House of the Dead

Plot synopsis:
The film begins with Simon (Tyron Leitso) and Greg (Will Sanderson) planning to take a boat to an island rave party. They meet up with Alicia (Ona Grauer), Karma (Enuka Okuma) and Cynthia (Sonya Salomaa). Karma has a crush on Simon, but Simon has a crush on Alicia and Cynthia is Greg's girlfriend. When they arrive at the dock, they find the boat to take them to the island has already left. They hitch a ride instead with Victor Kirk (Jürgen Prochnow) and his first mate Salish (Clint Howard). A cop named Jordan Casper (Ellie Cornell) tries to stop them since Kirk is a smuggler, but they leave anyway.Arriving at the island party site they find it a deserted mess. Alicia, Karma and Simon start searching for the others leaving Cynthia and Greg behind. The two start to making out in a tent, but Greg leaves to urinate. Left alone, Cynthia is killed by a group of zombies. Meanwhile, the others find an old house. Inside, they find three survivors named Rudy (Jonathan Cherry), Liberty (Kira Clavell) and Hugh (Michael Eklund) who tell them zombies attacked the rave, killing everyone. The six go back to the rave site to get the others. Meanwhile, Salish is killed by the zombies after he leaves the boat and is walking through the forest alone and unarmed.Everyone else meets up at the rave site. Cynthia shows up but she's become a zombie. She kills Hugh by biting his neck out, but is shot by Casper. They develop a plan to leave the island using Kirk's boat. But they find Kirk's boat overrun by zombies. Casper and Greg leave the group to go find help on the other side of the island, but Greg is killed when he and Casper are ambushed by more zombies.Kirk takes the group of teens to a hidden a box of guns that he is smuggling so they can defend themselves. Once everyone is armed, they head back to the house. The front of the house is filled with zombies. A brutal and surreal gunfight breaks (resembling a video game) in which the heavily armed teenagers and Kirk kill many zombies that attack them from all directions. Liberty and Casper are killed in the ensuing fight while the rest manage to take make it inside the house.Kirk hears Salish whistling outside. He goes out and finds Salish as a zombie who manages to bite him before being shot in the head and killed. When more zombies swarm in from all directions, Kirk then commits suicide by blowing himself up, opening the front of the house and letting the zombies in. The remaining four teenagers lock themselves in a lab, but the zombies break in. Karma finds a hatch in the floor. She, Alicia and Rudy climb down while Simon shoots a barrel of gun powder, blowing up the house, a lot of zombies, and himself. They find themselves in a series of tunnels. Making their way through the tunnels, Karma is killed by zombies as she holds them off with her rifle so Rudy and Alicia can escape.But minutes later, Rudy and Alicia are captured by a man named Castillo who injected himself with immortality serum many years ago, creating the first zombie. Alicia and Rudy escape, blowing the tunnels up in the process, but they're followed by Castillo. Alicia gets into a sword duel with Castillo and he stabs her in the heart. Rudy decapitates Castillo, thinking the fight is over. But Castillo is still alive and his headless body begins to strangle Rudy. Alicia, who is barely alive, crushes the Castillo's head under her feet, finally stopping him. She then seems to die.Later, Rudy and Alicia are seen being rescued by a team of federal agents who arrive on the island and gun down all of the few surviving zombies. The ending narration reveals that Rudy gave Alicia the immortality serum and that is why she is alive... but also infected as she will become a zombie eventually.

Tags: comedy, gothic, murder, violence

Review:
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.
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.
Just like that, when I saw the first shot of Uwe Bolls masterpiece "House of Dead", with that guy sitting at the front of the house starting his introduction while trying desperately to sound like he just arrived from Sin City, I knew I'm in for a helluva ride.So, the movie starts like this - first the lead character says that everybody else is going to die.
To add insult to the injury, every few minutes there are shots from the video game this crap is based on and there is a cute game-over cut-scene for a few characters when they die.I seriously hate this movie.
I mean, critics hated Resident Evil, and while it may not be a particularly great film, I enjoyed it if not for the fact that it was just a fun zombie shoot-em up with a half decent plot.
 that I watched it STRAIGHT.Having played this sensationally gruesome video game and avidly trod the doomed rooms and dread passageways of The House, battling Chariot (Type 27), The Hanged Man (Type 041), and other impossible sentinels, my curiosity was piqued as to how the game would transfer to the movie screen.It doesn't.The banal plot revolves around a group of "crazy kids"  a la Scooby Doo  attending a remote island for a world-shaking "rave"  whatever that is.
(You kids today with your hula-hoops and your mini-skirts and your Pat Boone) After bribing a boat captain thousands in cash to ferry them there (a stupidity which begs its own network of rhetoric), they find the "rave" deserted.Passing mention is made of a "house"  presumably the titular House Of The Dead  but most of the action takes place on fake outdoor sets and other locales divorced from any semblance of haunted residence.A fallen video camera acts as flashback filler, showing the island in the throes of a  party?!
Seriously, these zombies are more ineffective than the Stormtroopers from "Return Of The Jedi", who get knocked out when Ewoks trip them.I suppose the film's writer, Mark Altman, having penned the not-too-shabby "Free Enterprise", felt compelled to insert a Captain Kirk reference, in the character of Jurgen Prochnow, who must have needed milk money desperately to have succumbed to appearing in this aromatic dung-swill.
Accordingly, everyone dies in due course, except for a heterosexual pair of Attractive White People.A better use for this film's scant yet misused budget might have been to send the cast through Acting School, although Ona Grauer's left breast did a good job, as did her right breast  and those slomo running scenes: priceless!
I've seen some incredibly horrific movies in my time but this takes the p*ss!Honestly I can't express in words how bad this film actually is.
From Romero's 'Dead' trilogy to '28 days later.' However upon watching it, you can quickly see what this movie really is.It is actually a music video that goes progressively faster and gets more and more and more gory.
Sure, they went as far as to actually put in quick video game clips throughout the movie, as though justifying any particular scene of violence, but there are dozens and dozens of games that look exactly the same, with the hand in the bottom on the screen, supposedly your own, holding whatever weapon and goo-ing all kinds of aliens or walking dead or snipers or whatever the case may be.It's an interesting premise in House of the Dead, with a lot of college kids (LOADED college kids, as it were, kids who are able to pay some fisherman something like $1,500 just for a ride after they miss their boat) trying to get out to this island for what is supposed to be the rave of the year.
The first thing that comes to mind about House of the Dead after watching it is that it has become increasingly clear that modern horror movies have become nothing more than an exercise in coming up with creative ways to get a lot of scantily clad teenagers into exactly the same situations.
They look badly out of place running around the woods in cute little halter-tops, but at least they THOUGHT they were dressed for the occasion.Clint Howard, tellingly the most interesting character in the film by far, delivers an absolutely awful performance, the greatness of which overshadows every other actor in the movie.
After the first time (at which point I found it pretentious and cheesy for a movie like this to have a shot like that as though it was something original) it is noticeable more for the technique of the shot itself rather than any dramatic meaning or creation of any kind of tension for the film.One of the things that makes a zombie film scary and gets you on the edge of your seat is to have them slowly but relentlessly coming after the living humans, who are much faster but getting tired, running out of places to run, and with a terrifying shortage of things with which to fight the zombies off with.
Since the rave never happened, and I guess since Uwe Boll thought people were going to be disappointed at not hearing any techno music in the movie, there's one scene right in the middle where all the humans are fighting off the living dead, and amazingly enough it turns into something of a music video.
You're just watching these shots fly across the screen and wondering what the hell the director was thinking when he decided that it would be a good idea to put something like this in the movie.
28 Days Later was also clearly an inspiration for this movie, it's just too bad that House of the Dead didn't do a single original thing, except for the somewhat moronic idea of putting in quick shots of the video game on which it is based, just in case you forget.
This is just not a good movie, but if you're like me and enjoy giving the "Mystery Science Theater 3000" treatment to bad films, you should see this one.
This is the only film I've seen that is made by Uwe Boll, I knew that he is probably the worst director ever who always makes films based on video games also that "House of the Dead" is one of IMDb bottom 100.
Then, you probably won't believe it when the characters start sucking each other's faces in this movie.Beyond the obvious issues that plague this movie like so many other horror movies, Uwe Boll elected to add scenes from the video game of zombies being shot, randomly whenever a character shoots a zombie in the movie.
Had the production crew turned into zombies when they came up with the idea of making it, because you sure have to be brain dead to find any enjoyment in it.I am a fan of most genres and enjoy "shoot 'em up" games, but merging the daft scenes from the game just made this ridiculous and unwatchable.As most have already said, there was hardly any script and the acting was weak.
It's evil!".We all know that Zombie movies are never going to be particularly thought provoking or full of meaning; at best they are a harmless two hours of action, blood and closet terror.
I had not played the game before, though was amazed that director Uwe Boll used original game play footage of first HOTD game to go with the movie and do believe in some of the scenes they actually did work well!
For example a scene when three humans are making an escape in an underground tunnel from the zombies, the use of a first person shooter, shooting zombies then straight away jumping to game form of that same moment, I believe did actually work very well for the scene.I give the film a 5/10 and unlike the other reviews I have read of people completely panning the movie.
Please just don't look upon the movie and think "Now that didn't go like that in the game!" cos believe me, a director does try their hardest to please the fans and I know must be one of the difficultest things to place on screen, including book - movie adaption, and adding new things in the movie which wasn't in the game I believe isn't a so bad idea other wise is too predictable if you already played the game.Anyway I do think anyone could enjoy the full on action and gore the movie has to offer and not just hate the movie of not being exactly true to the game, and of course all zombie films usually have a cheesy b movie story: in this case early 20 year olds being trapped on an island with of course zombies, as they must try and reach the House of the Dead....
Manos: The Hands of Fate is bad, but I respect Harold Warren for creating a movie without any kind of education in film.So, let's turn to House of the Dead.
Another Uwe Boll video game adaptation means yet another inept effort at making a watchable film.
This time we take what I'm sure is a heavily plotted, intelligent and character driven game that demanded a film adaptation (not really) and make it into a boring, generic zombie movie.
If there's one good thing that could come out of this film, it's a recommendation to any aspiring horror filmmakers to hire the costume and makeup artists that were involved in this movie.
Considering the fact that the acting is pretty weak here, maybe it was a last minute decision by director Uwe Boll to avoid as many scenes of the actors talking as possible.
Even that movie, which is widely accepted as a masterpiece would be laughed out of theaters, so what chance does "House of the Dead" have with its undead-like acting abilities and paper-thin story?
After watching this last night on DVD, I'm still not sure whether I would give this movie a nod of the head or deface the cover and use the disc as a coaster.To summarise what would be my review for House of the Dead, it would be along the lines of "cheesy goodness" as that what it exactly is: oozing with cheese that makes it good.After having played the game in the arcades, I was happy to have seen it on the new release shelf of my Blockbuster.
The title alone was enough to have the case stand out; the cover-art was exceptional; "From Sega's best selling video game" the blurb cried out to me; I was sold.House of the Dead is very disappointing in the sense that it has absolutely no storyline, no character development, no atmosphere and anything else that would make a horror movie a GOOD, at the least, horror movie.
There is no sense of "survival horror" that one has appreciated in the likeness of the Resident Evil game (or movie), 28 Days Later, Living Dead Trilogy, and such which truly ruined the atmosphere.
The ultimately low point of the movie was the middle where the 8 or so "strong" group make for the "House of the Dead", armed to the teeth with guns tuned in to "kick ass" mode, but takes an unnecessarily long time to walk 10-20 meters, even if they were killing the undead in the process.
As says the legend,long centuries ago ,a Spaniard witch who was banished from a galleon to the ghostly island and he experimented an elixir for getting the eternal life.Nowadays the young men discover that the witch is going on alive and he feeds of humans.Now they're trapped and the island has been taken over by ravenous and bloodthirsty zombies .They find eventually help of an agent(Ellie Cornell,Hallowen IV).Meanwhile they battle in an exciting fight with diverse weapons against hordes of killers zombies that are increasing in numbers and under control of nasty witch.Together they find shelter in a house but the dead keep finding ways to break through their defenses.The films packs action,terror,spectacular struggles and lots of blood and gore.
Based on terrifying and successful video game with same title.The movie takes parts of ¨Resident Evil I and II Apocalypse, Dawn of dead and Doom¨.Thus it belongs to sub-genre about cinematic adaptation video-play where the authentic protagonists are a speedy Zombies and as always persistent.
Zombies,like George A Romero have slow reflexes ,however here are rapid and more intelligent,aggressive,can move as fast and fierce as animals and as always hungry.The picture contains spectacular confrontation near the house and another impressive final fighting.Noisy hard rock and synthesizer score accompanies to the action film.The motion picture is regularly directed by Uwe Boll(Alone in the dark,Heart of America).Rating : average though entertaining..
HOUSE OF THE DEAD is nothing like; it's an awful film and even worse than the previous Boll film I watched, ALONE IN THE DARK.An erstwhile adaptation of the popular arcade game, this is a traditional zombie film which sees a group of unwary ravers falling foul of some zombies that emerge from the depths of the ocean to wreak havoc upon the living.
Other bad movies, such as 'When A Stranger Calls' or 'Premonition', will actually look much better when compared to 'House of the Dead'.
The script appears to have been written by an 11-year-old, who decided to include a scene of someone throwing up on a girl's chest and to include the hilarious line, "it smells like someone farted out here." The characters have no personality or depth and they do some of the most moronic things ever seen in a horror movie.
Worse yet, Boll actually thought it would be a good idea to include small bits of footage from the House of the Dead video game into the movie.
It's like Boll wants to remind us repeatedly that this movie is supposed to be based on the video game.
To all the directors out there: whenever one of your movies gets a bad review, all you have to do is remember that you didn't make 'House of the Dead' and you will feel much better.
Until i met a great educational flick called 'House Of The Dead' by Dr. Uwe Boll, there had been not a single film that i decided stop watching in the middle of viewing.
The main action seen was great and very stylized and the cheap video game sequences were funny and underlined another zombie waste shot.
The incredibly cheesy video games are better in every way than the terrible movie.
But I had a great time laughing through the whole thing.If you go into a movie like this expecting it to be good...
The film had fun soundtrack, awesome action scenes, Kirk, the captain, was my favourite character, the zombies didn't look too awful and there were some so bad, it's good moments.
If you don't believe me, do a web search on his name and look for the petitions to force him to stop working.ANOTHER BAD THING: This movie is so poorly conceived and executed that it not only notoriously splices clips of the original video game source material into the live action footage, but also accidentally reveals the device used to launch actors during an explosion made famous by the "A-Team."EVEN ANOTHER BAD THING: This flick gives zombies a bad name.
Soon after that I realized the director (Uwe Boll) made the movie like an amateur.Only a few characters have any development to them and they don't last long.
The movie never developed characters, so it was just like playing a video game.
People are failing to realize this was a independent film shot in Germany on a very low budget based on a script that wasn't the best in the world to begin with which was based off a video game that had cheesy dialog and a silly plot to begin with.However, even taking this into account you still may hate this movie as a lot of people seem too.
You have to know what you're getting into with HotD.I recommend this movie to anyone who likes any of the Evil Dead movies, Return of the Living Dead, or other video game based movies or Uwe Boll movies like Alone in the Dark or Bloodrayne or his older films like Heart of America..
While it probably isn't the worst film ever made, it surely is one of the worst zombie ones.At time it just seems like really bad music video.
It's even more astounding that 'sega' uses old house of the dead shoot em up clips from the game on the basis it acts as a homage or adds something to the movie.
This film is utter tripe, beyond being humorously bad like Troll 2.The second Uwe Boll started splicing in-game footage of Sega's House of the Dead into the opening sequence this movie was destined to be crap.
House of the Dead is no masterpiece and has several shortcomings but is not the worst zombie movie I've ever seen.
However, the makers would have been better off spending more time and effort getting a decent plot and script, rather than getting a contraption that took entirely useless 360 degree shots that didn't even fit into the action.This film makes Resident Evil look like a zombie movie masterpiece, I advise you not to watch it, it's not even "so bad it's good", it's just plain bad..