Director Uwe Boll's 2005 film Alone in the Dark is often cited as one of the worst horror movies ever made, yet it somehow got a sequel in 2008. It's no secret that movies based on video games are generally not very good, sometimes ending up actively terrible. The first major live-action film based on a video game was 1993's Super Mario Bros., an objectively awful effort that failed to accurately adapt its source material. Little did fans know that there was much worse to come.
Quite a few entries into that "much worse" group were directed by eccentric German filmmaker Boll, who became famous for both helming really bad movies and being a total jerk to anyone who challenged him on that fact. Boll actually changed his critics to fights, some of which even accepted. The title of Boll's worst effort has many contenders, but Alone in the Dark might just be the winner. The script is alternately laughably bad and boring, it bears little resemblance to the games, completely miscasts American Pie's Tara Reid as an intellectual, features subpar performances in general, and just downright fails on every level.
Yet, despite being hated by nearly everyone, and even bombing at the box office to boot, Boll's film got a sequel. If nothing else though, said sequel came with 100 percent less Uwe Boll. That at least was a bonus, but it still doesn't quite explain how it ended up getting a follow-up. That may instead be down to tax incentives and the need for a reclamation of the property from the notorious director.
Unsurprisingly, no one involved with Alone in the Dark 2 has ever directly explained why the sequel exists. It's actually quite mystifying overall and has baffled many horror fans. As mentioned, the first Alone in the Dark was a critical and commercial flop, which usually doesn't spell sequel. While Uwe Boll didn't return to direct, his career was sustained for many years by odd German tax incentives that made it more potentially financially lucrative to invest in a flop than a hit, in a sort of real-life "Springtime for Hitler" from The Producers scenario. Alone in the Dark 2 was also a partially German production, so that may well have influenced the thinking of investors, although those laws have since been made less flagrantly stupid after a public backlash.
Considering the fact that Alone in the Dark 2 was much more of a reboot than a sequel, bearing a bit more of a resemblance to the games, and recasting the lead Edward Carnby role, perhaps franchise makers Infogrames Entertainment was looking to try and redeem the property in the eyes of film fans. Whatever the reasoning truly was, the gamble didn't pay off. Alone in the Dark 2 also garnered abysmal reviews, albeit ever so slightly better ones than the original, as it was more technically competent. Unfortunately, it's also actually less fun to watch, as while Boll's film is terrible, it's the kind of terrible bad movie fans can have fun laughing at. Alone in the Dark 2 is just the boring kind of bad.