House of the Dead

 

Title	-	House of the Dead
My Admission	-	$1.00
One Line Review	-	Gotta Kill Captain Stoopid!

 

Review – House of the Dead is missing too much to be an enjoyable film.  Based on the popular, and fun, Sega console video game of the same name, you’ll find your hard earned quarters, and time, better wasted in the arcade.  Besides, it’s infinatly more fun to kill zombies than to watch them eat people too stoopid to be alive anyway.

Set on an island, of all places, House of the Dead tells the tale of five friends who get a boat ride to the largest rave party ever.  There are less than a hundred people there and it didn’t look like much fun to me, but anyway.  While people are drinking, dancing, and having sex something seems to be watching them from the woods of the island.  By nightfall the five others have arrived by boat and find the party completely destroyed.  Large portions of stoopidity, carnage, and death ensue.

Uwe Boll directs the film and I believe he has talent.  He’s picked a competent crew that gets some good shots in.  Visually it’s not bad, but as for acting, storyline, and, effect, it’s sheer brainless.

Example: There’s a house on the island; imagine that, and it does look pretty creepy.  I’m sure that as easily as the characters found this house that anyone who thought about throwing a party on the island would’ve come across it or been subjected to flesh eating zombies long before the party favors and streamers were even in place.  Give your characters some credit.

I’m not comfortable with a film asking me to be this stoopid.

There are two groups largely at fault here and I can’t determine whom to blame it on.  Either the writers couldn’t come up with a complete enough backstory or M.O. for their villain or the powers-that-be decided that plot takes too much away from the action and so the meat and potatoes were jettisoned.  Either way, the movie winds up completely pointless and becomes an absurd waste of your time.

And now I find myself unable to stop.  I must tell you at least a few of the things to be enjoyed if you must see House of the Dead. 

• Jurgen Prochnow and Clint Howard.  The two are the most fun to be had in the movie.  Not great but more fun than anything else.
• Dead Zombies.  I just like em and some of these guys get blasted all over the place.  It’s mildly entertaining.
• Bullet Time Effects.  This goes hand-in-hand with the zombie killing listed above and for a few final looks as some good guys die.  This effect shows some of the things that Uwe can get done to help a movie be visually interesting, if it’s nothing else.

Tits and Ass.  This has got to be a new low for me.  I can only recommend this movie if the T & A are included.  There’s not much of either and it’s not that great but it’s far more interesting than the film itself.  If that doesn’t tell you how bad House of the Dead is, I don’t know what else can.

-m-