House of the Dead

Aficionados may argue about how faithful this German-American movie is to the videogame on which it's based; regardless, it's certainly faithful to the dumb-kids-chased-by-zombies genre that's been around for much longer. Here, a bunch of spring-breaking college students make their way to a place called Isla de Muerte aboard a boat captained by a fellow named Kirk (that's the high point of the comic inspiration here), who has an inept first mate played by Clint Howard. Expecting to discover a big rave in progress, they instead encounter lots of corpses and an army of flesh-eating undead; needless to say, much running about, shooting, and bloodletting follows. The dialogue is lame, the acting uniformly awful, the score bombastic, and the effects mediocre (the decision to insert periodic flashes of video graphics is particularly annoying). Devoid of style, scares, or smarts, House of the Dead is one game in which everyone loses. Not recommended. [Note: DVD extras include two audio commentaries (one by director Uwe Boll, post-production supervisor Jonathan Shore, producer Shawn Williamson, and costar Will Sanderson; the other by executive producer Mark A. Altman), the six-minute featurette “Stacked for Zom-bat: The Sexy Babes of the House of the Dead,” the 18-minute “making of” featurette “Behind the House: Anatomy of the Zombie Movement,” three storyboard comparison sequences, three deleted scenes, a promo for the upcoming Sega video game “Nightshade,” and a trailer gallery. Bottom line: a decent extras package for a dud slasher flick.] (F. Swietek)