House of the Dead (review)

*Spoilers*...like you give a damn?

Out of all the days for my boss to give me a day off, he had to choose Monday. So now, the second day of the week is always empty for me. What to do, you ask? I rented House of the Dead, despite the fact that its gotten every bad review from anyone. The entire b-movie and horror community hate the film. But I ended up spending four dollars and something cents on the DVD.

Before you read on, I just want to say that HOTD is not a masterpiece nor is it a turkey. I sat through it and laughed my face off, knowing it was meant to be a horror film; and not a comedy. The plot is clitched beyond repair by any script doctor. The film starts out with some of the worst dialogue ever written: "It all happened a couple of days ago. So many dead. So many victims..." And it gets more crazy from there. In one scene, a guy gets his girlfriend to go skinny dipping but refuses to enter himself because the water is too cold. Then, while in the water, the girl senses something around her and gets out quickly, only to find her boyfriend missing. As she walks through the woods, she seems to be guided by the director off screen, cause there is no explanation to how, out of all the places to go, she ends up in the "House of the Dead" where she sees her boyfriend get a hand through his chest. If you look carefully, you can tell its a fake prop. As the "plot" continues, the movie turns into a video game, literally. Another thing that bothered me was that whenever somebody died, no one would give a damn. For example, two of the characters Simon and Karma seem to have an attraction for each other, yet when Simon dies, Karma just goes on like nothing happened. And another thing, most characters just blow themselves up for no reason. Captain Kirk (not the guy from Star Trek) just gets a stick of dianomite, says, "I'm dead." and blows himself up, taking half of the house of the dead with him, now leaving the college students vulnerable to more zombie attacks. Even Simon's death was by explosion, even though he could be saved. The film also has some of the worst editing ever. People show up out of nowhere, and die leaving no remains behind. As for the dialuge, the entire film is pact with stuff like: "We got to the boat, but it wasn't there."

The zombies were impressive, yet a question that came up was, why is the tagline called "They walk...you run" when these zombies run faster then the humans in the movie, and even jump like frogs. The make-up was amazing, and the exploding head shots were incredible, but I still have trouble understanding why Tom Savani and George Romero were on the "making of" documtary of the film, phraising it. I guess they liked it?At least Romero talked about his fourth Dead film, and said it will be made. Also the producer of HOTD insisted that there will be a sequel. I just hope it goes to theaters so I can MST3K it with strangers all around. The closest i'm come to having an horror movie experience in theaters like Jeepers Creepers or Leprechaun was Scream 3.

As for the ending for the film, it leaves even more questions. I don't mean questions you would come up with while watching Donnie Dracko; I mean questions like, "So he is the bad guy, even though he just killed the bad guy who could not die?" If you watch the film, you would know what I'm talking about, but if you don't then I don't blame you.

I know, I know, it seems as if I hate the film. But I really do not. Believe me I've seen worse. Oasis of the Zombies, ring a bell? I remember when I got that on DVD, and I fell asleep, and woke up wishing to kill myself. Man, I really hate that film.

I don't understand why people bash this film so much, even though other horror movies have made and continue to make the same mistakes. I guess, one bad review makes another bad review and so on. The director, Uwe Boll (who's name I cannot pronounce) has become a modern Ed Wood with only one well known film under his belt.

Anyway, I give House of the Dead a 3/5.