House of the Dead review

House of the Dead
Well I don’t know if anyone has been waiting to read this but I have sure as hell been waiting to write it. This is why I kind of just phoned in the last one.

House of the dead was the first movie made by infamous director Uwe boll. Since then he has directed some of the worst and one of the best video game movies. I skipped seeing this in theaters because the previews made it look like it was just silly but being a fan of cheese I rented it and oh boy was it bad so let’s get right to it.

The story of house of the dead is about a group of kids who hire a smuggler to take them to the Isla de Muerta where the biggest rave of the year is supposed to be happing. As the movie goes on we find out that zombies have killed all the ravers. So after a short time the kids are attacked by zombies and they have to fight them off.

Eventually they make their way back to the boat and arm themselves with guns that the boat guy was smuggling also the police show up and they also have guns. Many shootouts happen and eventually the surviving kids make their way to what they think is an abandoned house. Inside more kids die and the big plot twist is reviled it was a former Spanish priest who was captured.

Apparently when the priest escaped he killed everyone on the boat he was on from here he devolved the blood shade which turns corpses into zombies eventually one of the characters kills him and she is then rescued by special agents and is the only survivor.

Ok now that that is over its time for the actual review. First I’d like to say I don’t hate Uwe boll all the time just most of the time and I don’t hate cheesy movies either I love watching b-movies every once and a while but when you combine bad acting bad writing horrible plot I can’t help but hate a movie.

What I can do however is point out what did work which is minimal and what didn’t which was a lot. First it seems no matter how much he ruins a movie Uwe boll does like to have throw backs to the games he basing his movies off of and house of the dead is no exception. Right from the get go we get scenes from the game thrown into the title screens which is cool but quickly becomes annoying when it continues throughout the movie. During the opening rave scene there is the Sega logo everywhere and the creator of the game and the president of Sega of America make cameos as zombies.

The gore throughout the movie is pretty much what you would expect from a b-movie and I love gore so that worked for me especially when one of the kids gets torn in half. What didn’t really work for me was the fact that these kids who were ready to party and do drugs one minute are suddenly expert marksmen as soon as you put a gun in their hand not to mention no one reloaded ever. I think the boat captain was using a desert eagle and fired like 15 rounds as far as I know the gun holds 9.

Then there were the special effects for like 5 to 10 minutes we get a scene of each character holding a gun and the camera spinning around them. I’ll say this now and hopefully never have to repeat it. It was cool in the matrix then it got over used and even when it’s over used in other movies at least it’s used to show something cool like a kick or bullet or something but here we get nothing but pointing.

In the next scene we get a bullet time shotgun spray but it’s too little to late it was neat to see the pellets in bullet time but after the camera spin scene I just didn’t care. The kids being experts at shooting isn’t the only stretch in the movie either. The one Asian girl all of a sudden is great at kung fu and because she took a few fencing lessons the only survivor is able to beat a man much stronger then her in sword fighting.

As far as it is based on a game besides the title and zombies there’s not much linking it to the game. There’s the last name of the main bad guy is the same as the bad guy from the first and third game, at the end of the movie two guys in trench coats come out of the helicopter and one is referred to as g which is the name of one of the characters from the game and there’s guns but that’s really it.

The acting is about what you would expect from a b-movie sometimes worse. Honestly I wouldn’t be mad at Uwe boll if he was just the director but most of his movies he’s the writer too so sometimes especially with this one it seems like he’s trying to ruin the idea of the game on purpose. Some people have called him the Ed wood of our time but I don’t know if that’s entirely accurate but they both do make cheesy movies.

And now for the triumphant return of how I’d do it. First this would never have been on the top of my list for games to be movies. But if I was going to I would at the very least have the two characters from the game and id do what resident evil didn’t id have Romero direct it so it would be good and then id include monster types from the games and maybe just as a fun little thing I’d have some sort of future gun that reloaded when you pointed it away from the target and pulled the trigger.

Overall I would give the movie 2 out of 10 light guns the gore was ok but everything else was bad real bad

Acting gets 2 out of 10 I’ve seen b-movies with good acting and bad acting but this is some of the worst I’ve ever seen with the exception of the main bad guy he was slightly less worse

Plot gets a 1 out of 10 besides zombies this was nothing like the game.

Content gets 2 out of 10 only reason it didn’t get a 1 was there where enough references to save it from complete crappyness and obscurity when it comes to the game.

Ok well that does it for the first boll movie there are more out there and it doesn’t seem like he’s going to stop but to your surprise there are a few that are not bad and at least one that’s great so I’ll see you next time. Up next is the second resident evil movie witch actually has characters from the game and then it’s on to bolls second movie alone in the dark.