House of the Dead 2 Review
Written by: andyy2b
The original House Of The Dead is one of the most mis-understood films in movie going history in my books. If you try and take it seriously you will end up either hating it or wondering why you bothered watching it. However if you take it like the campy piece of schlock that it is you'll discover it is an hilarious film that is very reminescent of the early eighties straight to video horror movies. Now 2 years later we get the shameful sequel.
As soon as I heard that House Of The Dead 2 was not going to be directed by Uwe Boll I feared the worst, bitch about the director all you want but the man sure knows how to make a campy movie. Soon after this news it was announced that House Of The Dead 2 would be premeiring on the Sci-Fi channel and my fears were confirmed...House Of The Dead 2 sucks major donkey ass.
Having little to do with the game or the original movie House Of The Dead 2 takes place on a university campus where Curien, one of the original survivors of the first movie, is now a Professor experimenting on students by killing them and injecting them with some kind of re-animating serum. Curien is played by the awesome Sid Haig, yes Captain Spalding himself, but his talents are wasted in this movie and his appearence is a mere cameo more than anything. Curien is bitten by one of his experiments and soon after the Campus becomes over-run with zombies.
After all that takes place we get another brief Cameo by Ellie Cornell, the only actor to make an appearence from the first movie, as the head of the AMS organization. She sends a team of 2 agents and a bunch of Marines to the Campus to retrieve a sample of blood from the original zombie that started the infection so that they can create an antidote. And from here it's all downhill.... The Marines, who somehow are stupidier than the original college kids in the first movie, are picked off one by one while the 2 agents go about their business with little to no interest. The movie throws plot-hole after plot-hole.
Why wouldn't the Agents take more than one sample from the original zombie? How come they say there is only 10 minutes to a nuclear warhead hits the campus yet it seems to take them way longer to go back in and retrieve a second sample? How can the Woman agent, called Nightingale, survive the Campus blowing up? Why are the Marines so freakin stupid?
After awhile you give up caring. The Agents over-act, the zombies flail there arms around like their on crack, there is hardly any blood or violence, the make-up effects are average, yet the movie takes itself seriously, like this is supposed to be a "good" zombie movie. In trying as hard as it does the movie fails miserably, it takes away what made the first movie so good...it was funny, either intentionally or not, it was funny. House Of The Dead 2 is neither funny or interesting, it's filmmakers trying to undo peoples impression of the first movie by making a more serious zombie film and that my friends, is a bad thing. Avoid this one and wait for a 3rd House Of The Dead movie, maybe then will they get things right.