Starring Vin Diesel, Jordi Mollà, Matt Nable, Katee Sackhoff, Dave Bautista, Bokeem Woodbine and Conrad Pla. Written and directed by David Twohy. One Race Productions/Riddick Canada Productions/Radar Pictures.

Hard-as-nails macho future warrior Riddick finds himself stranded on a wild, sun-scorched planet, so he is forced to trigger an emergency beacon that attracts two teams of mercenaries, who land on the planet and begin to hunt him. As if taking on these mercs isn’t enough, it starts to rain, and within the wet weather lurk monsters that would really love to eat Riddick!

PITCH BLACK (2000) was a very enjoyable, violent sc-fi-action-monster movie that introduced the world to badass antihero Riddick (a character created by Jim Wheat and Ken Wheat), played to perfection by Vin Diesel. The follow-up flick, THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK (2004), wasn’t to my taste. I found it too overblown and sprawling, desperate to be more of an ‘epic’ sci-fi blockbuster. This third film, RIDDICK, is much better, in my opinion, maybe because it tones down the pompous fantasy-science fiction elements of part 2 and concentrates on telling a survival-on-a-creature-filled-planet story, just like the first film. You could certainly argue that RIDDICK’s central concept is very similar to PITCH BLACK’s core plot: one has alien beasties that only come out in the dark, and the other has alien beasties that only come out when it rains. But, hey, I like this monsters-in-the-downpour concept, so let’s move on…

RIDDICK really delivers lots of creature action! Perhaps this movie’s world is a little green screen-ish compared to the real locations used in PITCH BLACK, but this movie does boast a fun bunch of critters!

There’s loads of fun stuff to see here, including pincer-tailed Mud Demon predators, hyena-like dog creatures, flying bird-reptiles and eels that live in tepid pools of water. I love the bit where Riddick disembowels a big Mud Demon… which proceeds to eat its own guts!

It was a nice touch having Riddick befriend one of the alien dog creatures. Cool!

There’s a last stand-style battle between Riddick and the Mud Demons on a rock outcrop that is also pretty damn cool: it’s almost like a Conan the Barbarian moment! Niiiiiiiiiice.

Finally, here are some creature concepts…

The original design for the Mud Demon was done by Patrick Tatopoulos, then Jerad S. Marantz took a pass at the creatures, modelling them in Z brush.