Publication Date: 11-12-2025

The Chronicles of Riddick (2004) review

Dir. David Twohy

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★

Given the relatively weak box office performance of David Twohy’s Pitch Black — a visually stunning Alien knockoff released back in 2000 — few probably would’ve pegged it to get a sequel. Strong home video and rental sales gave it a new life, but The Chronicles of Riddick is no Tremors II: Aftershocks in the “unlikely sequel” department. That said, the film has garnered a following of its own despite harboring a sub-30% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Nobody like a C-Riddick.

I never had much interest in the series, looking the other way when the belated 2013 sequel was released into theaters. But when you’re by your in-laws, and they elect to watch a movie, you simply sigh in relief when they decide to turn the politics off for a change.

Set five years after Pitch Black, Twohy’s sequel catches us up with Riddick (Vin Diesel) while he’s on the run from bounty hunters. He reunites with Inam (Keith David), an old friend, who tells him of the Air Elemental, Aereon (Judi Dench), who can help stop the Necromongers. The Necromongers are a miserable bunch. They operate on nihilist principles that life is of no value, and harbor a desire to kill all living beings. Why they don’t start with suicide is beyond me.

Anyway, the Necromongers are trying to destroy Inam’s planet. After that proves successful, and our musclebound, gaggle-clad hero can’t stop it, Riddick hitches a ride to another location and reacquaints with Jack (Alexa Davalos), who was originally named “Kyra,” but has since changed her name and race and become as cynical as her mentor. Now, in the hotbed of Necromongers, they take it upon themselves to destroy those who seek and destroy as their mission.

Riddick’s confidant is Thandie Newton’s Dame Vaako, the wife of Commander Vaako (Karl Urban), who doesn’t share the loyalty to the Necromonger leader (Colm Feore). Newton’s role could’ve been expanded into something meaningful, but much of Twohy’s script incoherently bounces us between planets and spends a great deal of time on things that don’t matter. Large-scale battles and brooding villains. Maybe that’s what you came for, in which case have at it.

Save for the pristine visuals — which still hold up over 20 years later — Diesel remains all this series has on which to hang its hat. He’s charismatically growly, a believably conflicted anti-hero who more or less accidentally happens to do the right thing because his moral code won’t allow him to bail on those closest to him. Diesel clearly relishes a personality like this, and regardless of whatever narrative slop engulfs much of The Chronicles of Riddick, him and Twohy are on the same page of the bloated script.

Apropos of nothing (but when the hell else am I going to bring this up?), but as was the case for mid-2000s movie, The Chronicles of Riddick also had a tie-in video game called Escape from Butcher Bay, released on Xbox in 2004. Against all odds, it became one of the most acclaimed games for the original Xbox. Many reviewers even noted the storyline of the game was more gripping and intense than its cinematic counterpart. Humorously, the game sold poorly, due to consumers’ malaise over mediocre games connected to popular movies. I don’t know the first thing about reviewing a video game, but I’m half-tempted to cough up some money and play it. That said, I probably should’ve went in the other room and fired up an emulator instead of enduring a this 134-minute slog against my better judgment.

Starring: Vin Diesel, Thandie Newton, Karl Urban, Colm Feore, Linus Roache, Keith David, Yorick van Wageningen, Alexa Davalos, Nick Chinlund, and Judi Dench. Directed by: David Twohy.