Customer Reviews

House of the Dead

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(27)
3 star:		(25)
2 star:		(26)
1 star:		(222)

 

 

There are people out there who will greenlight anything! That is the only explanation I can offer as to why the House of the Dead movie exists. And that's only scary part to the whole movie. It's so bad you'll go off movies forever. I seriously wanted to switch this off and turn the TV over to the Paint Drying channel but I was bound by my word to suffer the whole thing. I don't know why I do these bad things to myself.

As if it matters, here's the basic jist of the 'story'. A group of twenty-somethings are so desperate to go out to some island in the Pacific Northwest (Canada actually, because it's cheap) for the 'Rave of the Century' (which consists of about 8 people and un-raving music) that they pay some craggy old fisherman $1000 to take them there after they miss the main ferry. That's gotta be some rave to be worth all that dough! The fisherman warns them that the island is also known as the Island of the Dead (hang on-I thought this was HOUSE of the Dead?) and that they are all doomed yadda yadda yadda.

First faults here. Why would a tiny little rave (of the Century my foot!) be held on some remote island? Why would anyone willingly pay loads of money to get it? Why pay even more to the craggy old fisherman to take them back when they could just come back with the others?

Once they arrive they discover that the rave (which consists of about 2 tents, a small stage and a port-a-john) has been smashed, there's blood everywhere and no one is around. What would any rationally thinking person do? Run for their lives of course. But no, these clueless, obviously blind people decide to go look for them. Soon enough they discover an old ramshackle house that's 50 times as big on the inside as it is on the outside. Another half hour of stumbling around in the forest follows, as an excuse to kill of some of the lesser characters, and after much tedium they arrive back at the house again. The characters, like the movie, go nowhere.

Jammed into this ghastly disaster is a superabundance of gibberish dialogue, heinous acting, mumbo-jumbo exposition and zillions of clips from the once-popular arcade game of the same name. Why this was universally accepted as a good idea with the filmmakers I'll never know. The clips have no reference to any of the scenes and only degrade this trash even further, if that is at all possible.

It has nothing to do with the game save for some cheap, throwaway line at the end. It makes Resident Evil look like cinematic glory. Hell, even the Double Dragon movie seems multi-Oscar worthy in comparison to this junk. The only one who comes out of this with his dignity still intact is Jurgen Prochnow. He could have just taken his money and ran but he tries his best with the awful script and brings a tiny bit of pathos to his character. The rest of the cast suck I'm afraid. The characters are idiots and deserve to die.

Plus, if you cut out the swearing and pointless nudity, I see no reason why this film cannot be shown on Saturday morning TV. It's not frightening in the slightest. Pirates of the Caribbean is more scary than the skeletal bad guys in this film. And where did all those bad guys come from anyway? There were only a few people on the island to begin with. I guess this justifies the reason they chose to reuse footage over and over. I kid you not, you'll see the same zombie die a dozen times.

Who's ultimately to blame for that scandalous waste of celluloid? None other than director Uwe Boll. His control over the movie is non-existent. You can clearly the see actors have no idea what they should be doing and that the zombies aren't really taking it all seriously. The actors seem like they're reading off cue cards as they constantly pause in the middle of long sentences and carry on talking as soon as they see the next card. It all feels very unnatural.

Plus the film is shot like a two-part mini-series. I have indeed seen better TV productions. And don't get me started on the editing. The film is an incoherent babble with thousands upon thousands of pointless shots and dozens of meaningless camera pans. No real skill or talent was put into making this at all. It truly baffles and boggles the mind how movies this unfathomably bad can get made and George A. Romero can't even get anyone to take his calls. House of the Dead makes some idiotic reference to Romero in a lazy attempt to be 'post-modern' but it only irritates that they think THIS is in the same league as a REAL zombie movie.

For what it's worth, the 1.85:1 anamorphic picture looks great and the Dolby 5.1 soundtrack is clean but very unimpressive and only serves to pronounce the heavily over-used ADR even more. The DVD comes with extras but why torture yourself. Isn't this review warning enough? Stay away! You are all doomed I tell you! Doomed! Doomed!!!

This terrible movie is so poorly made that it goes down in cinema history as the WORST zombie movie ever made.The plot(if there was one) was a bunch of teens visiting an island and battling zombies.This is a very stupid,horrible time-waster.

Here's the reason this movie is so terrible
1.The zombie's makeup,it looks like toilet paper and ketchup(the fake blood at Wal Mart looks state-of-the-art compared to this)

2.The acting,it is so atrocious, you'll wish these amateurish actors/actreses would die off soon.

3.The slow-motion scenes:This really messed up the movie,Like the scene were all the teens were fighting and the scene was slow-motion was this The Matrix part 4 or something.

4.The plot:The plot and storyline was so badly written that a little kid could write a better script with a piece of toilet paper.

5.The editing:Some of the worst editing ever.Scenes from the video game should up in quick flashes and the editors didn't edit the movie well.

and the casting:Truly horrible cast especially the captain from DAS BOOT.What a shame.

Don't ever buy,rent,or steal this movie.Burning every copy of this montrosity would help the world.

Being big zombie fans, my girlfriend and I walked into this movie with high expectations. Mistake #1 - especially since this is directed by Uwe "best director ever" Boll. This movie which encompasses scenes from the video game of characters spinning around to die and the screen turning red - is quite possibly the worst movie of all time.

In fact, it has been 10 years since I walked out of a movie theatre and we did walk out of this pile of garbage. I will - the memory could be erased from my mind. Do not waste your time. Boycott all of Uwe's movies before its too late. Run, run fast from this DVD. The sequel is decent.

I want to know if the reviewers who gave this movie a 3,4,5 rating saw the same movie I did. This movie does not deserve a rating above zero, but being that it has to be rated anything above a 1 is too much!!!

There is nothing in this movie that is good at all. House of the Dead is actually a Sega video game, that was made into a movie. Just watch the game while you play it, trust me it's better then this cinematic piece of garbage. House of the Dead starts off with some young adults trying to go to an island where a wild rave is. What they don't know is the rave has suddenly been taken over by some relentless zombie. The party goers are warned that they should not go to the island, but they flash $1,000 bucks and the captain is willing to take them. During the party scene you get to see some scantily clad women, and a topless woman that has nothing to do with the plot at all. Just some senseless eye candy for the fellas. When the young group arrive to the Rave they wonder if they missed the party and go in searching to see if they can find anyone.

The action is somewhat okay, but the lines are so corny all I could do is groan. "Who said size does not matter" as the captain hold his weapon of choice. "Mine is bigger", officer bad actress would retort. I told you corny lines!!! When Howard's character is trying to give one of the female characters a cross for protection her line is "It's all right I'm on the pill" pathetic!!!!

Mixed in the story line is something weak about a slave ship. There is this guy who wants to live forever. He created some kind of formula for that purpose, but the downside is you will be a stupid, kung-fu fighting, quick moving zombie.

When I watch a horror movie I want to see the gore, and the action behind the killings. Folks are dying in this film but you don't see it. This movie is not scary, its not entertaining, it's not thrilling. The acting is terrible, the lines are corny, and the plot is simply pathetic. Why did some of the zombies not look like zombies? The make up team must have ran out of make up. How is it that Kirk lights a cigarette in his boat, it's raining, then in the next shot it' not raining, and then it' raining again the shot after that? Did the rain machine malfunction? The police woman tells Greg to come with her to hunt for zombies, and when the zombies appear she tells Greg to run. Why hunt them if you are going to run? Stupid, stupid, and more stupid. I actually liked the swimming zombies. In the actual game the zombies do swim. One thing that was very annoying were the scenes where the actual game was included. It was stupid, and it took away from watching the movie. Not that it really mattered being the whole movie was so lousy anyway.

If you want to watch a good zombie movies please rent one of the following:
Night of the Living Dead
Dawn of the Dead
Return of the Living Dead 1, 2, 3
Resident Evil

If you wan to see a good video game turned into a movie watch Mortal Kombat and Mortal Kombat 2.

Don't buy this movie, don't rent this movie. This is one time where you see a lot of bad reviews that you should actually take heed. PLEASE DON'T WATCH THIS SORRY FILM!!! The only horror about this film is watching it in its entirety. I feel bad for anyone who spent money to add this sorry movie to their DVD collection.

Uwe Boll has become immortal and will be mentioned for generations to come for making one of the worst films of all time. The plot, acting, FX, and dialog are laughable. I do find this film entertaining because it makes me laugh until tears are streaming down my cheeks. I agree with many other reviewers that the line, "You did all of this to become immortal, why?" "To live forever." is quite possibly the stupidest dialog exchange in film history. Other moments that make me laugh are: When the federal agent pulls an assault rifle out of Kirk's weapon box that is way too long to be in there, the kung-fu styling of Liberty, the lame matrix rip-off bullet time shots, and the zombie chuckling during the anti-climatic sword duel. The "not so" special effects are hilarious. I will always wonder what they were thinking while making this garbage. This is a fun movie to watch just for being so lame and laughable. Also, the scene with Smallville's Erica Durance at the beach is worth a view.

Folks, save yourselves from "House of the Dead." This is pretty atrocious filmmaking at its most insulting. Worse than even "Resident Evil." I know, I know... they are just videogames, not a movies (but if you check out the special features junk on the "House of the Dead" DVD you can find out the filmmakers had a much different, and much higher opinion of their effort).

"House of the Dead" offers lots of action but, as usual for today's young auteurs weened on MTV, it's pretty damn hard to follow and, after a while, it becomes repetitious to the point of sheer boredom. The acting is rotten (save for Jurgen Prochnow (it's a long way from Das Boot, ain't it captain) and the ever weird, always interesting Clint Howard (it's a long way from "Evilspeak" isn't it Coopersmith)), the special effects are decent (when you can see them, and hey... ALL special effects should be decent nowadays, shouldn't they... no points there). The direction is nearly non-existent, and the screenwriting is simply bad... but not bad in a fun way-- the way you can play drinking games with a movie or MST3K it to death on a Friday night around the hookah. I can't even really bring myself to call this a horror film, for not once was I horrified save for the moment, toward the end, where I thought to myself, "y'know, you've actually wasted nearly two hours of your life on this inglorious piece of poop, man."

This "film" has the temerity to namecheck George A. Romero and his (as one character aptly puts it) "Holy Trilogy" of zombie classics: "Night, Dawn and Day" natch. Well, 'tis true.. Romero is clearly sui generis when it comes to apocalyptic zombie horror. No need to run (as the current spate of zombies is wont to do), for there's nowhere to hide. Romero at the very, very least has an understanding of the basic rules of filmmaking that at least keep a viewer's interests alive for his dead folks... not only that, but he clearly understands the most basic rules of drama and character. I know many folks that didn't grow up with Romero's films might look at them with some derision regarding black n' white zombies in "Night of the Living Dead" or the baby-blue flesh and Crayola day-glow colors of blood from "Dawn of the Dead." Yet, Romero knew how to handle the gory violence in his films (over-the-top and with great shock-value) and, in the end, Romero wasn't simply striving for realism in gore so much as he was trying to make a valid (still valid!) point about how human beings act in a society under severe stress. He had something to SAY, and he was able to SHOW it without lots of lame-assed exposition that passes for dialogue these days.

Uwe Boll on the other hand, knows at least how to load a camera and keep it running (and running and running and running). But he has no sense of story whatsoever, no sense of pace, no sense of continuity and no sense of fun. This is a dreary exercise in crap filmmaking with a decent-sized budget... the kind of budget Romero should have had for his underrated films, but hey! at least Romero knows how to use a dollar wisely. Boll seems to be a kid on the ultimate sugar high as he spends money on fancy camera angles, weird point-of-view shots, CGI gore, and buffed out stuntpeople as decayed corpses... and yes, I know this movie is really just a videogame. In fact, the "director" even goes so far as to include shots from that videogame as segues to his badly choreographed action sequences. After the first few heads a-poppin' (yay, for gun violence) it gets rather dull, and then the action speeds up even more in order to keep the audience awake and, well, just plain confused from what I could see. Boll hits all the cliches just right... POV of the bullet going into flesh and inanimate objects, bullet-time cinematography (can someone please put a stake in the heart of this visual stunt once and for all?!?) and of course some good-lookin' young adults with sawdust for brains and the martial arts skill of Bruce Lee flippin' the bird to the laws of physics. It's inane, it's astonishingly lame and it's insulting to sit through, and yet I did, just so you can avoid having to sit through it too!

One thing about George A. Romero and his highly regarded trilogy of zombie films: the zombies themselves were often secondary to the living human characters they sought to munch on. They were scary because you could clearly see they were no longer reasonable human beings-- your family, your friends-- but just dead things with a devastating single-minded instinct for moving foward toward a hot lunch. It didn't matter if they ran or did Cirque d'Soleil-style acrobatics in order to get to you, or just simply lurched. The zombies were always a wave of nearly unstoppable slowness, and thus a very handy metaphor for everything from groupthink to mall shoppers on a Sunday afternoon. In "House of the Dead" the zombies are just fodder, nothing but magnets for lead projectiles... and yes, I know, it's just a videogame.

In the end, avoid this load of manure and check out Romero's films if you haven't yet (and, really, what self-respecting zombie fan has not seen them yet?!?). If you can't handle character building, drama and a fairly amazing story of the breakdown of society due to lack of cooperation among the living (and, yes, plenty of gore), then I say turn to either "Re-Animator" or, better yet, "Return of the Living Dead" which at least also manages to tell a story and offer up some halfway decent acting with he gore. Both of those films also offer copious amounts of nudity for you teenage horror fans who seemingly can't get close to the real thing... and yes, I know the videogame movie does too, but the other movies have the added benefit of actual skilled filmmakers behind the scenes, while "House of the Dead" does not. "Return of the Living Dead" actually gives the horror fan a shining example of what "House of the Dead" could have been in the right hands. One film is loads of fun (and hey, by the way, Romero's films offer fun and humor in spades lest you think they are simply turgid sociological dissertations), and the other is so much less than fun it could lead to suicide. I know I wanted to off myself just for getting through to the credits.

The films of Romero along with Peter Jackson's brilliant, low-budget "Braindead/Dead Alive," and the recent releases of "28 Days Later" (a quasi-zombiefest) and the hilarious (and quite bloody) "Shaun of the Dead" all offer far more entertainment value (key words here, folks) than "House of the Dead." These films all have some quirky things to say about life along with loads of furious bloodletting, while "House of the Dead" is simply a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing.

Wow was this a stinker ...

It was really god-awful. Horrible in a way that I can barely put into words. Terrible in a way that will make you feel like your IQ dropped after you saw it. Rotten to the point where you question if you want to live in a world where garbage like this can be churned up for the masses. Ranicd to the point where you wonder how anyone from this production will ever get work in Hollywood. It's such a staggering, earth-shattering, mind-numbing mess that you have to tell others to watch it to see for themselves the kind of depths this "film" can sink to.

You know it's bad when ...

... The audience is informed IMMEDIATELY who lives and who dies; robbing us of at least having a little fun picking out who will survive.

... The production team will earn an R rating for all the gratitutius topless scenes, but 90% of the killing will take place off-camera.

... The production team (I was cracking up over this) uses CUTS FROM THE VIDEO GAME as scene transitions.

... Some of the zombies running around in the background aren't in any kind of makeup.

... The outrageous number of times they used a matrix-style "bullet-time" camera pan. It must have been a dozen times, right in a row. I was actually starting to get a little dizzy.

... The leading actress can take a broad-sword RIGHT TO THE CENTER OF HER CHEST and survive the night with no medical attention.

It may be one of the top three worst movies I've ever seen. You've got to check it out ...

...this movie sucked. Shall I elaborate? Wow, um....hmmmm...

-The incessant cutaways to the video game to show that we're watching a movie based on a video game could be timed and were increasingly infuriating.
-The acting, if you can call it that, was...well no, you can't call it that.
-The story was.......
-...There is no story.
-I spent half of the movie trying to figure out where I've seen Ellie Cornell before (Halloween 4 & 5).
-What the hell's going on with the 360 degree pan on EACH SEPERATE CHARACTER in the 10+ minute shooting sequence?!
-Why, at first can you only kill the zombies by shooting them in the head, then 10 minutes later kill them by shooting them anywhere, including the leg or other random appendage?
-Why...am I wasting my time?

I feel sorry for Uwe Boll. Everyone basically hates him for releasing
such garbage and ruining the videogames he takes off with (though is
"ruining" the right term? This is, after all, House of the Dead...).
After watching the commentary on Alone in the Dark to hear what he had
to say for himself, I learned that Uwe Boll does not create such
terrible, terrible film out of a lack of caring or complete negligence,
he really does believe in every mis-cut one-dimensional broken piece of
action shot quipped with bad dialog he is responsible for.

This movie doesn't even need to have the commentary to feel this from
him. Immersed in all of it's terrible glory, one can still feel the
love Uwe Boll has from the camera as he misdirects scene after
horrible, horrible scene.

A rave is being held on the Isle del Muerte (and in this case Uwe Boll insults our intelligence again by actually having a character translate this to us: "That means The Island of the Dead!" He's the same character who states "Sprechen Sie English?" What a multilingual type!) Some characters pay over a thousand dollars to get to this party (why?!?!?!), but when they get there, no one's around. Irregardless, they go about dancing, drinking beer, sexing it up... but despite their total lack of ability to do anything anybody normal would do, like wonder where everybody went or whatever, they get pulled into the action anyways. Or whatever.

Rain falls on a boat but never on the island. Day and night seem to come whenever it feels like it. Zombies are scary by putting their hands on trees and flying. The action is either akin to that movie your younger brother shot with his friends in the woods behind the house, or it's faux-Matrixy bullet-time. There are boobs for no good reason whatsoever, and even more pathetically, men who are around those boobs who don't go anywhere with it because they're either insane (fisherman guy), idiotic ("I have to take a piss!") or just wimps, ("No way, the water's too cold!"). And mixed with it all is a lot of screenshots from the game, an idea that might have worked out if Boll didn't use it to transition between scenes randomly or whatever.

Good things this movie has, since it's appeal, action, continuity, editing, and dialog are terrible, are its allusions to other films... Romero gets a significant nod (what's a zombie movie without questioning whether Romero will come out with another zombie movie?), Scooby Doo, The Elephant Man, Lord of the Rings, I Know What You Did Last Summer, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, they all get their respective shout-outs.

It's better than Alone in the Dark. It had one scene that was at least fun to watch, the action one outside of house. Too bad it takes too long, being that the terrible song that plays entirely through during it ends... and a new one begins. But it was fun to watch. The rest of it is rather exhausting, trying to keep up with it, trying not to vomit from the absurd dialog, trying not yell at the film for wasting your time... Meh.

I could go on forever, but you have more reviews to read about it. You know you read these reviews to hear the many various ways people hate this movie! It's more entertaining than the movie itself.

--PolarisDiB

I've seen some bad movies in my time, but man this one really takes the cake. I can't believe this garbage was put in theatres. The acting is hilarious. I love how there are zombies all over, and one guys girlfriend even turns into one and attacks him, then gets shot repeatedly. The boyfriend just kinda shrugs it off. No emotion at all. NOTHING

Although my favorite part ever that me and my friend are now quoting non stop is the heartfelt scene where Curien is crying about how some lady died, he says (and i quote)

She's dead, i didn't save her.. IT WAS MY FAULT... Were you here? did you see it? Did you see watch them rip her apart?

SEE WATCH them rip her apart. I had to rewind to make sure i wasn't hearing things, then i put on the subtitles. Was that REALLY their best take? Man this movie is horrible and that's what makes it great. One of those corny ass flicks you can watch just to laugh at.