The world is filled with bad movies. In any given week, if half the movies opening aren�t bad ones, then it�s a very good week. And yet, it�s not that often that a movie comes along that is so mind-blowingly awful that it defies all logic as to how it was actually greenlighted, let alone allowed to be released. House of the Dead is one such movie.
Based on the video game of the same name, it follows five college students to the party of the year, on a deserted island. OR IS IT? Once they arrive, one of them is shocked to notice that no one else is there. The other four don�t really care. After exploring the island, our intrepid team come across a group of survivors who inform them that the party was attacked by zombies, and they are the only survivors. Together with a tough female cop and a sea captain, the group fight the dead� for their lives.
The plot is as schlocky as it sounds, and I could mention the bad acting, music, etc, but that�s all fairly perfunctory, and you should know about that already. In House of the Dead, the badness goes far, far deeper. At first just as a transition between scenes, but later actually in the battle sequences, we are treated to shots from the video game the movie is based on. That is, someone will shoot at a zombie, and it cuts to a zombie in the game getting shot- sometimes with the word �Reload� on the screen. Another technique used to remind us how awesome game-to-movie adaptations are is the death montages. When some characters are killed (that�s some, not all- consistency is for filmmakers� er� not on crack) we�re treated to flashes of the character�s actions followed by the camera doing a 360 around the person standing still (and alive) with a fade to red. BECAUSE IT�S BASED ON A GAME!
And deeper still. This movie sets a new benchmark in lack of character logic consistency. The girl with curly hair and the tits we don�t see seems to fill the role of both the smartest and dumbest character in the movie- she is the only one worried when the students find the party deserted, but minutes later she�s the one suggesting they go into the spooky looking house. After they see video of the zombie attack (thanks to a character�s two traits being �guy who has seen Romero movies� and �guy who only looks at things through his video camera"), the genius-moron is convinced it was a prank pulled by the people running the party. The movie is filled with this kind of stupidity- as her partner, the cop chooses the guy who has just lost his girlfriend.
Director Uwe Boll has taken on an interesting zombie mythology. With the recent slew of zombie movies, we�ve seen either the fast or the slow moving varieties. Here, however, we have both! We see zombies running at the heroes, like they�re from the new Dawn of the Dead. Then comes the fighting. In the background of the fighting, we can see zombies shuffling around like the traditional Romero variety, almost as if the extras weren't told what to do! But it couldn't be that. It�s just an interesting take on the genre!
I could go on, but that would rob you of discovering more of these things yourself. Because, you see, you need to see this movie. You need to gather some friends, maybe with some booze, whack this in, and collectively urinate yourselves, in a good way.
On the other hand, you could lament the fact that it cost US$12 million to make. You could run directly to the IMDb to complain that Uwe Boll promised he�d remove the shots from the game from the movie. You could cry yourself to sleep thinking about how this movie got Boll lined up to direct three more films - all game adaptations - and has lined up actors such as Michael Madsen, Ben Kingsley and, apparently, Naomi Watts. But my way is a lot more fun.
So, giving this movie a mark is hard. Do I mark on how much I enjoyed it, or on the actual quality of the movie? House of the Dead really did make me appreciate Resident Evil, and the lack of amphetamines in Paul W.S. Anderson�s system, at least when compared to Uwe Boll's. And while I did have a lot more fun with House of the Dead, I don�t think I could live with myself if I gave it, say, a 9/10. So, when choosing between the enjoyment and the quality, I think I�ll go the latter- there's no way it was intended to be this funny. Horrible movie. See it now.
