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Categories: Commentary
Tags: dvd, movie, uwe boll, zombies
House of the Dead (Uwe Boll, 2003)
I thought I should give House of the Dead a chance.
I recently watched Flight of the Living Dead and thought it was okay, so I’m susceptible to bad zombie movies. Also Uwe Boll was decent enough to respond to some e-mails I sent him, so I figured I’d give another of his movies a shot.
Frankly, in the back of my mind, I was hoping that I could present a reinterpretation of House of the Dead – something akin to an Uwe Boll appreciation guide. That’s not going to happen.
House of the Dead is set on an island where an invitations-only rave (sponsored by Sega) has drawn dozens of spoiled rich kids. The main characters are late to the party and find the island seemingly deserted – until packs of zombies begin attacking. Along for the ride is a grizzled sea captain/gun smuggler (Jürgen Prochnow, whose character references both Das Boot and Star Trek), a stunted Gordon’s Fisherman sidekick, and the coast guard officer who’s chasing them.
House of the Dead has a standard twentysomethings vs zombies structure. The twentysomethings get to have “humpity-bumpity,” find powerful weapons, and strike dramatic poses before being eaten alive. The zombies are a mixture of nimble and shambling undead and are part of an elaborate, centuries-long plan to … well I don’t know.
House of the Dead is the type of movie which would have played well in a pre-Internet era back when audiences were happy to sit through bad horror movies because the R-rating guaranteed breasts and gore. Since breasts and gore are just a few mouse-clicks away, all House of Dead has going for it is a tenuous connection to the game franchise and a few interesting CGI-effects.
What is has going against it is bad acting, a questionable storyline, and the fact that neither the zombies nor the humans are particularly interesting. Honestly, if these people hadn’t been eaten by zombies, they would have just died in some other movie anyway.
Boll’s biggest problem is that instead of adapting a video game for a movie, he merges the two. When characters die, they pause dramatically while the camera swings around them and it’s no surprise when the movie concludes with a boss battle. What is startling is that House of the Dead is intercut with scenes from the game. Characters will move down a hallway shooting at zombies popping out the woodwork and then the movie will cut to a similar clip from the game. At least when the exact same thing happens in 1998’s Bio Zombie, it reminds the characters to aim for the head.
After watching the movie, I decided to listen to the audio commentary which is worth listening to just to hear Boll answer a cell phone call from Christian Slater for a few minutes.
Silvercube:
Lol, so you did!
His Bloodrayne movie was better than House of the Dead.
Oh, and Plane Dead (Flight of the Living Dead) was a decent movie. I liked the umbrella scene ^_^
Paul:
I think that was the same zombie for every grenade.