Many thousands of years ago, the Abkani Native Americans discovered a gateway between the dimensions of good and evil. They controlled this magic portal through the use of a half dozen stone gizmos that could be assembled to form a powerful key. But eventually, something slipped through! The Abkani people vanished from the face of the earth, and their gizmos were dispersed to the four corners of the globe.

Many thousands of years later, there lived a mad archeologist in the employ of a top-secret government agency devoted to the study of paranormal phenomena. When he was not scouring the globe searching for Abkani artifacts, he was busy conducting strange experiments on orphans in his underground laboratory.

Or something like that. The actual back-story that scrolls down screen at the beginning of “Alone in the Dark” is literally six times longer than my paraphrase, and infinitely more ridiculous. I can barely reconstruct it. All I remember is that by the time the fifth paragraph of this hilariously convoluted text hit the screen, the preview audience was dying of laughter. When it was finally over, I did something I’ve never done at a press screening: I began to applaud.

“Alone in the Dark” is by far the best film of its kind since “Alien Vs. Predator.” In other words, it’s the kind of movie a prepubescent sci-fi geek might dream up after beer-bonging an entire six-pack of Red Bull. Truly, it must be seen to be believed – but even then, you might not believe what you’ve just seen.

Halfway through this astonishingly shoddy, amazingly absurd, historically idiotic motion picture, I leaned over to a colleague and whispered “this is the best movie ever.” With such irony does the film critic keep his sanity in the dumping ground of the January movie scene. Yet were I a 10-year-old boy up past his bedtime, discovering this movie on some third-rate cable network in the middle of the night, I might very well have said the same thing with no irony whatsoever.

Until it devolves into the laziest “Alien” knockoff ever made, “Alone in the Dark” is fairly enjoyable trash, the kind of movie where monsters can only be killed by bullets dipped in “photon-accelerated iridescent resin;” where solid-gold coffins are retrieved from the depths of the ocean, pried open with crowbars, and release their evil cargo, and where bodacious she-scientists (Tara Reid) run around decoding hieroglyphs.

Christian Slater stars as Edward Carnby, the sole orphan to have escaped the experiments unscathed; the evil centipede that was surgically attached to his spine was killed when he accidentally electrocuted himself trying to escape. Now he wears a trenchcoat, lives in a gigantic loft with pan-Asian decor, and runs around the city fighting off zombies (don’t ask) and monsters. Stephen Dorff co-stars as the commander of an elite military squad on hand to unload machine guns and get eaten.

Based on a video game, “Alone in the Dark” was directed by Uwe Boll (maker of the 1991 classic “German Fried Movie”), and written by a trio of scribes whose resumes include “MVP 2: Most Vertical Primate” and “House of the Dead 2: Dead Aim.” The production design is credited to a man named Tink, and the special effects were managed by the visionary behind “Catwoman.”

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As a movie, “Hide and Seek” is lazy and stupid, but as a radical form of therapy used to rouse the comatose, it may very well constitute a medical breakthrough. Here is a movie in which the flick of a light switch unleashes audio apocalypse; the crossing of a room is accompanied by orchestral hysteria, and the inevitable cat, lurking in the inevitable closet, leaps out with the inevitably earsplitting screech.

I wonder why Hollywood doesn’t just cut to the chase: They could endlessly rerelease “The Sixth Sense” under different titles and hire somebody to creep around the movie theater randomly shouting at people through a megaphone. And I hate to be the one to tell you, but it’s time to declare M. Night Shyamalan’s wildly overrated thriller the most perniciously influential film since “Pulp Fiction.” Apparently, despite “The Village,” Hollywood believes there is no limit to the American appetite for shlock gotcha! flicks with trick endings.

But let’s start at the beginning: On the first night of the New Year, young Emily Callaway (Dakota Fanning) discovers her mother soaking in a bathtub of her own blood. Following a brief stint in the munchkin loony bin, she’s packed off to the country by her psychologist father David (Robert De Niro), who seems to think that total isolation in the dead of winter will be just thing to brighten her spirits.

After a short drive through the credit sequence of “The Shining,” the Callaways arrive at their new digs, a rustic, multi-bedroom house conveniently located next to an ominous woodland cave. (Run along now, little Emily, go have fun in the mysterious underground passage!) They’re welcomed by a suspicious sheriff, a pair of creepy neighbors, and (now this is really scary) a spooky real-estate broker – all of whom make a point to cryptically fixate on what a beautiful young girl Emily is. Perverts! Fiends! Red herrings!

Meanwhile, Emily has made a new friend named Charlie. An imaginary friend. But could it be that he isn’t so imaginary after all? Emily begins to make scary drawings. The cat slips into the closet. Elisabeth Shue co-stars as Elizabeth Young, a foxy neighbor who stops by now and then to flirt with David, bring daisies to Emily, and provoke Charlie to black fits of jealousy.

Next thing you know, all manner of freaky graffiti is getting scrawled on the bathroom walls. David grows increasingly worried about Emily. Emily grows increasingly ambiguous. “Hide and Seek” grows increasingly ludicrous. Look out for the cat!

What To See This Week

All Words Are Flesh: Scenes From The Gryphon Group (Ocularis) Williamsburg’s premier film venue hosts the first in an exciting series of programs showcasing the Gryphon Group, a pioneering collective of experimental filmmakers including Stan Brakhage, Gregory Markopolous, and Charles Henri Ford. Charles Boultenhouse’s “Dionysus” and Willard Maas’s “Narcissus” kick things off with “Greco-homo mythmaking of the highest order.”

Starship Troopers (Pioneer) Paul Verhoeven’s sick and twisted adaptation of Robert Heinlein’s sci-fi classic pits a troop of moronic patriots against a horde of intergalactic spiders. See it (tonight, at midnight) for the subversive satire and outrageous violence; adore it for casting Neil Patrick Harris as a crypto-Nazi psychic. Beyond amazing.

Edward Yang Retrospective (Anthology Film Archives) Don’t miss a single night of this invaluable retrospective devoted to the great Taiwanese filmmaker, which continues through early February. If you can only see one film, however, make it “Yi Yi.” An intimate epic that holds its formalism and humanism in perfect equipoise, this shattering masterpiece about modern city living could be the richest emotional experience you’ll have at the movies all year.

The Inner Scar (MoMA) The best long form Nico video ever. Philippe Garrel’s 1972 oddity follows the smacked-out chanteuse as she serenades the desert with her gorgeous, uncanny songs. Preceded by Bico – very cute, MoMA – a new short by everyone’s favorite deadpan Finn, Aki Kaurismaki.