PART Dune, part MacBeth, and part Plan 9 from Outer Space, The Chronicles of Riddick may be the most expensive B-movie ever made. Budgeted at $120 million, Riddick is director David Twohy’s sequel to his 2000 effort, Pitch Black, which was budgeted at $23 million. Money, like power, often corrupts.

Pitch Black was a modest and deserving hit. A life-boat movie about a small crew of people who survive their spaceship’s crash-landing and then have to endure a siege of monsters on their way to safety, Pitch Black was thrifty, clever, and filled with off-speed stuff. Vin Diesel plays an escaped convict named Riddick, who tries to kill the group off, one-by-one, while ostensibly helping them escape.