:

Edward is not mysterious and does business as usual – which destroys his entire heroism – his entire reputation built up by the game, would be DESTROYED by this film. Edward has to be mysterious like in THE CROW and BLADE, he has to have special abilities and weapons and no normal BACKSTORY!!!

What isn’t much use are grave things: the dialogue, Edward’s Character and the story per se. IT IS GOOD THAT H IS NOT A SUPERNATURAL SUPERHERO - BUT HE CANNOT BE ALSO TOO NORMAL - HE IS A LONELY HERO.

You don't have big screenplay experience and after my bad experience on House Of Dead, I need a Top Script now. Your first script wasn't that. I want to be scared, intelligent, not boring, packed and surprising at the end.

He wanted us to add "big gun battles" and "car chases." You know, all the things that make horror movies scary, particularly movies that revolve around suspense. We kept arguing with him about how to actually tell a scary story, as it became apparent he had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. A big point of contention was the monsters; he wanted tons of big, slimy, dog-looking CG monsters all over the story, while we kept repeating it was far scarier to keep them in the dark - hey, what do you know, kinda like the title - and build suspense. We tried to use the (at the time) recent film "Signs" to explain this to him, but everything seemed to bounce right off the guy. Boll then went off on a rant that should rank as one of the most confusing arguments ever in history.

WE MUST KNOW A LITTLE MORE ABOUT ALL THIS . LOOK in SIGNS THE AUDIENCE KNOWS THAT THE ALIENS WANTS TO DESTROY - SO HE AUDIENCE IS AFRAID. LIKE WHT YOU SAY ABOUT OSAMA BIN LADEN: WE DONT KNOW A LOT - BUT WE ARE FRAID - BECAUSE OF 11.9. - SO WITHOUT ANY INFORMATIONS ABOUT THE ALIENS WE ALL FEEL NOTHING - WE ARE ALL CONFUSED BUT LETS SAY YOU NEVER WOULD HAVE SHOWED AN ALIEN IN SIGN - IT WOULD BE A DESASTER - NOBODY WOULD TAKE IT SERIOUS!!

Yes, I know English is not his first language, but Jesus Christ, I'm not even sure this man has a first language. That's not even coherent in any intelligible way... and this man is DIRECTING FILMS IN ENGLISH. And whether or not you enjoyed the film "Signs," I didn't think anybody had ever argued that the awkward CG alien scene at the end was really a strong moment in filmmaking history. Finally, our short-lived deal with Boll fell apart during yet another debate about the ending. We felt a good horror movie should leave the audience with a creepy, scary uncertainty at the conclusion. Uwe felt people are more terrified by big excessive gun battles and even bigger monsters than the previously slightly-less-big monsters.

But Boll's rambling, borderline psychotic emails don't end here. No, he kept on going.

I AGREE BUT WE STILL NEED A BUILDING UP TENSE /SHOWDOWN OR WHATEVER. WHATEVER IT IS: EDWARD FNDS IN THE END SOMETHING WHAT BLOWS THE AUDIENCE AWAY, OR THE PROBLEM IS THAT MORE AND MORE PEOPLE ARE MISSING, MORE CREATURES OR BIGGER CREATURES ARE COMING UP ... ! We WANNA MAKE A UNUSUAL AND GOOD MOVIE - BUT DONT FORGET THE CLASSICAL - MUST'S - OF STORYTELLING

By this point is was clear we weren't writing a true Uwe Boll movie, so the good doctor began to lecture us, the writers, on proper story telling procedure.

The story doesn’t go from A to B, which is unavoidable for a genre-flick. Your story is an author’s piece, a drama, where we spend time with people!!! With a video game adaptation what is more important than ever: hero needs to have a goal, that the [Uwe here uses the term “08/15 Zuschauer” which basically means the no-name, loser audience] understands and the hero needs to be interesting.

There was only one way to fix it and, fortunately, he had just the plan:

EITHER increasing numbers of people are getting kidnapped or killed by monsters, so that everything is threatened to go out of control and Edward has to stop the monsters – otherwise everything is lost in the end – OR Edward has to solve a specific case and stays on it – needs to go on an island (see ALONE IN THE DARK 4) or solve a murder. I was really angry, because I don’t think, that you’d ignore so many things, that apply to story telling basics!

Oh no! Our script had made Uwe Boll angry! I have to say that being lectured by Dr. Uwe Boll on the proper way to tell a story is an experience I will truly cherish forever. In our defense, I apparently skipped the film writing class which explained how every realistic, suspenseful script required at least one major scene on an island, unaware this omission would be a violation of "story telling basics." At this point we realized Boll was a world class fuck up and was only going to ruin anything he touched. Despite being desperate first time screenwriters, we walked away from the project and refused to give him the rights to our script.

For those of you who actually give a shit, the original script took the "Alone In the Dark" premise and depicted it as if it was a actually based on a true story of a private investigator in the northeastern U.S. whose missing persons cases begin to uncover a disturbing paranormal secret. It was told through the eyes of a writer following Edward Carnby and his co-worker for a novel, and depicted them as real-life blue-collar folks who never expected to find hideous beings waiting for them in the dark. We tried to stick close to the H.P. Lovecraft style and the low-tech nature of the original game, always keeping the horror in the shadows so you never saw what was coming for them. Thankfully Dr.Boll was able to hire his loyal team of hacks to crank out something much better than our crappy story and add in all sorts of terrifying horror movie essentials like opening gateways to alternate dimensions, bimbo blonde archaeologists, sex scenes, mad scientists, slimy dog monsters, special army forces designed to battle slimy CG dog monsters, Tara Reid, "Matrix" slow-motion gun battles, and car chases. Oh yeah, and a ten-minute opening back story scroll read aloud to the illiterate audience, the only people able to successfully miss all the negative reviews. I mean hell, Boll knows that's where the real scares lie.

He even managed to cast "Blade" actor Stephen Dorff in the movie. I'm sure he was a huge fan of his performance in "Backbeat" or something. The funny part is, after we walked off and he got his usual team of hacks to churn out a huge steaming pile of shit, he came back months later and asked us if he could get the rights to use scenes from our screenplay... for free. Oh, Uwe.

But the future is bright for Dr. Boll. Even though "Alone in the Dark" opened to #14 and made only $2.5 million on its opening weekend, as he's got plenty of other important film projects waiting in the wings. He's already finished shooting "Bloodrayne" and is working his way onto "Hunter: The Reckoning" and "Far Cry" next year. Notice a theme here? I mean, besides the whole "making terrible movies that nobody likes" thing?

For my part I would just like to apologize to the video gamers of the world for indirectly helping this man unleash another cinematic atomic bomb on audiences. In my defense I can claim at the time I started, I didn't quite know who Uwe Boll really was... and in the end, we did manage to salvage our script from actually being filmed at the hands of the mad doctor. So I can take small comfort in a quote by one movie critic this weekend: "The other practitioners of cinematic drivel can rest a little easier now; they can walk in the daylight with their heads held high, a smile on their lips and a song in their heart. 'It's okay,' they'll tell themselves. 'I didn't make Alone in the Dark'."

Damn man that was a long post- bad news is the man sucks at film making, the good news is that his new movie Alone in the dark is better than House of the dead, but then again that isn't saying much.

I didn't even try to read this long ass post

LMAO that is a great article. Uwe Boll is a leech on the nutsack of filmmaking. It's cool though, let him pigeon hole himself making video game movies, and in a couple years he'll be directing straight to video steven seagal horror martial arts dramedys.

I don't think they generally get auteurs to direct films based off of video games. Paul Anderson is a great example of that. That guy pretty much crushed my hopes of ever seeing a cool Alien or Predator movie again with that giant crappy pg-13 wankfest. Serioously, PG 13? what the fuck. Christ, I'm gonna have to go to the aintitcoolnews board and burn off some rage

You are right Don Jeremy. He does suck but I guess he would be good at making music vids with all the strobed up action he seems to enjoy. It is too bad because House and Alone would have been cool summer type movie fare if given to a capable director.

Yeah, he'll probably direct a video for Korn or some shitty goth band. However, I still don't think video games=good movies. Halo I'd go see, but thats cuz I'm a huge sci fi nerd under this pudgy exterior. Or is that what gives it away?