review for House of the Dead on AllMovie

Although it premiered months earlier at the 2003 San Francisco Independent Film Festival, House of the Dead reached multiplexes hot on the heels of Danny Boyle's dread-inducing 28 Days Later and Eli Roth's jokingly enjoyable Cabin Fever. With the zombie-flick revival in full swing, this rote, workmanlike offering couldn't help but pale in comparison. Abandoning any pretense of viral anxiety, social commentary, or actual suspense, House of the Dead settles for worn-out George Romero swipes and horny collegiate archetypes. When the only distinctive character is a male model too vain to face the future with an acid-scarred face, it's clear we're meant to view these comely cutouts as mere fodder for shoot-'em-up, video-arcade fun. Indeed, director Uwe Boll helpfully supplies occasional flashes of the actual Sega game upon which House of the Dead is based. But such reminders of the script's origins seem redundant given the emphasis on flat, gory fight scenes, repetitive woodland chases, and interchangeable zombie gross-outs. A voice-over and a somewhat convoluted chronology do provide at least the trappings of actual storytelling. And, to their credit, Boll and screenwriter Dave Parker squeeze a modicum of fun out of their deliberately familiar supporting characters (including Jürgen Prochnow as a salty old sea captain). But 2002's similarly arcade-derived Resident Evil kicked off the current zombie craze with killer set-pieces, visceral production design, and a chilly aura of technological doom. A solid genre effort, it set the bar high for this sort of corporate synergy. For all its competency, House of the Dead more closely resembles The Dead Hate the Living, another Parker-penned fright flick featuring a wincingly over-the-top zombie overlord.