Post by Mr.HoRrOr on Feb 13, 2006 13:43:06 GMT -5
Plot:Picking up where the last film left off, government operatives lead a team of agents to investigate a college campus overrun by a zombie plague.
Cast:
Sid Haig
Emmanuelle Vaugier
Sticky Fingaz
James Parks
Victoria Pratt
Jennifer Holland
Mary Ann Jarou
Tina Mahler
Ross Patterson
Paige Peterson
Theo Rossi
Dan Southworth
Johnny Nguyen
Nadine Velazquez
Mark A. Altman
Erik Betts
Derek Blice
Matthew Brent
Danielle Burgio
Ellie Cornell
My Thoughts:Uwe Boll's "House of the dead" was better.
Review:Lions Gate did everything in their power to try and make "House of the Dead" a much better movie than "House of the Dead". They kept Uwe Boll out of the directors chair, tightened up the cast talent, and dumped the video game footage. But after watching "House of the Dead 2" on the sci-fi channel over the weekend, I was longing for Uwe's version. "House of the Dead 2" involves a college campus overrun by a zombie plague which originated from the campuses laboratory. Sid Haig makes an early appearance as Professor Curien,in one of the films few bright spots. His son Rudy used the reanimation serum to bring back Alicia at the end of "House of the Dead". As for Rudys fate, well he was bitten by Alicia and Professor Curien killed him, but kept Alicia locked in a chamber within his laboratory, which is kind of weird considering you would think he would've kept his son Rudy alive instead. Professor Curien sees the serum as a major medical breakthrough, so he takes to killing a female college student so he can use her as his guinea pig. Unfortunately she winds up biting and infecting him with the virus, and thus it begins to spread as more people are bitten. This is "House of the Dead 2"'s first mistake. Sid Haig is underused in this film and after he bites and infects a chef at a local restaurant he's never seen again in the film. Later we are introduced to the AMS agents most notably Emmauelle Vaugier, (Saw 2) and Victoria Pratt (Mutant X). Kirk "Sticky Fingaz" Jones of the upcoming "Blade" tv series...also makes an appearance as AMS agent Dalton. These military types are carbon copies of other military types in previous horror films. We have the hot blonde girl, the hot latina girl, the asshole guy, the tough as nails sargeant, and the rest are day players bound to be picked off before act 2 rolls around. These characters are just as thin as the teens in the first "House of the Dead" film, with Emmanuelle Vaugiers character being the only one with any depth to her as she plays an AMS scientist who tries to juggle her work all the while killing any chances at a possible love life. Ellie Cornell shows up again as Jordan Casper and yes she has no legs! Proving that atleast one good thing can be said about this film, it doesn't lack continuity. Although no explanation is given as to how she survived the massive loss of blood and the explosion which soon followed in "House of the dead" but hey whos counting right? "House of the Dead 2" follows a pretty simple formula which sets up the blood, gore, and splattered zombie brains to come into play. The AMS agents must infiltrate the now zombie infested college campus, retrieve a sample of blood from the original zombie that started the infection in this case Zombie Alicia, and bring it back to HQ so they can create a cure. Seems easy enough right? After all, a group of college kids managed to have a pretty easy time with the undead ones in "House of the Dead". This is where "House of the Dead 2" runs into it's biggest problems, predictableness. The AMS agents are picked off in the exact order we expect them to die in, and at the end the two remaining agents,are exactly who anyone who watches alot of these sorts of horror films would expect. Although I must say the "House of the Dead 2" zombies look way better than the zombies in the first movie. They're also more vicious and have a few new moves to their attacks. This film is also way more bloodier and gorier than the original, but all of that is immediately diminished compared to the thin story, and the horribly done close calls that the survivors have with the zombies. I mean there are scenes in this movie that give new meaning to the term "unbelieveable skin of their teeth escapes", and none of them are choreographed well or come close to being remotely realistic. One of the films worst scenes comes at the end when the last three commandos retrieve a blood sample but lose it during their escape. So rather than going back to the spot outside the University where they lost it, they go back into the University which is crawling with zombies, to get another sample, which results in Victoria Pratts character being bitten! It's stupid things like this that make "House of the Dead 2" a total waste. That and the painstakingly obvious low production values. Gore fans will probably love this movie if they can look past the bad acting, stupid actions of the characters, and bad dialogue, but this gorefan couldn't get past any of that.
Pros:Atleast there was some serious plot continuity, and some good looking women, and the plot was a bit stronger than the previous films story.
Cons: Bad acting, bad dialogue, alot of unrealistic escape scenes, and dumb decision making by the characters who are supposed to be trained black ops agents used to dealing with the supernatural and abnormal. Emmanuelle Vaugier was great in "Saw 2" and even though she turned in a subpar performance in this film (mostly due to the bad script), she still was the only good part of the movie.
Overall: I'd say wait to catch this on sci-fi when they reair it in the near future. It's not worth a rental or a purchase in my opinion.