House of the Dead 2: Dead Aim (2005)

Director: Michael Hurst

Starring: Emmanuelle Vaugier, Ed Quinn

Run Time: 95 mins

Certificate: 15

Plot Outline: A virus breaks out at a university which turns the entire campus into a mass of ravenous zombies. A team of scientists and soldiers are sent in to try and find the zombie that started it all off, named "Generation Zero" and obtain a blood sample so that an antidote to the virus can be found. However the team only has a limited amount of time before the campus is wiped out with a cruise missile to prevent the virus from spreading.

The Review: Uwe Boll's House of Dead was not only one of the worst video game conversions ever made, it was also one of the most horrific piece of horror cinema that I've ever had to suffer through and led me to my sheer hatred of the German director, which has now become widespread in the world of film. Given it's reputation amongst the horror community as a total crap fest, how would you expect a sequel to go and get a green light? It's amazing how many terrible films get sequels nowadays and the majority go straight-to-DVD. Well the good news before you even sit down to watch is that no film can be as bad as the original....can it? I mean no film could really get any lower. Thankfully, House of the Dead 2: Dead Aim is not as bad as the original by any stretch of the imagination. Is it a good film? Not really. But at least the filmmakers can always claim that it joins an elite selection of sequels which are better than their predecessors.

Zombie films are ten-a-penny at the minute and I'm a bit sick of it. There's always some fad going around and it seems like it's the turn of the walking dead to be saturated back into the ground from where they came. House of the Dead 2 doesn't do anything but stick to the well-worn formula of the genre. The rapid spread of a virus and the imminent need to contain it. The group of soldiers and scientists heading into a location filled with zombies for whatever reason. Plenty of supporting characters to be devoured. Main characters turning into zombies to lead to the "I can't kill you even though you're a zombie" moment. There are moments when the characters must charge through hordes of zombies to get out of a certain area. It's totally derivative but thankfully, after the horrors of the original, I'd rather watch something that provides safe viewing. There are a few minor additions to the formula though, including the zombies continuing on with their normal lives as best as they can instead of being obsessed with eating human flesh. Watching the zombie football team was pretty quirky - it reminded me of something that George A. Romero would throw into one of his zombie flicks. One thing that isn't lacking is the gore and there's plenty of it here but that's to be expected from a zombie flick.

The film is hardly an actor-friendly one though given the source material. It's not played seriously enough to warrant anyone putting the effort in but on the flip side, there's too many throat rippings and intestine-pulling moments for the comedy to work. So the cast are there to provide eye candy or in-jokes. There's plenty of cleavage on show from the female cast including the smoking Emmanuelle Vaugier. Sid Haig (from The House of 1,000 Corpses) pops up for a pay cheque early in the film and has a bit of fun. It's a blink-and-you'll-miss-him cameo and a bit more of his character would have greatly assisted matters later on when the film begins to sag. After a while the cycle of shoot zombies, soldier dies, escape to a new room, shoot zombies, soldier dies, etc. runs thin. In fact it doesn't even run thin, it just runs out completely and becomes a dull bore. I like the fact that there's plenty of action, zombies and gore, but not at the expense of a story and characters. That wouldn't be hard to expect would it? Attempts to link this with the original are pretty weak and pointless too. They should have cut their losses and pretend it never happened.

Final Verdict: A few of the people behind House of the Dead were behind this and it seems at times that House of the Dead 2: Dead Aim has been made to apologise to people for the abomination of the original by overcompensating on things like the gore and cheese factor. It's still a sub-par zombie flick which is too monotonous for it's own good. But it's the film that the original should have been and does go some way to righting some wrongs.....unfortunately not as many wrongs as we would have liked to see.

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