House of the Dead - The Remedy

Trying to fix an Uwe Boll movie is like trying to repair cracks in the Hoover Dam using only your fingers. The fact that Boll gets even the easiest of film conventions wrong means that there is just far too much for me to address in one sitting. I may revisit this Remedy later down the line and add to it but for now I would like to address the key areas that would need to be fixed in order for this to be a passable movie. Having said that I can’t promise I can even do that but let’s see how we go.

There is one aspect of this movie that is quite blatantly obvious that it needs to be addressed and this is an issue that plagues most video game to movie adaptations. Boll is not the only person guilty of this, in fact I think Paul W.S. Anderson has done it more, and that is taking the movie on such a bizarre tangent that it does not faithfully portray the game. Keeping in mind that the core market for movies based on video games is going to be the fans of the video game it’s not too much to ask to have the movie reflect the game. Where I am going with this is that the game House of the Dead is about two FBI agents who are tasked to save the president’s daughter only to have a far bigger and sinister plot exposed. Compare this to the movie where it’s about some dead shit teenagers who are trying to escape zombies at a rave. Now as I said in my review the difference in the plots is summarized by the movie being a prequel to the game but given that link is tenuous at best it would have been a far better option to simply follow the precedent of the game. This is not to say I am condoning bringing anything original to a video game adaption. In fact it should be encouraged for directors to add their elements onto a franchise to not make it seem simply like a live action cut scene from the game. Having said that you do have to remember the audience you are making this movie for and in this case House of the Dead fans, with me being one, expected some elements that should have been integral to the movie.

Firstly and definitely most importantly is the foreboding sense of dread as you traverse tight corridors. A majority of the game is made up of you navigating tight corridors, turning sharp corners and all of sudden being confronted by zombies carrying chainsaws or fat bastards throwing oil drums at you. The sense of not knowing what could be around the next bend is exactly what the game is about and would have had the audience identify more with the movie. At the very least it would have made it a lot more thrilling than it currently is.

Secondly, the world of House of the Dead is not confined to zombies. There are leeches, swamp beasts and hulking behemoths that could have been introduced into the movie to give the audience that sense of recognition to the game. I understand that this movie was made on a budget and could hardly afford Avatar like CG effects but a bit of variety in the foes the heroes have to face would not have gone too far astray. While it would have been nice to include the hulking iron giant with the vulnerable point on its chest (the first boss from the game) but if that was not an option even having zombies wielding chainsaws would have sufficed.

Thirdly, this movie gets too confused by all the characters it tries to cram into the story. In the game there are simply two agents traversing the house instead of a litany of idiots giving thoroughly uninspired performances. With this movie I do truly believe less would have been more and having only two central characters and build them up for the audience would have at least had us giving a shit about them. I am aware that horror movies do need their array of meat puppets who are simply there to die but the movie could have gotten around this the same way the game did. At certain points during the game there are scenarios where a survivor is slowly being stalked by a zombie and it is up to you to save them. All you had to do was adopt this concept into the movie of having little moments where someone is in danger of dying and the heroes either do or don’t save them. This then satisfy the horror fanatics who came for their quota of blood and can also add dramatic elements as the audience is left anticipating whether the person would be saved or die. A little bit like saw except less predictable.

Ok, now that I have got the changes to the script and feel of the movie done I must now fix the biggest cinematic bungle of this movie. This of course being the idea of fusing images of the game into the movie to either act as screen transitions or even in a general scene. I think it goes without saying but this is entirely stupid and pointless. The only reason I could possibly imagine Boll having attempted this is simply to show how faithfully he recreated the game. This is all well and good but when your movie has absolutely nothing to do with the game it is somewhat of a mute point. These scenes give the movie are very cheesy feel which the game certainly did not have. Yes, later games such as House of the Dead Overkill had a more tongue in cheek feel about them but at the time the games were more tingling than tongue. This also applies to the other wipes and fades that Boll has put into this movie. The Star Wars wipe is blatant stealing and the blood spill wipe is just childish. Really, conventional scene switches would have sufficed, because your movie should be riveting enough without having to put a cacophony of shit in between.

Staying on that and there are a number of other odd conventions that Boll uses in this movie that are either unnecessary or not executed properly. Throughout the movie you get the sense that Boll is trying to make this movie feel like a game, which is not a bad idea, but he executes this the wrong way. For example the game over screens which consist of a 360 pan camera that dissolves into red. While this is a completely ridiculous idea if you are going to include something like this at least be consistent. The fact that only two people get this screen makes it seem more like a mistake than a convention. If every character that dies had this screen then we would at least understand it, and perhaps even get a little giggle out of it. Another element of this comes halfway through the movie in the little arming up montage. Having the characters name their weapons (Monotone can even identify the type of ammunition her weapon has despite it not being visible) just seems like a very vain attempt in making us identify weapons that are common in gaming culture. Really a better use of this would have been to simply for the characters to use them on zombies and have the viewer, who is most likely a nerd, identify the weapon for themselves. It can give the viewer a sense of accomplishment for having determined the weapon being used. All in all this movie did not require it to have a gaming atmosphere as we know it is based off a game and we came to watch a movie about it. So simply make a movie about it.

Leaving the gaming culture aside for a moment another important point Boll needed to consider was that he was making a zombie movie. This sub-section of movie has its own set of conventions that are to be followed. To not repeat myself I will not go back into detail about all of the genre rules that Boll broke but needless to say he broke pretty much all of them. While the zombies in House of the Dead do attack you with weapons their primary goal does not change. They still want to eat you! Very rarely do zombies obey a higher power and given that this movie offers no good explanation as to how or why the zombies serve the villain it would have been better to leave them as mindless drones with the one desire to feed. Another problem is that very rarely in this movie do the zombies ever seem menacing, most of the time they simply stand around waiting to die. The true horror of zombies comes in their unrelenting nature. Unlike vampires or werewolves who have their times of vulnerability where you get a reprieve the moment a zombies lays eyes on you that is all it cares about. They will constantly pursue you giving you no time to relax or catch your breath. A good example of how the zombies in this movie are anything but scary comes during the giant fight scene. Monotone’s partner shows up and he has been zombified. The two lock eyes and the partner simply stands there for about ten seconds before Monotone shoots him in the head. In the world of zombies the partner should have immediately rushed for Monotone. This is an obvious problem because if we don’t view the zombies as a threat then where does the horror in this movie lie? An overhaul of the zombies is desperately needed to invoke that sense of dread that would have been further enhanced by the changes in script style I mentioned earlier.

The last thing I want to mention in this remedy is the fight scene during the middle of the movie as the group try to get back into the house. I showed a friend of mine this recently and he agreed that it is one of the worst sequences in cinematic history. It is overly long, we timed it at eight minutes, insanely repetitive and a lot of the time there are obvious continuity issues. Fight scenes can either go one of two ways in a zombie film. They can either be stylized and slick with great CG and varying action sequences, the Resident Evil films are a good example of this. The other way is to have the survivors, rather than fighting the zombies, frantically trying to escape through tight shots and frantic pacing, 28 days later is great at this. For this movie I would have picked the latter, as the former can be quite expensive. So this fight scene I would have had the group trying to escape the horde through the twisting corridors of the house where certain members would be nabbed out of the blue and really build the suspense of the whole sequence. What I also would have done for this, and I know I have mentioned this a couple of times, but would be to have the sound of a revving chainsaw echo through the halls. Giving that chill that there is a lunatic wielding a chainsaw but having no idea where he is would again hopefully add that lump in your throat. I know this would be a bit Texas Chainsaw but for mine on of the scariest noises out there is a revving chainsaw in a horror movie. You wouldn’t even have to show the person dying at the hands of the chainsaw, simply having them finally run into them is enough because nothing is more grotesque than what we imagine in our own minds so I would have the viewer imagine the scenario of what happened. I would definitely cut down the time of the whole scene but changing that entirely boring gun fight into something far tenser I think would have been the best thing for this movie.

I know there is still plenty more that could be fixed but really I have exerted enough brain power on this shit than it deserves. The summary of this remedy is that this movie should have been far more frightening than funny. Sadly in the horror community at the moment this is a regular complaint so we do sometimes just have to grin and bear it. Next time I get my punch on and vent my spleen on one of the biggest issues I have with my beloved homeland.