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| Release Date: | October 10th, 2003 (US) |
| Runtime: | 90 minutes |
| Rated: | R (US) - 18A (CAN) |
| Genres: | Action, Horror |
| Directed by: | Uwe Boll |
| Written by: | Mark A. Altman, Dave Parker |
| Starring: | J?rgen Prochnow, Ellie Cornell, Clint Howard, Jonathan Cherry, Tyron Leitso, Ona Grauer, Will Sanderson, Enuka Okuma, Kira Clavell, Sonya Salomaa, Michael Eklund, David Palffy, Ben Derrick, Steve Byers |
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 Let's get this story crap out of the way so I can start bitching: a group of college kids seek to attend the "Rave Party of the Century", which it just so happens takes place on an island named Isla del Muerta. They book passage on a smuggling ship, whose Captain...*cough*...Kirk (Das Boot's Prochnow), is being pursued by Coast Guard cop Jordan Casper (Halloween 4 and 5's Cornell). They all get to the island and find that everyone's dead, except for the few lucky ones who got away to a mysterious, run-down house in the middle of the island. Then we're all fed some crap about this guy doing experiments to prolong life, he's exiled, blah blah blah. At this point, you will have stopped caring.
Message to all: you have a greater stomach than I if any of you have sat through the entire thing. I got up and left as soon as the "action" sequence outside of the house took place. This was utter tripe. The cinematography was horrendous - how many more times are we going to be inundated with "bullet-time"? And here's a note to all filmmakers: if you are going to make some kind of attempt at using bullet-time, make sure it doesn't look like it's a camera spinning in a circle around some poorly rendered claymation. And for the love of God, who thought using short snippets of gameplay from the games was a good idea for the segues in the story? Whoever they are, they should be excellently executed.
My next complaint: the characters were shallow and very unrealistic. For one, they were party-hardy preppy college kids one minute, and gun-toting karate chopping badasses the next. It's one thing to be under pressure and reacting during a situation like being stalked by undead flesh eaters, but it's another thing to all of a sudden possess the skills of the bastard son of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Lee. And beyond all of this, there's one main problem with all of these characters: I couldn't WAIT for them to bite the dust. Why is this a problem? In a movie like this, you're supposed to give two gallons of monkey piss about what happen to these people. Instead, with House of the Dead, you get characters you wouldn't pour two gallons of monkey piss on...
Now, let's talk about the story, which is so contrived and pointless that it pales in comparison to the video game's (which enhances my point because the stories of the games were extremely minimal). It was like the writer said "Hey, instead of building upon what little I have to go on from the games and making a semi-original and interesting movie, I'm just going to combine major elements from The Matrix and Friday the 13th, throw on some rap-rock, mix in some zombies, and screw it all up Ishtar style!" I'm sure I even skipped over some influences, because there are just too many. I can't even see how Altman and Parker can, in good conscious, call this movie theirs, if they even have the testicles to claim this garbage.
I recently got into an argument about House of the Dead at a very popular horror message board - I'll leave the site unnamed because I don't want to give it bad publicity and because it's one of the best horror sites out there. Anyway, this proves that there are people out there who like this film. But even those at that particular message board acknowledged that the film was bad, but in the "so bad it's good" way. Fine, if you're a masochistic moviegoer, then this film may be for you. Every once in a while, I even like to put myself through the ropes with a little Plan 9 from Outer Space or a bit of Troll 2. But I'm not so hard on myself that I will EVER, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES watch House of the Dead again. "So bad it's good"...maybe. "So bad I want to gouge my damned eyeballs out and pray for the Lord's mercy and forgiveness for having even tried to view such an awful, horrible, disgrace of a thread of celluloid trying to pass itself off as a film"...more than likely.
In closing, I'll leave you all with a quote that was shown to me by one of the posters at the aforementioned message board. Now, I don't know who to credit the quote to, so if it's yours or you know whom it belongs to, please contact me. Anyway, I believe this sums it all up quite nicely.
"This movie gave me an idea. Next time I see a movie this bad, I'll kill myself. Why? I will instantly become embedded in pop culture history as the guy who killed himself because a movie was so bad. The movie I snuff myself at will be known as "the movie so bad it killed a man". It would be grand. I'll do that tomorrow or something."
This guy should be given the first ever Nobel Prize for Complete and Utter Brilliance. Bravo. |
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Chris Gaskey
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