In space, no one can hear you scream. No one can hear the thud of lawsuits for daftly unoriginal movie premises either. I can imagine the pitch: Its like "Alien...on a spaceship!". Yay!

Actually, despite its razor-thin (and razor sharp) plot, Pitch Black more than delivers.. With a novel twist on its premise, It involves a crashed spaceship and a planet which is bathed in permanent blinding daylight from its 3 suns, all except for one period every 22 years, when a planetary alignment occurs that means that an eclipse takes place.

And then, well, the planet is populated by some very unsavoury beasties, and we all know that monsters like the night time don'twe? So guess what happens next? Humans + Monsters = bughunt.

Splat.

Lots of blood.

Yikes.

Being populated by a cast of largely unknowns mean that you really can't tell who will last longer than the next five minutes, and if you're guessing whose gonna die next, theres a few surprises in store This very unpredictability works in the films favour. Shot for a

miniscule budget (about $20million, ridiculously small for a movie nowadays, let alone a sci-fi movie) also works in the films favour, being shot in the Australian outback gives this film a seriously bizarre otherwordly look, especially when combined with inventive use of colour bleaching and tinting to produce a world unlike anything we've ever seen before, all harsh unrelenting colours and vistas.

Impressive and inventive use of special effects, especially the opening crash sequence, bring this world vividly to life. Whilst eschewing the pop-culture jumpcuts and snappy editing of many more recent films, "Pitch Black" proves to be effective simply due to the fact of this very unpredictability in terms of characters, who range from the a seriously deranged criminal psychopath with extra-optic powers (a magnificent and unpredictable performance from Van Diesel, playing Riddick) to an off-world antiques dealer. A tense inter-relationship between the characters, with no-one appearing to be who they seem to be, and a religious subtext brought on by an Islamic family among the survivors, means that this film works equally well as a sci-fi horror thriller as well as evoking the memories of Alien 3's similar religious morality play.

Apart from the unpredictable plot, this haunted house in space idea works surprisingly well, especially when visual effects are used to see the attacks from the predator's perspective and also the eyes of the genetically-altered Riddick. Maybe its partly due to budget restrictions, but the alien predators are never truly glimpsed in great detail, making them all the more mysterious and terrifying. Being slowly introduced into the story makes them all the more intimidating.

With an effective use of a low budget, inventive camera work and effects and a damn fine script, this film is truly one of the best sci-fi horror films in a long long time. Bombarding the audience with artful, stunning, inventive visuals and camerawork and an unusual, suspenseful script, watch out for director Twohy, because he'll be worth watching.

The DVD features a brief - all too brief featurette - on the making of the film which is pure fluff, but 2 interesting audio commentaries; and there's absolutely no excuse not to own this, the best sci-fi movie in ages.

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