In the year 2678, the spaceship
Hunter-Gratzner is struck by
micrometeoroids that penetrate the hull, killing the captain and sending it off course toward a nearby planet. First Officer Owens and docking pilot Carolyn Fry attempt an emergency landing. As the ship descends uncontrollably, a panicked Fry prepares to jettison the passengers held in cryostasis to save herself, but Owens intervenes. The ship crash-lands, killing Owens and most of the passengers. The survivors include Fry;
Imam Abu al-Walid, escorting three young students (Ali, Hassan and Suleiman) to New Mecca; a teenage boy named Jack; prospectors Shazza and Zeke; wealthy merchant Paris; law enforcement officer William J. Johns; and his prisoner, the dangerous and enigmatic criminal Richard B. Riddick, who escapes in the confusion. While searching for him across the sun-scorched and seemingly barren planet, the group discovers an abandoned geological research settlement with a nonfunctional dropship. When Zeke goes missing, the survivors suspect Riddick. However, Fry investigates a nearby underground cave where she is attacked by aggressive creatures and narrowly escapes. Johns recaptures Riddick and offers to release him in exchange for helping them escape the planet. While exploring the settlement, one of the students, Ali, disturbs a cluster of juvenile creatures, which devour him before retreating underground to avoid the sun, revealing a fatal vulnerability to light. Using an
orrery, Fry discovers that a total eclipse—occurring every twenty-two years—is imminent. Once darkness falls, the creatures will emerge to hunt, explaining the fate of the previous settlers. As tension builds, both Johns and Riddick try to win Fry to their side: Fry recounts Riddick's cold pragmatism, while Riddick exposes Johns as a morphine-addicted bounty hunter who had refused to use his drugs to ease Owens' agonizing death. The group races back to the
Hunter-Gratzner to retrieve power cells for the dropship, but the total eclipse begins, unleashing thousands of flying creatures that kill Shazza. The survivors take shelter inside the
Hunter-Gratzner, but the creatures breach it and devour Hassan. Realizing they must reach the dropship, they enlist Riddick—whose surgically enhanced eyes grant him night vision—to guide them through the darkness. Armed with available and improvised light sources, the group sets out. When the group reaches a narrow canyon teeming with creatures, Paris panics, runs, and is killed. Riddick reveals that Jack is actually a girl disguising herself as a boy, and her menstrual blood is attracting the creatures. In private, Johns suggests to Riddick that they wound Jack and leave her behind as a distraction. Riddick pretends to agree, then attacks Johns—injuring him and leaving him to be killed by the creatures. At Riddick's urging, the remaining group sprints through the canyon as the creatures begin cannibalizing one another. After reaching the other side, rain begins to fall, extinguishing their improvised torches. Suleiman is killed in the ensuing attack. Riddick initially moves on alone but ultimately returns to fight off the creatures and save Jack. He hides Fry, Abu al-Walid, and Jack in a cave, then sets out to retrieve the dropship. Suspicious, Fry follows and finds him preparing to take off and abandon them. Fry pleads with Riddick to help her save the others, but he urges her to escape with him instead. Guilt-ridden over her earlier attempt to sacrifice her passengers, she refuses, admitting she would now die to protect the others. Together, they rescue Abu al-Walid and Jack (with small,
bioluminescent native lifeforms), but Riddick is cornered and wounded by the creatures. Fry returns to save him, but she is fatally stabbed by one of the creatures and carried off. Riddick returns to the ship but delays takeoff, allowing the creatures to gather around it before using the engines to incinerate as many as possible. Once in space, Jack asks what they should tell the authorities about him; he tells them that Riddick died on the planet. ==Cast==