House of the Dead

Entertaining guilty-pleasure that, except for the boring opening twenty minutes, put an amused smile on my face that lasted until the closing credits. The prerequisite for enjoying something like this is not to compare it with similar genre films, not to analyze every plot flaw (and there are plenty), not to be annoyed by the overuse of bullet time effects and lousy actors, but rather to have fun with the awfulness of the project as a whole. Filmmaking-wise, of course, it's somewhere near the bottom, but it has a decent momentum and deserves that one star. I certainly wasn't bored most of the time. (25.01.2006)

German play-maker Uwe Boll has somewhat unfairly earned the reputation of being the worst filmmaker of all. On the other hand, I think it's something that could help his career a little bit. It was simply talked about, albeit negatively. People watched his films, and then when he finally started making something better, suddenly there was no interest. House of the Dead is a bad movie, but certainly not a particularly bad one. (13.05.2019)

When I heard the final "God, love is bitch!", it was not the first time I had fallen into boundless joy. Uwe did an amazing job. Every shot clearly has Wood's "no one will notice it, people don't watch movies for details", and the boundless zeal for doing something new, unseen. And it’s true. This has never been seen before. Shrunken stop time, bullet time and who knows what kind of time, a hellishly demented screenplay, incredibly slushy cuts to a computer game. If someone had told me that a more demented film could be made than an arcade shooter for a quarter, I probably wouldn't have believed it, but Boll did it. He’d be able to do it even with a masked camera, which is perhaps the only thing that was missing for me in the film. Put the cover lower, Uwe, the camera is seeing too much. Cut – ingenious, clip shortcuts – empty essence, music – infinitely good. The only thing that spoils it for me is Captain Kirk from U-96. Jürgen, Jürgen, you should have stayed at the bottom of the Strait of Gibraltar. Uwe Boll was simply able to bring to the screen the stupidest parts of computer games - usually the games in baskets with a sale sign. Love is a bitch, what can you do? People want immortality so they can live forever. The world is a beautiful place. (24.01.2008)