Chronicles of Shittick ...

In a nutshell this movie sucks major ass. As eloquent as that may sound, let me elaborate a bit. Pitch Black was a good, suspenseful, horror-action movie. It kept you on your toes a little bit and provided some good scenes and pacing. There was some cheesy dialog and what not, but it knew what genre it was in. Due to its somewhat successful run at the BO and Vin Diesel's *rising* star power, it was inevitable that a sequel would be made.

Enter the Chronicles of Riddick. The basic premise is that Riddick is the lone force that can stop the Necromongers, a people (humans) who worship the underverse. They basically travel around the universe (not to be confused with underverse) subverting or destroying all life. They replenish their lost soldiers and move on to the next planet. For some reason, and I will not give it away, yet, Riddick is the only thing between the head Necromonger and the taking over of "Helion Prime (IV I think, but it doesn't matter).

Firstly, what the fuck, the underverse, Necromongers ... of all the places they could have gone with this material they go for this fanatical religious cult (a large one at that) that eradicates entire planets with these phallic obelisks that wipeout whole continents. And by some tiny plot measure, Riddick, who is a Furian (Furyian?), is the roadblock to their success.

Okay, okay, lets go with the flow here and agree that this premise could possibly have some sort of promise. Classic one man versus everyone else scenario. So we should have so good action scenes. Because really all I wanted to see from this movie was some senseless action.

Instead we have a series of choppy, strobe light effect action sequences. Instead of seeing this movie, this is what you do. Go into a mirrored room with a friend, each with boxing gloves, setup a strobe light, close the door, take some speed, and start beating the shit out of each other. You won't be able to see shit, just pulses of light and a fist or a face here and there. For a more grand effect set up two strobe lights at different intervals. I was honestly appalled (as appalled as one can get from not seeing the action sequences they would like) at the quality here people. I would say go and see for yourself, but that is what I am trying to not get you to do. My friend who went with me summed it up succintly, "Sometimes the action scenes hurt my eyes so I just closed them."

So besides the action scenes of this sci-fi action movie sucking ass, what else was bad. Well the CG of the planetscapes was pretty horrible. The opening fly-in on one of the Helion Prime planets is no better than a videogame. Speaking of the videogame; that is actually supposed to be quite good. The premise of the game, from the title alone, seems to fit the character of Riddick well; a stealthy killer who can use his surroundings to his disposal, whether it be weapons or whatever else he can manage to find. Instead moviegoers are left with Riddick, defender of the universe.

The ending promises us many more, or at least one more installment to this series. I will not give it away, but one could say it is the lone bright part of the movie because it is actually pretty smart compared to the rest of the movie and comes out of nowhere. In retrospect one could figure it out beforehand through some cryptic dialog between the eye-candy of the film and her partner, but really, you will not care: by the time ending comes around you will either be closing your eyes or falling asleep (like me).

1 of 5 stars.