The Token Uwe Boll Shot: House of the Dead Review

This is a very exciting time for me. At one point or another in every online reviewer’s life they have to review an Uwe Boll movie and for me now is that time. Most people should know who Uwe Boll is but for the benefit of those that don’t I will explain. Uwe Boll is a German film maker who specializes in making really shitty movies; I mean the guy is a genius at how bad these movies are. What makes it worse for nerdy reviewers, such as myself, is that he seems to have found his niche in making video game to movie adaptations. This obviously results in him shitting all over some of the most treasured games from mine and many others childhoods. He has made himself a target to the gamer community and as such we all need to take this rite of passage to move on with our reviews. After I knew I was ready for this I then had to decide on which movie I would review because as I mentioned in terms of finding a bad movie to review with Uwe Boll you are like a kid in a candy store. I have settled on House of the Dead for a number of reasons. Firstly this was the first Boll movie I ever saw so it is the one most prevalent in my mind. Secondly, and more importantly, I loved House of the Dead at the arcade. Growing up in Australian gaming culture, I’m not sure if this is applicable around the world, but House of the Dead was the one machine in the arcade that had a curtain around it because it was that intense. Now being an eight to ten year old boy that is simply an invitation to play and once you grabbed that light gun and were blowing limbs and zombie heads off it was awesome! A friend and I actually spent an afternoon finishing the game at the arcade so as you can imagine I have a lot of fond memories of that game so to watch Boll systematically rip it apart is a truly special experience for me. So enough with the wide eyed nostalgia and let me take you through the horror, and I don’t mean that cinematically, of House of the Dead.

Apparently is now working on a Tetris movie that will have a love triangle

As if the movie is preparing you for how bad it is the first shots we get are of the most important scene in the game, this being when the woman you were originally tasked to save dies and tells you to go after the main villain Rudolph Curien. You think this might be a powerful way to start the movie making the viewer relive that moment that defined the game unfortunately Boll has ruined this by distorting the colour scheme to make it look like a bad LSD trip. He unfortunately continues this throughout the opening credits showing various screen images of the game in this technicolour nightmare. It is so unappealing that you actually want to avert your eyes from the screen.

Anyway now that is over we are introduced to our main characters by the softest narration I have ever heard. I’m serious I tried to turn the volume up but the narration is still drowned out by all the ambient noise. Since I can’t be fucked to put the subtitles on, mostly because I shouldn’t have to, I’m not going to bother and learn these characters real names and instead give them names of my own, based off their obvious character traits. Therefore ladies and gentlemen let me introduce you to the main characters of House of the Dead; Broody, Vanity, Ditzy, Minority and Douche. Apparently they are heading to the rave of the century on an island. We are then taken to this rave where people a mindlessly swaying about, women are flashing their breasts (because mindless nudity can always help distract men from a shitty movie) and the one thing that proves that this has to be the most awesome rave ever, a giant SEGA sign over the stage. C’mon there is blatant product promotion and then there is this. I assure you the only other time that banner has been unfurled was for a “how else can we fuck up Sonic the Hedgehog” convention.

Back with the Scooby gang and they have realized that they have missed the boat to get to the island and ask a cliché boat hand if they can use his boat. How cliché I hear you ask, he has a hook for a hand, that cliché! Anyway we find out that he is the first mate to Captain Kirk (yes that is the character’s name and Boll must think this is really funny because he keeps referencing it). The actor who plays Kirk looks staggeringly similar Liam Neeson, so much so that they could be brothers. In keeping with naming my own characters I think I will name you after another brother of a famous actor who is doomed to live in the shadows so I present to you Donnie Neeson. Congratulations to all those who got the reference. Vanity tries to convince Donnie Neeson to use their ship to go to the island with $600. Donnie Neeson informs them that the island is known as Death Island and there isn’t enough money in the world to get him to go to that island. Vanity bumps up his offer to $1,000 and Donnie lifts anchor. I think someone needs to learn the art of haggling. As they are setting off the Coast Guard appear on the dock and ask to search Donnie’s boat. Donnie Neeson, being a fearless outlaw, guns the motor and VERY slowly gets away. The Coast Guard woman could swim faster than the boat moves but she decides to let him go, you know because chasing people is such a pain in the ass.

Cut back to the island and we find that two teens have slipped away from the rave to go for a skinny dip. Hmmm, that sounds familiar, two promiscuous teens in an outdoor setting partaking in a rude act. Seriously we just need a nutjob in a hockey mask to really make it seem like a rip off. Anyway the “man” of the two can’t go into the water because it’s too cold! C’mon mate, the shrinkage issue was explained to women thanks to Seinfeld so you have nothing to worry about. So anyway captain flaccid decides to sit on the beach and watch his hot half naked girlfriend from a distance. She suddenly becomes a little freaked out by really nothing as we are treated to an underwater shot of her while ominous music plays in the backgrou.. are you kidding me!! Ok the Friday the 13th similarity might have been a bit of a stretch but this is completely ripping off Jaws in every conceivable detail….. well minus the shark. Anyway the girl in the water is becoming increasingly concerned over the nothing that is happening while the guy has passed out on the beach for some reason. Wouldn’t surprise me if one beer is enough to put this guy out. The girl comes out of the water to realize that the guy has gone. She searches around and finds an old house, steps in and finds her boyfriend just before zombies rip him apart and finish her off. I like to think the zombies all sat around and were thinking “oh dude wait till she comes in and do it when she’s watching. She’ll wig out and it’ll be fucken funny”. After this happens we are shown one of the things that this movie is famous for. Uwe Boll in his infinite wisdom decided to use small cuts of the game House of the Dead as transitions. The first time this happens you wonder what the fuck just happened. These are so needless, amateurish and stupid that they defy logic. Perhaps this will be the only time; maybe he wanted to trial it out and then move on. You can only pray so.

Images like this lead to seamless transitions

The gang has now arrived at the nerd rave and find it completely trashed. Banners have been torn down, tents are shredded and debris is all over the ground but thank fuck the kegs are still connected. Only Broody seems to think something is wrong. I’m sorry but I don’t care how much of a party animal you are anyone would notice something was wrong but apparently they think it is a reason to celebrate. Broody being the only one with a modicum of common sense, for the moment anyway, decides to head off and find out where everyone else went and since Ditzy and Douche are practically doing it on the stage Minority and Vanity decide to join her. To transition out of this scene Boll seems to have opted for the classic Star Wars wipe. Good to see that common sense has prevailed.

Special needs hook is carrying a box of something into the jungle for Donnie Neeson while figures run around him. In light of this I want to address a very contentious issue within the zombie fans community and that is the idea of running zombies. Zack Snyder is the man we have to thank for this when his re-make of Dawn of the Dead introduced us to not just zombies that could run but could flat out sprint. This was met with a lot of controversy and while I can understand why purists might react badly to this I don’t have that much of a problem with it. My reason being that in Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead and to a lesser extent this movie, the zombies seemed to be newly reanimated and are mostly intact. These aren’t decaying corpses who have skin falling off everywhere. For the most part their muscles are still intact and zombies have basic reasoning and primal natures so why couldn’t a zombie in this condition run? And for all those people who are already starting to talk about rigor mortis and other death related ailments may a remind you the whole premise of zombies is not exactly based in the world of science and reasoning and certain leniencies need to be given. While I respect the purist way of thinking I hope I have opened your eyes to the possibility that running zombies are acceptable. Oh and while I was talking about that Hook died, but who cares the running zombie issue was far more important.

Back with Douche and Ditzy and they have decided to move their lust into a nearby tent so as not to offend the no one around. Douche announces he needs to take a leak, there is a joke there but I am above that, so Ditzy waits in the tent. Rustling can be heard from behind the tent and Ditzy is becoming increasingly concerned. She calls out to Douche to cut it out when all of a sudden Jason jumps in and oh wait, sorry thought I was watching Friday the 13th there. I mean the movies are so similar it’s sometimes hard to tell. Anyway zombies come and rush the tent and Ditzy is dead.

Jason plans to send a message to Uwe Boll, personally.

The other three have stumbled across the same house that appeared earlier with the skinny dippers. Am I to assume this is the house from house of the dead because if so then the movie should have been called shack of the dead. Anyway they decide to go in to investigate, Broody opens the door and is about to walk in when Vanity spots a guy hiding behind the door with an axe and tackles him. I would like to point out that Vanity was behind Broody and had no way of seeing behind the door so I guess we just have to settle on the fact that Vanity has X-Ray vision, or Boll is a complete tool. I think I’ll take the latter. After the near homicidal accident we are greeted to three survivors of the rave who have been hiding in the house. These are Asian, Comic Relief and Obvious Hero. Apparently Broody and Obvious Hero know each other; how? why? Who cares Boll has more breasts to show us to take our minds off those trivial facts. Comic Relief breaks out his handheld camera to show what happened at the rave. Obvious Hero says that these were zombies, how do they know this, because Comic Relief has seen Night, Dawn and Day of the Dead. That’s right the greatest zombie movie of all time is mentioned in this piece of crap. I think I threw up in my mouth slightly first time I heard that. Let’s just move on! Broody tells the others that they have a boat and can get off the island but they’ll need to go back to get Douche and Ditzy. They agree and head off and you know this is going to end well for the gang. Before leaving this scene Boll has gone back to the game shot transitions, I guess he thought the wipes were a bit too star wars. That’s cool I’m sure he has picked his favourite transition shot now.

Back with Donnie Neeson where he is enjoying a cigarette on his boat when we seen scenes of zombies swimming towards his boat. Ahh, another contentious issue, I guess you are wondering what my reaction is to swimming zombies. Well I think it is complete bullshit and should have been desperately rethought. Running zombies I can hack as that is more of a primal instinct whereas swimming is something that must be learnt and zombies do not have that sort of reasoning power. Land of the Dead showed this perfectly by the zombies, instead of swimming, walking across the bottom of the ocean. That is how you are supposed to do it; then again this is Uwe Boll so I’m not surprised if they weren’t capable of hi-jacking a boat. After this scene we transition with the Star Wars wipe again, for fuck’s sake Boll pick a transition and stick with it!!!!!

The gang arrive back at the site of the rave and Douche and Ditzy are nowhere to be found. Some commotion can be heard from an upturned porta-loo. They tip it back up to find Douche covered in shit, I’ll let you insert your own joke there, and saying that the loo just tipped over on him. At that moment zombified Ditzy leaps out and snaps Comic Relief’s neck. Weird, normally I thought that zombies FUCKEN ATE PEOPLE!!! They aren’t Rambo or anything of that nature they simply bite people. Anyway the Coast Guard woman, who I will simply name Monotone after her style of acting jumps out and blows Ditzy away. Right after blasting her into next week she turns to others and asks “what the fuck was that?” I see that you subscribe to the shoot first ask questions later philosophy, good one to live by not so much back chat. Douche is clearly bummed by the death of his love as he now can only speak in monotone as well. Good lord I never knew bad acting was contagious, I should warn the CDC. They all decide to seek out Donnie’s boat to get off the island.

The gang arrive at Donnie Neeson’s boat to find him fending off zombies trying to climb aboard. Vanity runs up the pier to help Donnie but then realizes this was a mistake as there are still zombies in the water. Vanity tries to swim back while Monotone takes pot shots at the zombies chasing him. I think it’s worth mentioning that for some unknown reason Boll decided to add underwater shots of the bullets missing the zombies. Not sure what this accomplishes but anyway let’s just roll with it, the movie will be over sooner that way. Again, for no reason that is apparent to me, Asian decides to wade into the water to try to save Vanity. She is completely unarmed and he is a fair way out but you still have to admire that enthusiasm. As you probably guessed a zombie sneaks up behind her and I wish I was joking here but the zombie tries to drown her. For the benefit of Boll, who obviously is a complete dickhead, there are only two golden rules surrounding zombies. Number 1 is that they can only die by being shot in the head and Number 2 is that they FUCKEN EAT PEOPLE!!! Even if you have never watched a zombie movie before you still know that is what zombies do so to have something like this is inexcusable, even for Uwe Boll which is saying something. Anyway someone saves Asian, I don’t care who because I’m still too angry over the whole drowning thing. Anyway Vanity starts taunting a supposedly dead zombie only for it to raise its head and spit acid at him. Oh yeah didn’t I mention these zombies are fucken Xenomorphs now. Hey Boll here’s a good idea, HAVE AN ORIGINAL THOUGHT!!! As you can imagine this is bad for Vanity and suddenly he regresses to being emo. Broody asks what is going on and Donnie Neeson informs them of an old fable about the island. That’s right kids it’s flash back time.

I can see the relationship between Alien and Zombie, oh wait no I can't!!!

The screen suddenly turns all grainy and rustic, I mean how else are suppose to tell this was in the past apart from the period style clothing, the galleon in the opening shot or the fact that Neeson explains this happened hundreds of years ago. We are introduced to our main villain, I wish I could tell you his name but when Donnie says it the words are drowned out by a door opening sound effect. I know he is Spanish so let’s call him that. Spanish is apparently being extradited from Spain because of some unholy experiments he was performing. He baits the officer in charge of him to come closer and then strangles him with his chains. He then apparently managed to kill the entire crew on his own and run the ship aground on the island and no one has seen anything since. After our little trip down memory lane Obvious Hero tries to think of a scientific explanation for the zombies but is immediately shot down by Broody who thinks that it is easier for everyone to accept that they are zombies and move on. I love the fact that this movie is so lacking in depth that they couldn’t even think of dialogue for an alternate explanation. This is normally a staple for zombie movies but Boll has much more stupid things to do. They decide to go back to the House for cover until help arrives so Monotone and Douche go off to find Monotone’s partner who was left on the boat while the others go off to find Donnie Neeson’s guns, oh yeah Donnie is a smuggler. Yeah the movie only decided to tell me now.

While Douche and Monotone are looking for Monotone’s partner they are attacked by zombies, surprise surprise. They split up and we are then treated to a bizarre close up of Douche’s face as he is running away followed by close ups of the zombie’s faces. I really do sometimes think that Boll is an eight year old child playing with the controls in the editing software. Douche decides to hide under a tree and perfectly reenact the hiding scene from the first Lord of the Rings movie, it is mirror perfect! However zombies are too smart for that and end up catching him. The next shot is a 360 pan of Douche which dissolves to red. I mean what could that be and HOLY SHIT that was a game over screen. What else could it be, Boll has included game over screens in this movie!!! I am seriously floored by how stupid this is. I mean this movie is not based on the game whatsoever and yet he is trying to give the movie a game feel. It just doesn’t fit.

At least doing it this way gets the message across quicker.

Now that I have recovered from that small pocket of insanity Monotone rejoins the others and tells them that Douche is dead and again they all seem a little bummed by it. After an arming up montage they reach the house and find it swarming with zombies. This begins the crescendo of shitness as this gun battle is so long, uninteresting and badly shot that it makes the rest of the movie seem like a masterpiece. Where do I begin with this scene? Well firstly the entire time this hideous rock/rap music is playing in the background to take away any drama that this scene could have had. Secondly, given the success of the game over screen Boll has decided that every character needs their own slow motion 360 pan shot. What makes these worse is not only are they not interesting or relevant in anyway but they are also incorrect. For both Broody and Minority’s pan arounds they are clearly holding different guns then what the establishing shot had them holding. What I mean by this is that in Broody’s one it opens on her aiming her shotgun and then in the next shot, which is the pan around she is holding a handgun. I have no idea how anyone fucks this up especially when you have obviously decided to make this a key point of the fight. The biggest problem however is simply how uninteresting this whole scene is. All it has anyone doing is blindly shooting at zombies (in the chest I might add so he has broken the other golden rule) and jumping around. Nothing really gets accomplished and I’m not joking about how long it is. The entire scene goes for around fifteen minutes! I know I am yabbering on about this scene a little but you simply have no idea how bad it is. There are even some weird moments in it to. Broody blows up a well for no discernable reason but the weirdest one comes when Asian dies. Asian is busy fly kicking all the zombies to death when she is suddenly rushed by zombies and screams out to Obvious Hero. This causes Obvious Hero to have a sudden flashback of scenes we have already seen in the movie that led up to this moment, including scenes of places he never was. After this Obvious Hero simply rejoins the others, well hold on what the fuck was the point of that flashback. He didn’t psyche up and save her or condemn himself for not being able to do anything. He just had it like a bad migraine and moved on. Boll you can’t simply add shit wherever you want, it has to have a purpose!!! Oh and by the way Asian gets her own game over screen, I guess Boll thought he was being ground breaking or some such shit. Another thing I should mention about this scene, yes it’s that bad, all through the fight Boll has inserted images of the game during the action. I assume this is to show us how faithfully he has re-imagined the game but when your movie isn’t based on the game in the first place it’s just completely pointless and I tell you after fifteen minutes of this I found myself hating the game I once loved. This my friends is the power of Boll.

Now that is over Obvious Hero and Monotone find a way into the house through a window, oh yeah the house was locked for some reason despite that fact when they left it would have been open! Zombies catch Monotone and hack off her legs with axes. It would seem these zombies do everything except eat people. Obvious Hero again is bummed someone is dead and goes to open the door. Donnie Neeson gets caught and a zombie starts gnawing on his leg. Hoofuckenray!! A zombie has finally tried to eat someone and it only took an hour. Donnie Neeson says that the kids should start worrying about themselves and leave him. Then comes my favourite line in the entire movie. Broody discovers a book on a shelf and says “hey this looks old, maybe it can help us”. I think that is so inspired in how uninspired it is. What kind of explanation is that? It would be like Indiana Jones raiding a temple and saying “that looks old, it could be valuable”. Surely it doesn’t take much brain power to quantify how useful something might be. All the book turns out to be is a journal from Spanish guys ship that ran aground so it doesn’t help that much but why not have the line be “hey I found a ship journal, perhaps it relates to the story Donnie Neeson just told us”. At least that is based on some logic! The group go to the back of the house and find an old science lab where Broody looks into a glass case to have a hideous zombie sperm attack the glass. Minority does the right thing and shoots at it despite the fact it was completely encased in glass and couldn’t possibly have harmed anyone!! This awakens some nearby corpses as they find out that it was the blood the sperm was encased in that revives them. Thank you Boll for that very weak explanation into the zombie phenomenon when before you clearly had no interest in doing so, bravo.

Donnie Neeson hears a familiar voice outside and walks over to the door, his legs miraculously healed, and finds that Hook has been zombified. Neeson does the honourable thing and lights a stick of dynamite and blows himself up to save the others, how noble. This backfires however and it simply leaves a giant hole for the zombies to pour into. The remaining gang find a secret door to the underground and all decide to go down. Vanity however is caught by a zombie in the weakest chokehold you have ever seen and instead of trying to wrestle free he decides to blow himself up with a barrel of gunpowder nearby to save the others. Wow just had a wicked case of déjà vu just then.

The remaining three are pretty bummed that Vanity is dead but oh well we must press on. They continue through the catacombs as Obvious Hero puts it, to make it seem more gamey I’m led to believe, when the group is set upon by moss zombies, I.E. zombies covered in moss. Now believe it or not these are actually enemies in the House of the Dead game and if you don’t believe me that’s fine because Boll has kindly overlaid the footage from the game of the moss zombies to prove this. It was annoying in the monotonous fight scene and it is still annoying. Minority decides to do the noble thing and sacrifice herself to save the others aww c’mon! You can’t do that three times in a row. I mean you seriously couldn’t think of another way to kill these characters off. This sort of death only works once and only for a character that the audience has developed an emotional bond to, anymore than that and we simply see it coming and don’t have emotional interest. Also I must ask why have none of the characters past Asian had game over screens, I mean if you are going to have a theme throughout the movie even given how shitty this one is at least stick to it. Douche arrives to kill off the remaining moss zombies, wow he must have put in another $3 for a continue. Douche leads the others into a torture room where he rips of the Douche mask to reveal himself as Spanish. He more resembles a patchwork quilt than a man now but he has his zombie lackeys hold down Obvious Hero while Broody is obviously petrified with fear. Now comes my second favourite line in this movie. Obvious Hero says “You did all this just so you could become immortal, why?” to which Spanish replies “to live forever”. Everyone please with me, WELL NO SHIT!!

Unfortunately for Spanish decaying corpses don’t make good muscle and Obvious Hero breaks free, kicks Spanish in the nards and grabs Broody. He lets off a couple of grenades as they escape to the forest. The explosion goes off but Spanish will not be defeated that easily and appears to attack our two heroes with a sword. Boll brings back the 360 pan camera for this fight to make it even more awkward, thanks Uwe I really missed that nauseating feeling. During the fight Broody gets stabbed in the chest, you know stabbed in the part of your chest that doesn’t bleed. This angers Obvious Hero who cuts Spanish’s head off. Being immortal however Spanish’s headless body starts to choke Obvious Hero. Broody decides she isn’t dead and walks over to Spanish’s head and squashes it while whimpering the catch cry “game over”. That would be really effective if this movie had referenced a game in anyway but it doesn’t so it instead comes off completely retarded. Broody decides now she is dead.

The FBI arrive, for some reason, and rescue Broody and Obvious Hero. They ask for Obvious Hero’s name (which has been Rudy the whole time) and he responds with Rudolph Curien. OOOOOHHHHH, so this is a prequel to how Curien became an evil genius. Hey no wait that makes no sense. If he went through such a traumatic event and was clearly on the side of good why on earth would he turn evil, if anything from this back story Rudy should be the hero of the games in sort of a Chris Redfield/Leon Kennedy sort of way. That’s great Boll not only did you mess up the movie but you did it to mess up the back story of one of the main characters from the game, well done!

Boll's message to all of his fans

Well that is House of the Dead and what else can you say apart from the fact it is a steaming pile of rubbish. There a plot holes everywhere, it defies the most sacred conventions of zombie movies and worst of all it has absolutely nothing to do with the game it is based on. So next is the herculean task of trying to make this into a passable movie, lord help me.