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Zaux
Reviews
House of the Dead (2003)
Uwe Boll is acid death to the art of directing.
This movie has received a lot of bad press from people who don't understand what it was meant to be. One must understand that this movie was never meant to be taken seriously. It's camp, along the same lines as "Army of Darkness." AoD was silly, but funny and bad in a good way. "House of the Dead" fails to be "good bad.".
There are qualities inherent in good campy movies, most important of those being believable fantasy. One needs to believe what's happening in a movie to see the humor when a situation goes incredibly wrong. Without boundaries, the movie becomes absurd. HotD lacks any believability.
Worse still, HotD brings nothing new to the genre, and repeats the same plot twists and character reactions that many horror movies inevitably start to exhibit. For example, all too often, horror movies fall into the trap where the main characters find love amongst the gore and destruction. I don't know about you, but when I'm being chased by zombies, I wanna make out with a hot chick. Believe it? No? Then, you probably won't believe it when the characters start sucking each other's faces in this movie.
Beyond the obvious issues that plague this movie like so many other horror movies, Uwe Boll elected to add scenes from the video game of zombies being shot, randomly whenever a character shoots a zombie in the movie. Not only is there no clear rationale for this artistic choice, but it distracts one from an already unbelievable plot. Further, there are frequent and numerous examples of bad acting, and seemingly no attempts by the director to guide the actors' reactions to events... leaving the movie with no redeeming qualities. Avoid...
Equilibrium (2002)
Disappointing
What a disappointment. When I learned that this movie was to have only a limited release, I was annoyed. So, when I learned that the DVD was being made available, I pre-ordered it and waited with much anticipation. Five minutes into the movie, things are going well. Then, our lead man storms a room and I watch in horror as cartoon-ish CGI effects are applied to the rapid arm movements of Cleric John Preston, as he annihilates a group of emotional offenders. I do not exaggerate, the arms were not even the same color as the rest of Preston's suit. To top it all off, cheesy "whoosh" sound effects were added each time Preston's arms moved. A minute later, we see Preston overlooking a stash of hidden artwork, and a portrait of the Mona Lisa is presented to him. The Mona Lisa a teeny piece of art, painted onto a piece of wood- any self respecting European knows this (I'm a stupid American, BTW...) But, in the movie, the painting was at least two feet wide. ??? Why?!
So, the movie progresses a little more, and I'm still simmering over two blatant misrepresentations, and things are going well. A person dies, blah blah blah, then we meet Brandt. Preston, the greatest of all Clerics who can "sense" when someone is an emotional offender completely ignores that Brandt is smiling and chuckling, yes SMILING and CHUCKLING, when he says good bye to him after their initial meeting. We're not even past the first 15 minutes people, and there are still 92 more to go.
Anyway, I'll cut this review short. I wanted to like this movie. But, it's bad. The gun-kata idea was a nice touch, though not original as many have said. If you can ignore blatant errors in plot, special effects and character motivation, by all means, watch the movie. I'm sure there's a hidden message in there somewhere. But, rent before you buy. If had known that the director would be so slack, I would have never bought the movie. 5 out of 10 stars.
Invader (1991)
The only thing impressive about this movie was the poster...
Having been impressed by the movie poster and the implied theme when I saw it in 1992, I rented the movie... and it was the pits. Ignore everything "sketchy" has said about the movie; it has no redeeming qualities. Even by the standards of 1992, the graphics are horrible, the plot is predictable and plodding, the acting is one dimensional, and the miniature animatronics look like miniature animatronics.
The movie's current score of 3.6 out of 10 is accurate. However, as I said, the poster is very nice, and I recommend it to anyone.
Movie: 3 out of 10
Poster: 7 out of 10