PLOT:
bunch of stupid college kids go to a rave on a suppossed cursed island. When SUDDENLY zombies come out of no where and kill everyone except a few people who have to survive on their own.
uh huh, yeah. not very interesting and has been done before.
5/10
SCRIPT:
The characters here have as much depth as a sheet of toilet paper, cept T.P is useful, the characters arent. The attempted sub plots are about as halfassed as can be. The one guy who is an underwear model gets acid on his cheeck is upset because his career is ruined, the 'main' male character is iffy because he's with his ex and people around him are dying horrible(y goofy) deaths.
and the 'explination' of how the zombies get reanimated and stuff makes less sense than the film itself. The real villains of the movie are the screenwriters Mark Altmen and Dan Bates who cant seem to create anything beyond 10'th grade dialogue. I swear that at least 20% of the dialogue is people calling for other people. "Captain!?...Captain!?...Greg!?...Greg!?"
the ending is a joke, but an almost amusing joke when the 'main' character says his last name(Curien, who is the villain of the first house of the dead game). that was the only part of this movie that made any real sense.
1/10
ACTING:
yeah this movie features some of the worst direct to video acting I've ever seen. Just when one of the actors suddenly manages a decent performance it reverts to "look how serious I can be in front of the camera mommy!" acting.
2/10
MUSIC:
The film music sounds like a bad rave soundtrack. Its so bad I cant seem to remember any of it.
1/10
SCARES
none. everyhting is predicatbe in the film, except fo r how bad it is.
0/10
MAKE UP/EFFECTS
Some good effects here and there as well as some ok gore but nothing Tom Savini couldnt beat if he was drunk the entire time and had half the budget. A lot of the zombie make up looks really generic.
If you want to have fun look for the springboards used with the jumping zombies. I saw two when I wasnt even looking hard.
6/10
CAMERA WORK:
Shakey cam, blair witch cam and crap cam. it never improves, it only gets worse.Dont get me started on the cinematography.
2/10
EDITING
Utter s**t, there is so much bad editing in this movie that it will confuse you and make you ask yourself whats going on and why am I watching this?
1/10
DIRECTION:
ahhh now we're at the FUN part of the review. What is there to say about Uwe Boll that hasnt been said before? Hmm..incompitent, pathetic, suffers from borderline retardation as well as ADD, likes to copy other movies, has no sense of originality, cant direct, smells really bad, is ugly and I would like agenetic test to prove that hes the bastard child of Ed Wood.
0/10
FUN FACTOR:
Its kind of fun to watch this movie...once and then forget you ever did. this is a saturday morning special bad type of a film.
5/10
CHEESE!
I've never hade to give a movie a 10 out of 10 for cheese but in this case 10 isnt enough to describe it.
10/10
Overall: 23/100 - 10(cheese factor)= 13/100. Automatic 'F', but 'A +' MST3K fodder.
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Review extension:
What was taken from other better movies??
The opening from jaws with the drunken woman going in the ocean was copied, this time a drunken woman in a lake.
The villain is pretty much a copy of dr. Victor Frankenstein, though he seems to become frankensteins monster when he's 'immortal'.
the 'bullet time' fights are all as matrix as it can get.
the villain using the face/skin of a victim as a mask was taken from silence of the lambs, texas chainsaw massacre 04.
At one point flares are used to keep zombies away, this is from dawn of the dead.
the 'master zombie' Bulls**t has been used in god knows how many bad zombie films.
Characters, thy name is stupid.
Ok the survivors of the initial attack are holed up inside the 'house'(cardboard prop with old ivy vines) and are safe but quickly agree to go with the 'fresh meat' after
they just say they wanna find their 2 missing friends.
Sure theres a boat to escape on but its accross the island.
then they go BACK to the house when they cant use the boat.
Despite the fact the dead have axes and spears no one thinks to pick them up and use them after the dead are offed.
the female lead is suppossed to know how to fence, yet when she fights the villan the moves shes using are hardly in any way fencing. It almost looks like Rapier but its just silly hollywood mish mash.
I'm also amazed the villain knows how to fight as well as he does, hes using a few martial art smoves. I didnt know they taught how to do perfect leg sweeps in ancient Spain.
The captain blowing himself up...NEXT TO THE f**kING HOUSE! real smart move there pal you blew the front door open and let in all the zombies to eat yer friends.
the real cheese:
The Asian girl is the only character that knows martial arts.
The unlucky marine girl gets her legs hacked into at odd angles but when shes pulled into the house both legs are clean cut missing.
The marine woman empties her gun and places it in her holster then hands it to the stupid comic relief guy who fires 2 rounds and then is out.
The black girl says she can handle 3 moss zombies hits them like 2-3 times and then is backed into a wall and eaten while her friends who are about 5 feet away decide not to help.
these have to be the weakest zombies in cinema ever, they die by getting an axe in the chest or stabbed into a few times. or even shot in the gut.
You gotta kill real zombies by decaps, or head shots.
The insane ammount of ammo wasted trying to get into the house.
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Encylcopedia Genericana defines this film as 'phlib' since no curse word can describe its awfulness.
Sure the flick was bad, but it's like you said: It's a hell of a lot of fun to watch the first time around.
And I think a lot of the blame for the script has to go to Mark Altman and Dave Parker. They were the two to actually have their hands in the screenplay. To my understanding they brought Dave in originally because the screenplay was awful. He came in a "cleaned it up" to be best of his ability. It's sad to see that he actually had something to do with this film considering he can do much better (Dead Hate The Living).
You guys are forgetting the most important point...Ona Grauer
Ona was pretty f**king horrible in the movie. Just as stale as the rest of the actors.
Wow.
Nice one, Dunners.
Glad i never planed to see it...though the mega-cheese factor might make it actualy tolerable!
Oh, yes a high MST3K score....the key to bad movie survival!
I had so much fun watching this. You forgot two things though, the video game shots put into the movie as well as the one cop named "McGuyver"
My cousin started crying during the opening credits of this movie, it was that bad. But not the way you think of it. You see, I put the disc in my PS2 and when I saw "insert coins" I thought that Blockbuster gave me the game version and my Ps2 wanted some change (?) which is of course not possible. When the movie began (which is supposed to be a horror movie) I was greated by techno lights and music.
Did you see Clint Howard! He had a hook for a hand!
hah, yeah forgot about macguyver, and as for the lame inserts of game footage I stayed away from that. it was soooooo figging bad.
Actually he was just holding a hook....Which after he died he somehow magically came back into his possession when he was a zombie.
When all the fodder(the kids) enter the boat he appears around the corner with a hook in hand. Though IMDB says its suppossed to be areference to "I know what you did last summer" i think it was just out of stupidity.
Finally saw this on Showtime last night [more evidence that Showtime is the worst cable movie channel in the world--this is probably the first recent film I've seen on Showtime--the rest is usually direct to video crap.]
Put me in the camp of those who think it's so bad it's hilarious....I had a ball with this movie it was so terrible. I was laughing all the way through it. And my wife, who usually can't get over the cheese factor in horror films, even the good ones, was awestruck by how terrible this is.
HOUSE OF THE DEAD has the courage to really suck in a time where most bad movies are just mediocre. I do believe people 20 years from now will laugh at this the way people laugh at NIGHT OF THE ZOMBIES [although I gotta say that NIGHT OF THE ZOMBIES is a much better film.]
I recommend it to all bad movie fans, just don't pay a lot of money to see it.....
Somebody didn't listen to the commentary. Rent it again and check out Altman's commentary, wherein he gives specifics of how the movie used to actually make sense, and how Dr. Boll basically tossed his script in the ocean halfway throught the shoot and just made the rest up as he went along. Blame for the crappiness (and therefore the beauty that is this movie) lays firmly on Boll's shoulders. If you think it's a fluke, go see Alone In the Dark.
The zombies were like a cross between the ones in ZOMBIE HOLOCAUST and CITY OF THE WALKING DEAD. Pretty funny.
I love that one sequence where the chief zombie's life is flashing before his eyes. I may end up having to buy this one--thankfully I'm sure copies will be plentiful and cheap for years to come.
But really--had it not been for Boll this movie would have been merely mediocre and not truly bad. And personally, I thought this movie was way better than THE DEAD HATE THE LIVING, as far as entertainment value. At least they had more than 2 zombies.
I wouldnt trust Altman on This BR. He may just be trying to cover his ass by blaming someone who was even less talented and had more of a hand in the project's development.
Esp since Altman has wrote the seqeul all by himself I think and its pretty much the same story but with AMS agents showing up on the Isle to investigate. Theres a new leader zombie even for f**ks sake.
This is almost the same goddamn set up as the first film. Just with AMS agents investigating instead of a stupid college kids rave being invaded by the dead.
I gotta say it, I think it's hard to expect much from movies based on video games.
I'm always amazed when people go into these things actually expecting them to be any good.
I really shouldn't watch this then...
The Boll weevil is an idiot. Here is aquote from Hyper on HotD:
"Uwe Boll is the devil. There is a special seat in hell reserved for him."