Reviews: House of the Dead

[JoBlo]

JoBlo's 3/10 review of HOUSE OF THE DEAD can be found here: http://www.joblo.com/houseofthedead.htm

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[MovieDragon]

Rating:2/10

I found this movie to be horrid. I'll break the review into a simple Pros and Cons format.

Pros:
2 nude scenes; a very attractive actress (the character Alicia); a cool scene involving a human face; a few weak jokes that were mildly amusing

Cons:
This could go on forever. First off, the movie was extremely corny. For instance, after a 20 minute zombie attack and the violent death of friends and comrades, one of the survivors practically cries over an acid burn on his cheek. "People will never look at me the same again." The burn was fairly mild and took up a small portion of his face anyways. Then scene ends with an even cornier kiss.
Secondly, the moviemakers thought it would be a cool idea to splice in video game footage and techniques. In action scenes, they would often cut to scenes from the game. They also had death animations for a few characters. The screen would turn blood red and the camera would do a 360 around the dead character. It may have appealed to some, but not to me.
Third, cheap makeup. The makeup of these zombies was a very low quality rip off of the Ghost of Mars makeup (which wasn't all that cool anyways, but at least it was fairly high quality).
Fourth, horribly cheap bullettime. Well, I strongly believe that horror movies shouldn't have bullet time or kung fu. Oh well, nobody listens to me. This movie had several scenes with cheesy slo mo axe dodges and bullet time jumps (and shoots). The movie also reused images several times. Not to mention flashing. At one point, the movie does a flashback sequence that tries to show the stress a character goes through before snapping. I thought I was gonna have a seizure. Very poor cinematography.
Fifth, corniness. I know I mentioned this before, butI can't stress how horribly corny this movie was. Take the corniest movie you can think of (Nightmare on Elm Street 4,5,6 maybe? Halloween 4,5,6,7,etc., PumpkinHead 2, Rawhead Rex) and multiply that by 3. Thats how corny this movie is.
Lastly, the acting was straight out of hell. When a movie's most experienced actor is the pot/crackhead from Final Destination 2, thats a bad sign.

I recommend going and burning all copies of this film, and then throwing the ashes into the ocean.

[MisterTwister]

The acting sucked, the video game video looked like crap but i still had fun somewhat. Great gore(and zombies) and some nice action. A good B-MOVIE. 6/10

[Mike]

HOUSE OF THE DEAD (2003)

Everyone kept saying how awful this movie was, but I didn’t think it could be THAT bad. Even if it was cheesy, it looked like it would be fun and entertaining. Well, I was proved wrong. The acting in this movie is easily some of the very worst of the year and the lines are hilariously stupid. I couldn’t believe my ears. Stuff like this usually makes for good entertainment though, something to laugh at, yet it was actually kind of boring. Don’t get me wrong, there’s still plenty to laugh at, but this movie just wasn’t as entertaining as it should have and could have been. If you’re going to make a bad movie, at least make it entertaining! It had too many boring moments. I’ve seen a lot better horror movies go straight-to-video.

I loved Ellie Cornell in Halloween 4 and 5, and was looking forward to seeing her in something again. But sadly, the awful acting of the other actors must have rubbed off on her, or she lost her touch (she was never this bad in Halloween 4 and 5), because her performance is bad too. Hopefully she’ll show up in a good movie giving a good performance soon. Of course, she’s nowhere near the worst of the bunch, and next to the others, she actually manages to come out of this unscathed. Clint Howard was downright awful here. Oh my god, I couldn’t believe how bad his acting was and the awful lines he said. One of the worst and most hilarious ones was “Why? Why? Why? They always ask why!” It might not sound that hilarious on its own, but when you hear it in the movie and how badly the line is delivered, you’ll surely find it hilariously awful too. Another one of the worst performances in this movie comes from Jonathan Cherry as Rudy. Everything he said sounded so bad, especially the ending voice-over. Tyron Leitso was also really bad as Simon. Instead of going through every person though and saying they were bad, I’ll just save myself the trouble and say that they’re all bad. That includes Jurgen Prochnow as Capt. Victor Kirk and Ona Grauer as Alicia. I did love Alicia’s hilariously ridiculous line “Why aren’t these zombies alive like the other ones?” (Umm, because they’re dead! That’s like going to a cemetery and going “Why aren’t these people alive like us?”) That line was so stupid and so funny. And when Liberty (Kira Clavell) yells out “There must be some kind of scientific explanation for this!” I was immediately reminded of something Anna Faris would say in one of the Scary Movie movies, and the way Clavell said it even sounded like how Anna Faris would say it. It’s pretty bad when a line in a movie sounds like it’s something out of a spoof. Of course, it’s hilarious nonetheless. While watching this movie, you can’t help but think that they had to have made it this bad on purpose. How could you not have? There’s no way you couldn’t know that the movie you were making was awful.

House of The Dead is proof that you don’t have to have any talent in order to be an actor. Anyone can be an actor, however, your talent or lack of will determine what kind of movies you’re in. For people that have absolutely no acting talent, you will be in movies like House of The Dead. If any aspiring actors out there think that they stink and will never get cast in a movie, watch House of The Dead and you’ll be given hope. I mean, this even got a wide release in theaters and didn’t go straight-to-video. Speaking of which, it’s pretty sad when movies like this can get a wide release in theaters but not actual good/great horror films like May or Ginger Snaps. I highly recommend anyone thinking about renting this movie that hasn’t seen those yet to rent one of them instead. Or if you want a zombie movie, get the far superior 28 Days Later.

House of The Dead has its entertaining moments, and the movie does look good, but that’s about it. I recommend skipping it.

P.S. Uwe Boll, please pull some strings and cast me in House of The Dead 2, I’m sure I wouldn’t be any worse than the actors in this one.

Grade: 4/10 (D+)

[krazy drako]

I just watched this baby on dvd. WOW! AMAZING. SIMPLY STUNNING! The acting was top notch, the directing was amazing, and the music.... DEAD ON!

The random video game footage added to the aura of awesomeness surronding this masterpiece of cinamatic genious.

People say Gone With The Wind is the greatest movie ever. In my opinion House of the Dead is!

10.5/10



*Note to reader, I was being sarcastic. Watch this movie with extreme caution.*


:(

[JollyG87]

Okay, that's it! I'm never going to let my friends get me to see a movie ever again! I've been hearing all the time, "House of Dead is cool!" Yea, well that's what they said about Super Troopers too, and you should all know how much I like that movie (i.e. 10 Least Favorite Movies). But I could understand them for Super Troopers. It did have some funny scenes, but it just wasn't my type of movie, but this, this I just cannot understand because there is nothing in this entire movie that I liked. This movie was so bad that it made FearDotCom (my previous least favorite movie) seem like a movie that was just bad. House of the Dead has everything wrong with it; the acting was beyond bad, I mean, did they pick these people off the streets? The zombies were so fake that I couldn't even laugh at them. Plus the script itself and the choices the director made are just beyond me. Why would you put clips from the video game in the movie? Usually directors making a movie off a video game want their movie to be fun, but they don't want it to seem like a video game. This Uwe Boll guy makes a huge mistake by putting those in there. There was one thing I could see that my friends enjoyed and that was the bullet time stuff at the end. To me, it wasn't very impressive either and it felt all wrong. Let me show you where I'm coming from: Okay, imagine a bunch of college kids at a party, then zombies attack and all of a sudden the college kids pull out machine guns and they jump in the air shooting their guns killing all the zombies like they're all military commandos! Now I hope you see where I'm coming from. Plus the bullet time was overdone! They had this guy that was going to blow up the building full of zombies and they use this bullet time effect as he shoots a bullet into the gasoline barrel and I just felt they could have done without it.

Overall, House of the Dead is THE WORST MOVIE I HAVE EVER SEEN! It's one of those few movies that makes all the previous bad movies you've seen, better.

House of the Dead- 0/10

[TheGodSon]

This is the ultimate drinking game movie. Every time someone attempts to act, drink one. Everytime you see a video game splice, drink 2. Everytime you see a zombie, drink 3. You'll be wasted in no time. Everytime you hear captain kirk (or something), chug a beer. This movie is hilariously bad.

0/10.

[moviedvdfreak]

this was by far one of the most god awful pieces of shit i ever sat through,i want my 90 mins back damnit.