So my coworker lent me an HD-DVD copy of Pitch Black, the movie that, in conjunction with steroids, made Vin Diesel into Vin Diesel. The pitch line for this movie could be “Isaac Asimov’s Nightfall, with grues,” and the plot is pretty much what you’d expect from there — a spaceship (containing an eclectic assortment of people, including a convicted killer, a la Lost) crashlands on an alien planet with multiple suns. Grues are discovered. Orreries are discovered. Nightfall. Death. Flight against impossible odds. Finis.

It’s got a couple of bits of horror movie logic in it (one stretch of ground is safely and easily traversed three times, but then becomes ultra-challenging when it matters), the acting varies between competent and amateurish (Vin Diesel really is the charismatic star of this movie, to give you an idea), and we see too much of the monsters for them to be as scary as they should be.

Still and all, an adequate and reasonably decent sci-fi horror film thing, and a gorgeously crisp HD-DVD to boot.