I kept wanting to try to have a keyboard in front of me for this, and it kept just not working out, so, a few hours into a 12 hour shift, followed by a quick nap and another 12 hour shift tomorrow, screw it. Going to try to reply on my phone.
I think that your core thesis is that, rather than simply being an incompetent filmmaker who made bad video game movies because he couldn’t do better, Uwe Boll must be reconsidered as a competent filmmaker whose video game films are deliberately bad because he has nothing but contempt for the source material he is adapting.
My problems with this are twofold:
First, among those with stronger stomach than mine, the general consensus is that the quality of all his films, including his video game projects, gradually improves over time, with a complaint among many who aren’t me and actually like bad movies being that they went from being an entertainingly terrible films to boring. This would seem to conflict with the core thesis, that the films were terrible on purpose in an elaborate 3-D chess game of Stylistic Suck. And besides, anecdotally, at least when the film first came out, I remember at least one review quoting an interview with him acclaiming that a best selling game based on a best-selling book was a good choice for a creatively successful and commercially viable film.
Secondly, and arguably more importantly, hating the source material and making the film bad on purpose to subtly mock it and its entire medium as creatively bankrupt isn’t necessarily clever? Even within the body of the review, you seem to struggle to come up with specific examples of things that are criticizing the game as sterile ground in which no good films can grow. Admittedly, I have played no games in the series and have no affection for it, but it sure sounds like a couple names got bolted onto a largely unrelated monster horror movie. This isn’t necessarily something that has anything substantial to say, let alone something worth analyzing and re-interpreting the film around.
And besides, the film is not infamous for being an unfaithful adaptation; it is infamous for being a terrible film.
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A reappraisal of Uwe Boll.
The name of Uwe Boll once haunted the minds of gaming fans throughout the 2000s. Every year seemed to bring a new video game adaptation from him, which would be roundly panned, mocked, and flop at the box office, generating endless rage through gaming forums the world over. Theories spun about Boll using these films as tax write-offs, funding them through Loophole Abuse. By any cinematic standards, Alone In The Dark is a terrible film. Cliched and shockingly amateurish in all regards, poorly imitating moments from The Matrix and Aliens, filled with awkward dialogue and poor direction and production values that would be more befitting of direct-to-video fare over a feature film, with only the names of certain characters to vaguely suggest a connection to the video game. I would have question its value even as part of a 'Bad Movie' night.
But having looked at remarks from Boll over the years, combined with surprisingly decent original works like Rampage (2009), Tunnel Rats, and Assault on Wall Street, Boll had a point beneath what seemed a cinematic disaster. A joke that he refused to explain. Alone In The Dark was never a sincere attempt at film-making, it is a Take That! of epic proportions toward video gaming. It is Boll gleefully demolishing a video game property to display his seething hatred of a creative medium he views as lacking any shred of creative merit, and displaying his contempt for any person who dare defend its artistic integrity. It is Boll knowing spending millions for a vicious inside joke, regardless of any damage done to his or any other careers involved. Rather than Stealth Parody ala Starship Troopers, Boll opted for Deconstruction in the truest sense, deliberately reducing a video game narrative to cinematic cliché out of his contempt for the works of a creative medium he views as beneath consideration.
Even if one fundamentally disagrees with Boll that video games are inherently shallow, derivative, and artistically bankrupt, you may be surprised at what you gain when you appraise his films from the eyes of a director with nothing but contempt for the material he is adopting. Only now, as the video game industry continues to be rocked by news of systemic abuse and exploitation, does the punchline Boll hid within his adaptations become apparent. Uwe Boll may not quite be a secret genius, but he was never the fool everyone took him for.