Those Who Walk in Darkness

I made the mistake of renting this from NetFlix. I'm a big comic book/animation/superhero fan and, when I learned it was based on a book by John Ridley (The American Way), I was stoked. However, I should've wondered why I hadn't heard of it before. For those of you who care, this piece of crap was animated using Flash, which is not automatically bad (I site the brilliant, web-based cartoons featuring Bitey of Brackewnood by Adam Phillips as the acme of what can be done using Flash), but "Those Who Walk In Darkness'" animation was the most horrid, amateurish, unsophisticated, unarticulated shite I've ever seen. I've seen stuff on people's personal home pages that look like vintage Disney compared to this travesty. Why anybody thought it was good enough to burn to DVD and distribute is beyond me. It would've been nice to see a genuine animation effort using Ridley's story as basis but, alas, not this time. I cannot recommend strongly enough that you avoid this piece of crap at all costs.

Have you ever seen a Flash or Shockwave movie? This is pretty much how the film plays out. The animation is really weird: the characters move around across the screen like paper dolls and certain sequences like flames contain too few frames of animation. This really bothers me. The main hero (played by Li'l Kim) is a bigot against these supernatural beings, which makes her out to be more of a villain than a hero. I'm not trying to dog FLASH movies (or even insult canines), but this is ridiculous. The lack of frames is unbearable and ruins what could have been at least a decent film. I hope Li'l Kim takes a better look at her next movie script . . . unless she's really only in it for the money.

I recently discovered Ridley's depressingly racist novel THOSE WHO WALK IN DARKNESS and a few minutes ago discovered that it was being made into a pilot for a TV series. When a search of IMDb brought up this net-flick, I got to wondering if Ridly is using the Internet as a means to spread a script around and generate some interest. Certainly it worked for the SOUTH PARK guys.

I just wish that this project were better. The anti-heroine Soledad is an unremitting racist who has no problem shooting superhumans in the back, head, or anywhere else. And she spends her free time inventing ever more lethal ammo. Yet when her actions are compared to white racists (she's black), she is incapable of seeing the analogy. Further, she is incapable of seeing that her own actions actually force her victims to defend themselves, thus in her eyes justifying her legally-sanctioned murder spree.

In fact, the first book, THOSE WHO WALK IN DARKNESS, ends with her cheerfully planning a way to kill an ex-boyfriend because he turned out to have phasing powers; other than that he was a completely law-abiding citizen!