Pitch Black is a science fiction movie, of the alien monster theme, that I saw yesterday morning. Reviews have been mixed, since there was quite a bit of hype beforehand. It is a relatively low budget ($25 million with advertising) film produced and filmed in Australia. Early Internet reports raved about the plot and special effects, which are good but it is hard for a movie to live up to all those expectations. Roger Ebert didn't like the movie, saying that it was too much like any other aliens-killing-people movie and that the character plot could have been done in any genre, it didn't need to be set on another planet.

Plot summary: The Hunter Gratzner, a commercial cargo/passenger ship, travelling on auto-pilot while its occupants are in cryo-sleep, passes through a the tail of a passing comet. Micrometeorites pepper the ship, venting several areas and damaging other systems. The crew of three is awoken by the computer, but the captain is killed, leaving the pilot and the navigator to handle the emergency as the Gratzner enter the atmosphere of a planet. Pilot Carolyn Fry desperately tries to control the descent of the ship, but can't do it without jettisoning the passenger hold (and everything else). Navigator Doug Owens stops Fry, who manages to crash land the Gratzner. Unfortunately, Owens is killed in the crash landing.

At this point, the survivors consist of Fry, officer William Johns, who is transporting prisoner Richard Riddick to a maximum security facility, prospector team of Sharon Montgomery and John Ezekiel, Abu al-Walid and his three sons, travelling to New Mecca on a pilgrimage, antiques dealer Paris Ogilvie, and teenager Jack B. Badd. The survivors quickly find out that the binary stars which cast the land in a yellow-orange hue along one horizon are accompanied by a blue star which paints the land bluish along the opposite horizon, making a planet that never sees nightfall.

An expedition finds an abandoned geological survey station. Lots of useful equipment lies about, including a small interstellar skiff, although its power is depleted. This is almost midway into the movie, and by now two people have died to reveal the knowledge that there are dangerous creatures on this planet, but creatures which seem to shun the light. The other discovery is that 22 years ago, the planet experienced a total eclipse, which allowed the predators to come out and wipe out the geologists. A solar system model provides the clue that the eclipse happens every 22 years, as the planet is hidden from all three stars for a period of days, at least.

Just in time to see the ringed gas giant rise up over the horizon and start obscuring the blue star. The survivors race back to the Gratzner to retrieve its spare power cells, and arrive just as darkness falls. Now it's a race to get back to the skiff with the power cells before all their lights go out. That's the big plot. There are two other, smaller plots. One is Riddick and Johns, who are not quite all that they appear to be. The other is Fry, who is trying to redeem herself after trying to jettison the passengers back when the Gratzner crash landed.

I really enjoyed this movie; it's certainly much better than Supernova. Less holes in the plot and the characters are more fully developed. There is actually a sense of character growth, and everybody that dies, dies for a reason, to show some point or other. The creatures are rather pedestrian, the pitch black gimmick is not bad as it forces the survivors to depend on their meager light sources to protect them. I did not think the film ran long or short, and the people who actually survive the movie are a bit of a surprise. Unlike Supernova, the real survivors worked hard to make it through the whole movie. The special effects are quite good, especially considering the budget, and the acting is fine. Overall a good movie to watch.