Never trust a movie that opens with a written introduction scrolling by that's longer than the collected works of Tom Clancy.

"Alone in the Dark" begins with just such a prolix preamble about a long-vanished Native American civilization that once opened a gate to a realm of evil.

"Alone" also features a voice-over narrative and lots of post-dubbed dialogue in an attempt to make sense of its convoluted story, which is (not surprisingly) based on a video game. But no amount of explanation can help this flaming mess of a movie.

Here's a simplified synopsis: Edward Carnby (Christian Slater) is a paranormal investigator - although several times he is referred to as an archaeologist, so maybe he's that too. More important than his occupation, Carnby is also a survivor of some horrid experiments conducted years before on 20 orphan kids by Professor Hudgens (Mathew Walker).

Now both he and the monomaniacal professor are assembling artifacts from the people of the prologue. Luckily, Carnby's girlfriend is Aline Cedrac (Tara Reid), a museum curator so brilliant she can sight-read hieroglyphics from long-dead civilizations. Giving the Hollywood party girl a pair of spectacles and a severe chignon to play a scientist is like dressing Andy Dick in a tux to play James Bond.

Every time Carnby makes progress, he is shut down by Bureau 713, a government agency run by Commander Richards (Stephen Dorff). Apparently the 713 agents were all recruited from a modeling agency. Dressed in identical black T-shirts and backwards baseball caps, they could be backup dancers for Usher if they weren't so busy shooting everything that moves.

Mostly they're emptying clips into monsters who look like pointier versions of the creatures from "Alien. For a while there are zombies running around, too, but they get wiped out in a single splatter fest.

Director Uwe Boll handles the action scenes fairly well but never manages to make the monsters appear either daunting or realistic, a rather crucial failing. And even Boll seems to lose interest as the story unravels.

By that time, the supernatural cliches, plot inconsistencies, dead ends and red herrings have piled up so high you can barely see the screen.

Halfway through "Alone in the Dark," Slater's character is demanding of everyone he meets, "What the hell is going on around here?"

Hey, you're the hero and the narrator of this film. If you're lost, what chance do the rest of us have of figuring this thing out?

TITLE: "Alone in the Dark"DIRECTOR: Uwe BollCAST: Christian Slater, Tara Reid, Stephen DorffRATED: R (violence and language)GRADE: * ½ (on a scale of 5)