House of the Dead (2003)


REVIEWER RATING: 
4/10


I remember first posting about this movie years ago and thinking to myself that it might be a decent film. Then when I saw the first trailer I knew that it was pretty much going to be crappy, which is one reason why it took me so long to see it. I finally checked the film and it was just as I expected. Bah, what a waste. I don't know what the hell Uwe Boll was thinking.

Anyway, the story is very different from the arcade game that it's based on, but then again there wasn't much of a story to the game anyway. It's basically about a group of young friends wanting to go to a remote island where a huge rave is supposedly held. They hitch a ride with a couple fishermen, where one of them (Clint Howard) warns them that the island will bring them nothing but death. Naturally they ignore the warnings and head there anyway.

They arrive at the rave fashionably late, except instead of finding a large group of party-goers they discover a deserted island with nothing but the remains of what once was a great party. It doesn't take long before they discover that all the people from the rave are now zombies and ready to feast on the living. When I watched the trailer for this a long time ago, I noticed there was no footage of any sort of house, so I wondered if there was even a house in this flick. Well there is, but it's so damn small that it looks more like a cabin with a big-ass roof. House my ass!

The script for this movie is pretty bad. It seemed like something I could have written while in Jr. High. The dialogue is cheesy and so was the acting, but that's not the only bad part, because director Uwe Boll really F's up the film when he starts incorporating some video game footage... *sigh*... I didn't really see the point in it and it got annoying during this one main zombie fight against the survivors. Another thing that was annoying was all the stupid spinning-around-the-character moves the camera did. Man, it was decent at first, but when you do it to each character it just gets annoying and tedious. It even does it when they die, along with blood running down the camera, but that was just showing as if they were in a game.

On a plus side, the movie does have a lot of nudity from the hot chicks around the beginning of the film. The movie also had a surprisingly good amount of gore, which I personally thought saved it from getting anything lower than a 5-rating. Though, even the nudity and gore couldn't bring this anything more than "barely watchable" in my opinion. It did succeed in keeping me somewhat entertained, because I love zombies and the gore was good, but the plot was just too bad, especially towards the end when more is revealed as to why there are zombies. I hope that Uwe Boll's next film, Alone in the Dark, isn't as bad as this.

A horrible zombie flick. It has a good amount of nudity and gore, but in the end fails to gather up a good story. The directing is also very bad, because we're thrown a bunch of lame slow-motion sequences and stupid video-game footage, which really had no point in being there aside from just adding slightly more to the running time. Don't bother with this unless you're a big zombie buff.
OVERALL: 
A horrible zombie flick. It has a good amount of nudity and gore, but in the end fails to gather up a good story. The directing is also very bad, because we're thrown a bunch of lame slow-motion sequences and stupid video-game footage, which really had no point in being there aside from just adding slightly more to the running time. Don't bother with this unless you're a big zombie buff.


UHM is an independently owned site that relies solely on ad revenue, so we ask that if you like this site and what we do to help support by temporarily disabling ad block (if you're using one). If you'd rather help in other ways you can also send a tip by clicking here (or the button below). Any amount helps and will go towards the costs to maintain the site. Anyone who donates will also be listed in our thanks page.