Pitch Black is a smart SF film starring Vin Diesel as
Riddick, a cold-blooded convict with the unique ability to see in the dark.
After escaping prison--or the slam, as it is known in the film--Riddick is
recaptured by Johns (ably played by Cole Hauser) a cop who is bringing him back
to the slam via a merchant spaceship. Their journey gets sidetracked when their
ship suffers severe damage during a meteor storm and crash-lands on a planet.
Riddick, Johns, and the other surviving passengers are stranded on a desolate
world with three suns. They discover strange, savage creatures living under the
ground that viciously attack and kill several members of their party. Fry, the
ship's pilot (engagingly played by Radha Mitchell) has a scary encounter with
them when she tries to find a missing member of the ship in an underground cavern.
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Once they realize that the creatures only dwell in the shadows, avoiding the
harsh sunlit surface, the survivors figure they'll be safe as long as they
simply keep out of the dark areas. They explore a deserted human outpost, with
a small spacecraft in need of repair, and discover something really scary: the
planet they are on will soon see a total eclipse of all three suns, which will
cast the entire world in complete darkness, and thus giving the blood-thirsty
creatures full reign. As their numbers quickly decrease under the merciless
onslaught of the creatures, the remaining survivors grudgingly accept that they
may have to leave their fate in the hands of Riddick, a stone-cold killer who
is just as comfortable with the dark as the very monsters themselves. 
Directed by David Twohy, Pitch Black is an intelligent, scary ride that is
vastly entertaining. Filled with ample characterization, and plenty of twists
and turns, the film holds your attention from the very first scene. The
performances are dead-on, including Diesel's lethal killer who turns out to
have somewhat of a soft spot. Radha Mitchell is also very appealing as the
heroic yet flawed Carolyn Fry, who valiantly struggles to make up for a moment
of cowardice. Cole Hauser--son of B-movie star Wings Hauser--is great as Johns,
especially in his confrontational scenes with Riddick, where their oil and water
chemistry is most effective. Claudia Black, who is better known from the TV
series Farscape, gives a sturdy performance as Shazza. And Keith David is very
good as a Muslim holy man whose faith is severely tested. The creatures
themselves are bloodcurdling. Twohy wisely keeps them mostly in the shadows,
thus increasing the fear factor tremendously whenever they are fully seen, such
as whenever a light is lit and a character abruptly discovers that he is
surrounded by hundreds of these ravaging monsters. 
I reviewed the recently released Unrated Director's Cut DVD of Pitch Black, which has added footage, and
it is highly recommended. In addition to two separate sets of commentaries--one
by Diesel, Hauser and Twohy; the other with Twohy, the film's producer and the
visual effects supervisor--the new DVD includes expanded special features that
were not on the initial DVD release. Granted, most of the material here is for
the purpose of setting up the Riddick franchise (Diesel reprised the role in a
2004 sequel), yet it's still enjoyable filler. Cole Hauser lends his voice to
Johns' Chase Log, an audio dairy of Johns hunting and then capturing Riddick,
which leads up to the beginning of the film. There's also a visual encyclopedia
of the SF universe that Riddick lives in, also narrated by Hauser. There's a
look at Dark Fury, the animated film which bridges the gap between Pitch Black
and the sequel, The Chronicles of Riddick, a standard "making of" documentary,
and much more. The special features aside, the Pitch Black DVD is highly
recommended just for the film itself, which should be a "must have" for every
SF and horror fan. 