Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
Okay... the clock’s running down. I have to make these intros quick.
HOUSE OF THE DEAD is playing at the AFM, but it’s already shown in San Francisco, and we’re getting reactions in, like this one:
Hey Harry. I was avoiding writing this review for a couple days now since seeing House of The Dead but the review by one viewer Lady Deathstrike has prompted me into action. Last week I wrote my first review for AICN, a review of Spun. I was hoping that I could continue with the trend that movie set and write fun positive reviews. Unfortunately a movie called House of The Dead has wreacked havoc upon horror movies, and movies in general. Sorry Lady Deathstrike, but I found HOTD to be one of the worst movies I have ever seen. Only a couple scenes of well done gore and not too bad an action scene save this movie from having every single scene fail. As Lady Deathstrike pointed out the acting is terrible, and I mean its bad like they picked random drunken frat kids off of some college in Arizona to star in the movie. The plot is ridiculously absurd. Not that it matters in a movie like this. But basically its about a bunch of people trying to go to a rave on the island of Isla De Muerta. I dont know if thats spelled right. But i believe it means Island of the dead. And every time it is mentioned it is with a ridiculously serious tone. Naturally to get there they have to hire a crazy boat captain named none other than Captain Kirk. So of course we need a Star Trek joke, which is extremely uninspired, something like 'Where's Spock?' *sigh* At this point in the film, which is about 10 minutes, but seems like 20, i was asking myself why meee??? I mean seriously, it was like some higher power decided that I had seen so many good films in a row that now it had to give me one that was so bad it evened the rest out. LIke some sick sense of balance, like polar opposites, positive and negative, white and black, U know, that Unbreakable shit. Sorry, i will try to get ahold of myself and finish my review. Immediately after I noticed the terrible acting and script I noticed this movie has some of the worst editing i have ever scene. No strike that, It is definitely the worst editing and cutting I have ever scene. It jumps back and forth like 5 times in the first 2 minutes. And when the scene changes we are treated to a lame as clip from the actual House of the Dead video game. It was interesting at
first but it goes on throughout the movie and drives you fucking insane. Constantly you are assaulted with 1-2 second clips from the game. There is even a scene in this film that is nearly identical to the opening scene of jaws where the girl swims out into the water and the guy passes out on the beach. And it is not like a play on Jaws, it is no homage, as far as i can tell. In the first 2/3 of this movie all of the young men and women characters are absolutely as ditzy as any horror movie characters ever, but suddenly they are all given high powered weaponry and they all become fucking rambo. Or should I say Neo. Scenes of a ridiculous looking asian raver girl in an american flag suit, ducking axes in bullet time and not played for
any laughs is enough to make any moviegoer with self respect leave the theatre at once. Except I had a date so i was screwed. I think I am getting my point across here so I am going to wrap up here. The very very few positives of this flick are. A couple scenes of topless chicks, that have very little sexiness. A good sword fight scene at the end if you can forget the fact that earlier in the scene these ravers were running around like 'Ohh shit all the other ravers have disappeared and left the place as if it were being pillaged by James Earl Jones in Conan, so lets stop and get the keg out and then get freaky in a tent, or walk into a dark graveyard and go into the abandoned house with eery lights burning just for kicks and next thing you
know these stupid fucks are swinging swords like their fucking Toshiro Mifune. And then it ends with a zombie head being squashed, Resident Evil the game style. Then of course the Ubiquitous agents showing up just at the end and then set up a sequel. Which I can promise you there will never be, because even your most average uncultured moviegoer would rather see FearDot.Com three times in a row. So until my next review i will remain the Samurai Artist, wading through films like Zatoichi.
If it’s worse than FEARDOTCOM, it must be like gettings stabbed in the face. Did this next guy agree?
Hey Harry,
I was at the House of the Dead screening last Saturday in SF and have a report for you, if you’re interested. House of the Dead is definitely a B-movie, period. Was it fun, yes. Was it bad, yes. Would I see it again, probably. Would I buy it on DVD, not likely.
I, as most geeks, love zombie movies. In fact they are all that scare me (I have way too many zombie dreams!). Romero is the king, so I will not compare HotD to his work, as they are apples and oranges. My wife and I went to the showing and she is rather keen on the zombie genre thanks to my influence, so she was excited to see it, as was I. Neither of us had followed the production, we just knew that someone was making it. The night started with the usual intro and a quick intro of the cast who were present – even Clint! (But not Jurgen Prochnow)
The movie started and had a nice intro with scenes of the game being shown under the credits, a nice homage to the game and I wish the director would have kept it to this, but more on that in a moment. The premise was fine, it’s a video game prequel movie (the first of it’s kind?) so they had a lot of room for story. The voice over was more serious than the movie’s tone at times, and the rave was a bit silly as it looked like 30 people dancing to one DJ – not the rave of the year as it was supposed to be! They later said there were 150 extras, but I didn’t see them at the rave - they should have used them there.
The acting was what you’d expect and at times the script was bad, but the actors said they had to make up their lines in some scenes, so maybe it was that. But we don’t go to zombie flicks for a brilliant script – we want good zombie fun. This is where the film was a let down. Not much zombie goodness! I know the game has more than just zombies and the movie wanted to emulate that, but all they showed were zombies and you really couldn’t see any of them in the dark. My biggest complaint was the use of the game’s screen shots within the movie. At lot of fans have been hesitant about this, and I thought it really detracted from the flow of the action. As soon as a zombie is gonna get killed we see it die in the video game and then back to the real movie, you don’t get to see it. So it was zombie – video game death overlay – next zombie. This was how many of the zombies were killed. The director said this was his homage to the game and he wanted to try something new, but it didn’t work for me. But maybe others will think different…
I also had a big problem with the Matrix-effect. It also really upset the flow of the action. You see, most of the fighting takes place in one BIG sequence about 2/3 into the movie. All of the zombies are out and the remaining heroes want to get to the creepy house in the middle of the island for safety. All of the zombies are outside this house, so they have to blast their way through them to get to the house. This sequence is long and it is pretty good. But, the Matrix effect is way overused. It goes like this: hero is surrounded by zombies and goes to attack one - camera cuts back for full body view of hero – camera does Matrix swing around hero, but there are no zombies around hero (they would get in the way of the camera swing) – hero performs action killing zombie and then is surrounded by zombies again. This is really hard to describe in words, but the break in action was very noticeable in the movie. Also, pretty much every one of the heroes got their own “Matrix-moment” so it got tiring after the third time! (Personally I am sick of the Matrix-effect and think it should stay with the Matrix movies, it’s like using lightsabers in a sci-fi movie – it is such a signature effect that you can’t use it outside of the movie series that originated it. But that is my subjective opinion!)
There was some really nice CGI in this movie though; we were quite surprised by it. One bit in particular with a shotgun blast that was slowed down to show the pellet burst looked very nice. The budget was $9 mil, and you can see where it went!
The origin of the zombies and the House of the Dead seemed to be an afterthought to me; I just couldn’t buy it. The ending was the same, all of a sudden the big bad shows up out of nowhere and then it’s over. I know the point of this flick was the action, and the director kept stressing that it was an action movie, not a horror movie, but it seemed that a plot was also not much of the point!
However it was a fun movie at times and had some real nice zombie moments. At the end there was a sequence right out of the game where the remaining heroes were walking down a hall and zombies kept jumping out of the walls and they kept shooting them – which is essentially the game. But I wanted more zombie footage as they were always shrouded in darkness in the background of each shot. Although, the crowd seemed to enjoy it, so maybe I am being to hard on the movie.
I think I am rivaling Harry in word count here, so if you want to see this movie, then go see it. On some levels it worked, and on others it didn’t. I never base my movie viewing on review opinions anyway, so please check it out with a “B-movie attitude“ in mind.
You can call me TheeMrB
So that’s one for (Lady Deathstrike) and one against and one vaguely indifferent. I know we’ve got some friends seeing it at AFM, and I’m hoping they’ll write in to add their voices to the discussion about this one.
"Moriarty" out.
