Dilorenzo
09-22-2005, 12:59 PM
House of the Dead (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0317676/)
This film really should have some kind of warning on it. "Not safe for human eyes" would be nice.
"So, Mark" you may well ask, "why did you put yourself through the torture of watching an hour and a half of what you KNEW was going to be a bad film?"
Well, the answer is threefold. I wanted to see if, indeed, Uwe Bolls work was as bad as it was made out to be- Fandom having a habit of overblowing things. I wanted to be able to say to Dr. Boll, if I were ever to meet him, truthfully, that the internet didn’t hate your movie, people did- and that is because it was so very bad. The last reason, well, I was looking for another film to review, and since most of the others have been fairly good films, I wanted to give myself a challenge.
This is a challenge I will fail- there is nothing I can possibly say to make this film seem good. Fandom didn't exaggerate. And now, if I ever meet the good (HA!) Doctor, I can ask him to please go live in a cave somewhere and never inflict pain upon the world again.
The first half starts out with the main character introducing the other characters in a voiceover. This is where you will first feel fear. And not the good kind.
Every single one of these characters is a one dimensional version of someone that has been not only written, but acted better a thousand times over. Ditzy blonde. Sporty jock. Tough but vulnerable chick. Idiot good looking guy who you know - you just KNOW - will wind up doing something stupidly heroic. There were probably others, but hell, I can't remember them right now. It's a sign of how unlovable and uninteresting these people are that I can only remember one character name, and THAT only because he was Jürgen Prochnow. (His name? Captain Kirk. Oh, and isn't there such a witty joke attempted about that).
So, I sit there, through this dull attempt at characterisation, intercut with scenes of the "biggest rave of the century." The biggest rave of the century seems to involve one bar, a few people dancing to bad music, some breasts, and a big sega logo. Some bad haircuts too, but from what I remember, that's fairly true to life.
But then, what is this I see? Oh, it's just a scene recreated in every teen slasher flick. Oooh, promiscuous girl and drunk guy- are they gonna live happily ever after? Hmmm, let me think.
So, suffice it to say, there's a bloodbath, which we don't see. The only apparent sign of said bloodbath is a t-shirt covered in blood which provokes one of the latecomers into saying "I think something bad happened here." Needless to say, noone listens, and stupidity ensues.
Gah, no more, I can't bear to talk about the plot anymore. Yes, there is a plot, but it's too painful to talk about. Even thinking about it is almost giving me some kind of embolism.
But if even all this doesn't convince you that this isn't a film you shouldn't go and see, let's talk about the action scenes. I mean, it's an action movie (despite being advertised as some kinda horror), and as we all know, everyone loves some good dumb action now and then. Guns, grenades, zombies- exactly how can you go wrong?
I'd love to ask Dr. Boll the same thing. How is it that you can go wrong with something like this? How can you fail to illicit any kind of emotion in a viewer with an action sequence? Yet manage it he does.
The big spectacular action sequences features everyone (tooled up and expert in using guns after a 30-second, well, tooling-up-sequence), walking in a line towards a horde of zombies, shooting. This is intercut with scenes from the game which have nothing to do with what is actually happening in the film. Bites appear on the videogame screen when noone on film is getting bitten. Reload appears when noone runs out of ammo- except at the worst possible moment, of course. The camera slides around clumsily, cutting between slomo rotates (alá The Matrix bullettime), featuring characters firing guns they aren't actually holding during the rest of the action sequence.
Finally, though, the film comes to a laboured conclusion. I'm not going to talk about the end, because I feel I now have to go and scrub my brain clean. With wire brushes and bleach.
And so we actually come to the end of the review, and the fourth reason I watched this disaster. I watched it, so you wouldn't have to. So please - just don't.
Conclusion. Urgh. Just Urgh. Why did they continue giving this man money?
-4/5 (-4 is only because of Jürgen Prochnow. The man was in Das Boot after all)
This film really should have some kind of warning on it. "Not safe for human eyes" would be nice.
"So, Mark" you may well ask, "why did you put yourself through the torture of watching an hour and a half of what you KNEW was going to be a bad film?"
Well, the answer is threefold. I wanted to see if, indeed, Uwe Bolls work was as bad as it was made out to be- Fandom having a habit of overblowing things. I wanted to be able to say to Dr. Boll, if I were ever to meet him, truthfully, that the internet didn’t hate your movie, people did- and that is because it was so very bad. The last reason, well, I was looking for another film to review, and since most of the others have been fairly good films, I wanted to give myself a challenge.
This is a challenge I will fail- there is nothing I can possibly say to make this film seem good. Fandom didn't exaggerate. And now, if I ever meet the good (HA!) Doctor, I can ask him to please go live in a cave somewhere and never inflict pain upon the world again.
The first half starts out with the main character introducing the other characters in a voiceover. This is where you will first feel fear. And not the good kind.
Every single one of these characters is a one dimensional version of someone that has been not only written, but acted better a thousand times over. Ditzy blonde. Sporty jock. Tough but vulnerable chick. Idiot good looking guy who you know - you just KNOW - will wind up doing something stupidly heroic. There were probably others, but hell, I can't remember them right now. It's a sign of how unlovable and uninteresting these people are that I can only remember one character name, and THAT only because he was Jürgen Prochnow. (His name? Captain Kirk. Oh, and isn't there such a witty joke attempted about that).
So, I sit there, through this dull attempt at characterisation, intercut with scenes of the "biggest rave of the century." The biggest rave of the century seems to involve one bar, a few people dancing to bad music, some breasts, and a big sega logo. Some bad haircuts too, but from what I remember, that's fairly true to life.
But then, what is this I see? Oh, it's just a scene recreated in every teen slasher flick. Oooh, promiscuous girl and drunk guy- are they gonna live happily ever after? Hmmm, let me think.
So, suffice it to say, there's a bloodbath, which we don't see. The only apparent sign of said bloodbath is a t-shirt covered in blood which provokes one of the latecomers into saying "I think something bad happened here." Needless to say, noone listens, and stupidity ensues.
Gah, no more, I can't bear to talk about the plot anymore. Yes, there is a plot, but it's too painful to talk about. Even thinking about it is almost giving me some kind of embolism.
But if even all this doesn't convince you that this isn't a film you shouldn't go and see, let's talk about the action scenes. I mean, it's an action movie (despite being advertised as some kinda horror), and as we all know, everyone loves some good dumb action now and then. Guns, grenades, zombies- exactly how can you go wrong?
I'd love to ask Dr. Boll the same thing. How is it that you can go wrong with something like this? How can you fail to illicit any kind of emotion in a viewer with an action sequence? Yet manage it he does.
The big spectacular action sequences features everyone (tooled up and expert in using guns after a 30-second, well, tooling-up-sequence), walking in a line towards a horde of zombies, shooting. This is intercut with scenes from the game which have nothing to do with what is actually happening in the film. Bites appear on the videogame screen when noone on film is getting bitten. Reload appears when noone runs out of ammo- except at the worst possible moment, of course. The camera slides around clumsily, cutting between slomo rotates (alá The Matrix bullettime), featuring characters firing guns they aren't actually holding during the rest of the action sequence.
Finally, though, the film comes to a laboured conclusion. I'm not going to talk about the end, because I feel I now have to go and scrub my brain clean. With wire brushes and bleach.
And so we actually come to the end of the review, and the fourth reason I watched this disaster. I watched it, so you wouldn't have to. So please - just don't.
Conclusion. Urgh. Just Urgh. Why did they continue giving this man money?
-4/5 (-4 is only because of Jürgen Prochnow. The man was in Das Boot after all)