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House of the Dead 2 out of 10
Running time: 1:30 MPAA rating: R (Pervasive strong violence/gore, language and some nudity.) Peruvian rating: Mayores de 18
Cast:
Jonathan
Cherry, Tyron Leitso, Sonya Solomaa, Clint Howard, Ona Grauer, Ellie
Cornell, Will Sanderson, Enuka Okuma, Jurgen Prochnow. |
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Having already reviewed a couple of other Uwe Boll films (Alone in the Dark and Bloodrayne), I decided to write about the infamous director’s first videogame adaptation: House of the Dead. Based on Sega’s famous arcade game, the film is an example of how a filmmaker shouldn’t make a movie: the screenplay is amazingly dumb; the actors have no skills whatsoever, it’s boring and worst of all, being a “horror” movie, it’s totally unscary and, sometimes, unintentionally funny.
Five friends are invited to a “rave of the century” and hop on a boat to take them to a near-by island where the party is taking place. When they arrive, everything’s deserted. They don’t think much about it – it’s amazing they don’t have any suspicions, actually – and before one can say “zombie!”, Cynthia (Sonya Solomaa) and Greg (Will Sanderson) are doing kinky stuff in a tent. The undead start appearing in the island’s cemetery, though, and with the help of cop Jordan Casper (Ellie Cornell), the “kids” decide to fight the zombies and try to survive.
The film is unwatchable in every level. Director Uwe Boll (who, by now, is as infamous as any other bad American filmmaker) thinks that adding clips of the game between scenes and use “bullet-time” shots as often as possible during the film makes everything look cooler, and his direction of the action scenes and the movie as a whole is horrible. The “slow-motion” shots get old really fast, and the game clips make the film look cheap. Additionally, the camera turning around the actors while they shoot or kick zombie butt is ridiculous; all action sequences are incompetently shot, and generate absolutely no tension or emotion. The screenplay, credited to a couple of unknowns, is amazingly dumb, and treats the audience with such classic lines as “we finally got to the boat but it wasn’t there” or “No cap'n, we must not go there! It's eeeeevil!”
In terms of performances, I wouldn’t blame the actors – I mean, it’s impossible to give a competent performance with such a crappy screenplay – but they’re terrible nonetheless. They don’t look convinced at all by the lines they recite and, while shooting or killing zombies, show absolutely no skill with weapons or “martial arts.” (The fights, by the way, are horribly choreographed, so I guess it isn’t fair to blame the actors only.) I wonder why well-known actors such as Clint Howard (director Ron’s brother) and Jurgen Prochnow (who alternates between acting in decent films and crappy ones) appear in this piece of crap. Sadly enough, they don’t fair better than the “kids” surrounding them, and look kind of bored and sometimes embarrassed of being in the picture.
The crappy performances could be forgiven if the film was scary, but, sadly enough, that’s not the case. Uwe Boll treats the “horror” movie as if were an action film, and seems to be more interesting to show “cool” bullet-time effects, shooting, martial arts and tons of gore. There’s absolutely not a moment in the whole movie which gave me the creeps, and its tone is not even mildly unsettling. The whole picture looks as if it were made on the cheap – I bet that was the case -, and the “special” effects and gore look fake. The zombie makeup is acceptable but, when compared to other 21st century horror movies, it’s sub-par.
House of the Dead is a really crappy movie. It’s the reason why some people think all horror movies are dumb. Even though it’s kind of fast-paced and energetic, it’s incompetently made. The performances are awful, the screenplay is amazingly dumb, the story is uninteresting, and the direction is horrible. The characters are dumber than the average horror-film-protagonist, and the film is a whole is a chore. Viewers may have approached the film four years ago somehow naïvely but, now that Uwe Boll has become known as one of the worst directors ever, there’s no reason to watch the film.
©2007 Sebastián Zavala - GG site