Retro Review: House of the Dead – The Movie

This is another review BACK FROM THE DEAD. It was originally posted on the 10mfH forum.

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The movie in one word: Ugh.
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The movie in more than one word:
If this was a film my buddies and I made over the weekend for fun, It would have been excellent. This was an actual effort by a film crew though. I don’t know what to make of that. doop.gif

The plot can be summed up as this: Teenagers go to the “Rave of the year” on some creepy island. There is something evil there though, and it kills everybody. Some late party comers connect up with a few surviors and shoot their way to freedom through hordes of zombies. Sounds like fun, right? WRONG.

What worked: I liked most of the music, it was a cool techno type with a funky beat. The zombie effects were pretty good, with some good gooey head explosions. There were times when things were taken directly from the game, like the moss zombies coming through the water, or characters walking down a dark corridor with zombies popping out at them. That was pretty cool. Too bad it was about 5 seconds of the movie.

What didn’t work: Just about everything else. I will take this time to talk about the video game footage spliced in at scene transitions, and other random places. First of all, WTF? It made little sense and looked like crap. At least the “treated” footage at the start credits was cool. I liked the way that was done, almost music-video style. This film felt the need to constantly remind you that it was based on a video game and so it was supposed to be like this. Utter Bullshit. icored.gif They could have taken the time to make a good movie here, but instead made this piece of garbage.
The acting sucked.
The direction sucked.
The editing sucked.
They used crappy rip-off Matrix effects, that made no sense for the context of the film, or even the scene that they were in.

In my opinion: This could have made a good “attention getter” for a better film. Edit what happens in this movie down to ten minutes (It’s possible, believe me. You would lose none of the story. icon_rolleyes.gif ) and then continue by following the AMS agents, just like the damn games.

Family Friendliness: Don’t watch this with anyone. If you must see it, save yourself the embarassment of actually being accused of picking it out to watch and watch it by yourself. If you are looking for a good zombie movie, this isn’t it. Go rent Bad Taste, Dead-Alive, any of the Romero “Dead” movies, or pretty much any other zombie movie. Too gory for kids, too mindless for adults, with lots of pointless boob shots.

Best thing about the DVD: a making of/zombie movie retrospective. This was better than the actual film. It was cool to hear why they made the zombies the way they did and maddening to hear the producer of this movie talk about why he made this movie. Plus, Uwe Boll is a tool. I had to throw that in somewhere. wink.gif

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You’d be better off just going and playing the videogames again instead of watching this movie. oregonian_2guns.gif zombie.gif

About Dug (Wugmanmax) 241 Articles
(AKA – Wug, Dug, Foug) Hailing from the Twin Cities, Wugmanmax is an avid toy collector, graphic designer, video producer, firefighter, and podcast co-host.

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