So, this is it: The final part of my House of the Dead retrospective. It now has been six weeks since I began this and now it’s coming to an end. I’m almost getting emotional here! ALMOST!
Too bad I can’t end it on a high note though, since I’m writing about the second House of the Dead movie here. Well, hit the jump what that is all about (the following content is slightly NSFW!)…
Right off the bat, the second House of the Dead movie does everything right, or at least better: Uwe Boll is nowhere to be seen in the credits, only the writer of the first movie makes a comeback. Funnily enough, the movie’s dialogues are better than those found in the first one, if not by much. At least it’s actually bearable this time around, so I won’t have to resort to my reservoir of Luxembourgish beer in order to make it through this…
The plot is pretty much standard zombie movie fanfare: There’s an outbreak on an University Campus and two AMS agents, together with some soldiers, get send in to clear the situation. While the AMS guys are on the hunt for a first generation zombie in order to get a blood sample of which they can base a cure one, the military is only there to protect them, before the place is bombed.
Characters are introduced directly, without any kind of narration, which makes them a bit more interesting since we get a lot of dialogue. While most of the military members are stereotypes found in similar movies they are still fun enough to enjoy. At some points, it actually reminded me of the Doom movie, since there are some similarities going on here. Unfortunately, this makes it rather foreseeable who will die and who will survive. The two main characters however are pretty uninteresting and bland, but they work just fine. And really, ‘just fine’ is about everything you can say about the movie’s plot. Sure, there are some silly bits, like the female cop from the first movie somehow having survived, despite having her legs torn off and her clearly being dead in the first one… That makes no sense at all! Also, how is it possible that there is a zombie outbreak on an university campus without anybody reacting to it for a whole week?
The movie often has problems of keeping track who’s dead and who isn’t. The ending is especially guilty of that, just bringing characters back to life that were established to be dead. Oh well… Maybe it’s because the zombies themselves can’t really decide if they are threatening or lame. In some scenes, one zombie needs a single second to kill a character and later in the movie a horde of zombies has problems to bite one of the main characters even though they touch him for like five minutes. Consistency would be nice!
If you take 5 second to look closely, you can see 2 nipples in here. In the same time you could have opened another tab and watched a porn site instead, but that's besides the point, right?
This leads me to the overall biggest problem of this movie: It’s boring. Most of it is predictable if you’ve seen two decent zombie flicks in your life, most of the characters are uninteresting since the script and plot is bland. It has big problems keeping your attention and since you don’t care for the characters, them being killed off one after another has no impact at all. The movie even doubles up on the tits in order to get your attention, but as I’ve said in my commentary for the first movie, this one too is in no way better directed or filmed than a top-notch porn movie, so that’s pretty much entirely pointless.
I don’t want to get into too many plot details, because this movie is actually worth watching if you’re into Zombie movies. There’s some tension going on here, some scenes are rather well done and while the movie isn’t too exciting or memorable, it makes for a decent, if sub-par zombie movie. The budged surely wasn’t too big for this one, especially when it comes to explosions and the like, but the make-up on the zombies is done nicely. The actors are decent, but they haven’t got the best material to work with.
So, is this movie worth watching? Well, if you have already suffered through the first one, the answer is as simple as ‘yes’! If you haven’t, you should stay clear of this one, since the connections to the games are practically non-existent and there are way better zombie movies out there.
Think I might try this one out. Might not be that great, but if it’s not horrible and there are zombies then I’m all for it. Least I’ll get to laugh at the dumb blond girls getting eaten while their boobs bounce around the screen. Good times.
I’ve yet to see this one, but I doubt it can top the scene in the first where the dude hurls on a chicks boobs as a way for the film to force a nude disrobing scene. You can’t even write stuff that good. I had a fun bad movie time with the first, though, and I just assumed it was sort of lightning in a bottle and that the sequel couldn’t possibly tread water. From what Sir Sven says, though, it looks like I should try it.
Thanks for the complete retrospective, it’s been cool going through the series once more!