Jordan and Greg run afoul of some
zombies, leading to a HILARIOUSLY bad sequence featuring the actors
running straight into the camera while it's held about a foot away
from their faces. Greg manages to evade the zombies by hiding under
a hill while they sniff around overhead in a shot that looks
SUSPICIOUSLY like when the Hobbits did the exact same thing with the
Ringwraiths in Lord of the Rings. Boll must have really liked
that movie a lot. This only buys him a few minutes though, as he
eventually gets surrounded by the zombies who can now leap into frame
like Spider-Man. They dogpile on him to put him out of our misery,
but then he's... standing all alone in the forest while the camera
rotates around him?! Ohhhhhh, my head hurts so bad right now.
Back to Kirk and the gang of idiots,
where they've decided to return to the cabin for some reason. Jordan
returns, having written off Greg as a lost cause when she found the
pistol she gave him lying on the ground. Kirk takes everyone to one
of his crates so they can arm up, cracking “Let me introduce you to
my little friend!” as he opens it up. Hey now Kirk, you're in my
good graces, don't go fucking it up with shitty one liners ripped off
from infinitely better movies. He pulls out a giant gun, joking that
size DOES matter. FUCK. YOU. KIRK. Now armed to the teeth, and
breasts in the case of Fencer, they approach the cabin. The outside
is swarming with zombies, so it's time for another insanely dull
shootout! Yay... Only THIS time Boll splices in more footage from
the video game, and it's not transitions, it's just... shots of
someone playing the game. I don't... how...NO ONE told Boll how
imbecilic this looked?! I can literally feel my brain cells dying
every second I spend watching this, and I already have a dead zombie
brain!
Whoa, a shootout is going on?! Why the
hell aren't we ripping off the Matrix now? Ah, there we go.
Slow motion pans and bullet time starts erupting everywhere, EACH
FUCKING CHARACTER getting their turn for a slo-mo shot. There are
numerous continuity errors between each transition, how Fencer's hair
goes from frizzy to slicked back, but what's the use in even listing
them all? Boll even rips off Neo's iconic backwards dive shot,
although here it just looks SILLY when a girl in a Star Spangled
Banner bodysuit is doing it. The battle lasts probably longer than
the entire Matrix trilogy itself, giving me time to wonder how
all of these people are suddenly SUPER skilled soldiers that make
Rambo look like a loser. Jordan sure, but I'm really supposed to
believe freaking Bodysuit Girl is an ex-marine? That wimp Simon?
This gunfight is also-wait for it-
HORRIBLY DIRECTED. Half of the zombies are just standing around,
like not even trying to get involved. Some are just walking around
the set trying to figure out if the cameras are rolling or not, while
others look like they're talking to each other. I think I even saw
one bum a cigarette off another. An indeterminable amount of time
later (because I fell asleep), something finally happens and Bodysuit
gets dragged down by zombies. She yells out for Narrator to save
her, so he... begins to have flashbacks of the fight we just fucking
saw?! Are you KIDDING ME?!? FUCK THIS!
You know, up until about the half hour
mark or so, I didn't think this was THAT bad of a movie. Horribly
stupid and cliché, sure, but the whole time I was watching it I kept
thinking “I've seen worse”. The last twenty minutes though?
God. This is like watching one of those “fan-made” videos you
see on YouTube, only one of the exceptionally bad ones. You know the
kind I'm talking about, made by a fan that doesn't really understand
the source material or the reasons behind why anything is, and just
doing whatever they thinks looks cool? House of the Dead is
like that, only FAR worse. After Bodysuit dies, we get another 360
view of her alone in a field. Is this something from the video games
that happens when you die? It's been so long since I've played them,
and I don't really feel like doing the research to see if that's the
case or Boll just being nonsensical as usual. If you know the
answer, drop me a line and put this EPIC MYSTERY to rest once and for
all.
Jordan is the next to die, but she
doesn't get a rotating send off shot. Why not? She was a way more
important character than Bodysuit or Greg! Everyone fights their way
into the cabin, but Kirk gets his leg bit to shit while trying to buy
time for the rest. The zombies either get tired or bored, so they
just give up and leave them alone. With Kirk lying on a table
resting, the survivors decide it's good of a time as any to start
MAKING OUT! WHOA YEAH! Let's not bother securing the rest of the
cabin and make sure there's no zombies hiding in it, we are MEGA
turned on after a bloody shootout where several of our friends died.
Kirk, the lone voice of reason in the land of the brainless, points
out that MAYBE they should take a look around the cabin to see if
they can find anything useful. They uncover Castillo's lab full of
dead... deader zombies, along with a blood sample that Narrator
concludes has been “mutated”.
While they waste time with this latest
revelation, Kirk hears Clint Howard's apparent trademark whistle and
goes outside to investigate. He sees his first mate outside the
cabin, now a zombie himself. Realizing that he'll soon be a zombie
himself, Kirk pulls out a stick of dynamite and lights it as he gets
surrounded. The ensuing explosion ends up blowing the door off the
cabin, which really makes you wonder why Kirk didn't go out further
before igniting it. Maybe he hates the rest of the cast as much as I
do and just wanted to troll them. If that's the case, well played
Kirk, well played.
They retreat into the lab but just in
time for the zombies to come to life... death and attack them. Karma
finds a trap door in the room because OF COURSE there'd be a trap
door in this cabin, Simon making the heroic sacrifice to buy them
time to go down it. And my heroic sacrifice, I pretty much mean
stands around and lets himself get grabbed. So much for that love
triangle I was anticipating. The trap door leads to a series of
tunnels where Karma meets her end and it looks like the others are as
well until GREG shows up to save the day. Oh joy, HIM. He does
appear to be wearing the exact same cloak we saw Castillo wearing, so
my Zombie Sense is tingling. He leads them to a large room where he
pulls off his face to reveal his true form as zombie mummies dressed
like conquistadors appear to grab Narrator and Fencer. A character
impersonating someone else by wearing their skin, never seen that before!
It seems Castillo wants to use their
body parts for... I actually have no idea. Through another flashback
we learn the mutated blood he's created allows him to be immortal as
well as raise the dead, maybe he needs fresh humans to keep making
the serum to keep himself alive? The film doesn't think this is too
important to explain, so I'm certainly not going to prolong things by
asking stupid questions. Fencer sees a nearby sword and grabs it,
allowing her to turn the tables and escape with Narrator thanks to
those fencing skills that were so subtly hinted at earlier. She
drops a grenade on the way out that explodes the rest of the zombie
mummies or whatever they're meant to be. They exit the cabin to
BRIGHT DAYLIGHT when the previous scene with Kirk showing it was the
middle of the night. Oh well, at least these deeply nuanced
characters are free of that nightmare!
Fencer, deeply shaken up by the
previous few hours of hell, still has time to make a joke about how
nice it is to be wanted for your body. That is a TOTALLY appropriate
joke to be making right now. Narrator, your witty response to this?
“Yeah.”. ALRIGHTY THEN. Sadly though, the movie isn't over. We
see Castillo walk out of the cabin, which they really should have
expected because he just got done ranting about how he was immortal.
Did they think he was joking? He runs at them, and we have ANOTHER
slo-mo fight scene on our hands, this one a sword fight. This one is
easily the worst yet, Fencer doing THREE Neo backwards dives and I'm
pretty sure two of them were the same shot just repeated.
Castillo's centuries of experience
trumps Fencer's, as he ends up stabbing her through the chest. This
distraction allows Narrator to run behind him and cut his head off,
FINALLY ending this fucking thing. Just kidding! Castillo's body
begins to strangle Narrator to death while his head watches and grins
wickedly. Fencer, who is not quite dead yet, gets up and curb stomps
his head to... death? I guess immortality can be ended by a boot
now? Doing this uses up the last of her energy, and she dramatically
falls to the ground dead. Oh hey, I guess that puts us full circle
where the movie began now because Narrator is the Sole Survivor.
Shortly after this, a helicopter marked
with the letters AMS lands near the cabin and several agent-looking
figures get out. Narrator emerges from the cabin, Fencer draped
around his shoulder and looking very much alive. Oh no, he didn't...
One of the agents asks who Narrator is, and he replies Randolph
Curien. I bet that's REALLY meaningful if you've played the game,
but if you haven't it's just pointless and confusing. Randolph
Curien fittingly narrates us out, wondering what he's created now
that he's given Fencer the serum and wonders if this is the end... or
just the beginning? Unfortunately there's a sequel to this, so we
have our bitter, bitter answer.
Cue the credits.
I couldn't leave well enough alone
because I clearly hate myself, so I looked up the significance of the
last scene. The two agents were Thomas Rogan and “G”of the AMS
organization, which was created to deal with zombie outbreaks.
Curien is a reference to the villain of the game, Dr. Roy Curien, a
mad scientist whose experiments yielded bloodthirsty zombies. So
there you have it, ANY connection to the game series all took place
in the last minute of the film. That is just about perfect given all
the other middle fingers this movie threw at the audience.
This was, quite simply, excruciating to
sit through. It starts off as every “group of dumbasses get picked
off one by one” movie EVER, until the battle in the graveyard when
it completely goes off the rails. The action scenes are so terrible
thanks to Boll having no idea how to shoot these kind of scenes
whatsoever, so it's a good thing they make up the bulk of the movie!
It's one of those where it's hilarious at first, but then after a few
minutes pass the stunning realization sinks in that this is what
you're doomed to for the rest of the run time. It certainly doesn't
help the scenes in-between are packed with “writing” and “acting”
that rival the bottom of the barrel. Hell, this shit breaks THROUGH
the barrel and starts tunneling to China.
Despite all of this though, the film
actually turned a profit. Since Boll was new to the “bad movies
for profit game” scheme he was probably shocked, so had to redouble
his efforts to make sure he would get it right the next time. His
next film, Alone in the Dark managed to squeak out 10 million
dollars versus a budget of 20 million. That's better, but surely he
could do better? 2005's BloodRayne proved he could, as that
made three million dollars up against the 25 million that it cost to
make. Now most people would be content with that, but not Boll. His
follow up, In the Name of the King, cost 60 million dollars
and earned only THREE MILLION. Now that's how you do it, kids!
Normally I'd be salivating at the
chance to watch those movies because they must be MAGNFICENTLY bad to
purposely alienate audiences to that degree, but even I lack the
mental fortitude to do it soon. House of the Dead, which
often appears on lists of all time bad movies, is considered one of
his BETTER video game adaptions. Let that sink in for a moment,
REALLY sink in. Boll made a film inferior to House of the Dead,
and not only that, but MULTIPLE ones. This world is indeed a cold and uncaring place.
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