Awful April begins, and boy do we have a doozy. German director Uwe Boll is one of the few to succeed in making most people cower in terror. Sadly, not because the movie we’re gonna take a look at is a scary movie per se, more that $12,000,000 was wasted on such a celluloid abomination. House of the Dead is that rare beast that goes beyond bad and then beyond “so bad it’s good” into its own little niche where even the most die-hard horror fans fear to tread.
When talking about this movie, think “so bad it’s irredeemable”.
Want to know why? Are you a hardcore masochist? Figure out for yourself the answer to both questions and just hit the jump already.
Our movie opens as a shabby teen gives us a rather long-winded voice-over explaining in advance that all the main characters except him will die and then kindly introduces us to the characters in question like an episode of “The Dating Game”. This conveniently eliminates any need for the film to try and bring any depth, feeling or back story to the characters – presumably to make the job of acting badly easier for the rest of the cast. It also helps the audience by eliminating the need to waste brain-power working out who lives and dies. Our ill-fated bunch are on their way to join revelers at a rave on a remote island but after missing the official ride they buy their way to the island on the boat of a smuggler going by the dubious moniker of Captain Kirk. Followed by a tough-as-toilet paper harbor inspector intent on bringing Kirk to justice, they arrive on the island to find it seemingly deserted. Of course it soon comes to light that the island is in fact the home to a posse of flesh-eating zombies who have already munched their way through all the other party-goers and have now set their sights on the new arrivals.
Most cinematic adaptations of video game aren’t exactly known for their rich and divisive storytelling. Nonetheless, it can sometimes be worth it for a fan of the game to watch the movie just to see an aspect of the game in real life. Examples include the Lickers in Resident Evil, Johnny Cage doing the Ball-Buster move in Mortal Kombat or the shiny baldness of Agent 47 in Hitman. At the very least, they at least have rudimentary camera work.
House of the Dead fails in every equivalent of these concepts.
Here’s what the movie has in common with the game:
-there is a house
-there are dead people
-sometimes, it shows quick scenes from the game
Voila. That’s it.
The zombies look as good as someone who applied K-Mart Halloween makeup and is getting ready to go trick-or-treating. Where exactly did the $12 million for this movie go? The only decent aspect of the film is a bullet-time sequence that is completely unnecessary for what we’re dealing with and belongs in a better movie.
Almost every kill is off-screen, a vice that can’t be tolerated zombie horror. Movies like “Kill Bill” prove you can go far with an R-certificate, so what’s the point of showing a close-up of a screaming character only for the camera to cut away before the fun starts? Let me assure you, it’s not for suspense-building purposes.
Boll obviously went for a whole lot of style but used no imagination in the process. However, he did get a whole lot of shit. The action scenes are trampled by an offensive combination of rap and techno music, and every time the camera would show a character, the action would stop and we’d get a 360 degree pan of him/her firing a round or two into a tame-looking zombie. There’s no reason for anybody-especially since they all have weaponry skills-to fall victim to the zombies unless the plot requires them to be fast. What happens is we get about three different noble sacrifices from characters who simply don’t want to live anymore. Nice work, Uwe.
The action gets mundane as the same clips are recycled and characters are always jumping away from explosions. At one point they encounter a fish tank full of blood and a girl fires two rounds into it. The free flowing blood awakens the dead corpses that litter that ground and then more fighting takes place.
It’s hard to write a review worthy of House of the Dead and still use correct spelling and grammar. To properly convey the jaw-dropping shoddiness of this video game-based ”horror” ”movie,” one must approach what scientists call Absolute Stupid, a state previously thought to exist only under highly controlled laboratory conditions or at the highest levels of government. When you’re actually saying to yourself “You know what, Clint Howard? You’re so much better than what this movie deserves”, that’s not a good sign for cinema.
This movie gets the full-on Chugs Seal of Quality Approval.
Because only a picture this random could begin to make sense of this pile of crap.