House of the Dead

(2003) **

I think some day somebody will make a good movie based on a video game. I think this movie will do things differently somehow, manage to pull out the kineticism and punch of the game without sacrificing the storytelling or the characterization. And I don't think Uwe Boll will have anything to do with it.

JPX hauled an extremely reluctant me into the theater to see this in 2003. We had just seen Kill Bill and I was ready to go home, and for whatever reason he didn't mention his double-feature intentions. Seeing the debased quality of the film in the first few minutes (I was quite incensed at the character introduced as "pure eye candy," who I saw as more of an "eye turkey sandwich a little on the dry side"), I drifted into a pissy, fitful nap for most of the movie.

That being the case, I was mildly surprised on rewatching this to find a nugget of enjoyment here or there. I was more than a little taken with Ona Grauer, the bodice-wearing Hero Girl, who might win this year's title for "girl I'd most like to take out to dinner." Kira Clavell, the hot Asian chick in the flag-themed body suit -- also an appealing addition. And there was ample use of the Matrixy bullet-time effect, which I have a soft spot for after having worked on such an FX system myself in 1997.

Buuuut, that's about the limit of the good stuff. Boll's particular filmmaking style combines the schools of "I'm from Europe" and "they didn't give me very much money," both of which are workable places to start from. Unfortunately, Boll's talent for distilled mediocrity brings in the third school of "I don't give a rat's ass." The biggest disappointment by far is the so-called zombies. This isn't slow zombies vs. fast zombies, these guys are ninja zombies. We're treated to loads of shots of zombies running by spotlights in the woods with ominous whooshing sounds. They can jump really far, which was kind of neat until it got overused and tired (a common feature in this movie). They use weapons, they make faces at the live people to be scary -- in other words, they act like alive people. Other than the makeup, there's no attempt to really monsterize them, except for completely ineffective scary whooshing shots. The only thing about them that says zombie is their ineffectiveness in battle, which is mostly down to underthought blocking in the big carnage scene. I kept spotting zombies that were right next to our characters, holding weapons in a ready stance and just standing there because they hadn't gotten the cue from Uwe to move yet. Hackery and more hackery. And it seems you can take out zombies with shots to the chest or just kicking them. Whatever.

You could pick any aspect of this movie and spend time tearing it apart, but who has the time?