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I wasn't expecting much when I watched it on scifi today but I was mildy impressed. The effects were better. The death scenes weren't plagued with the 'game over' House of the Dead's original style. THe acting was on par only because Emmanuelle Vaugier and Ed Quin were their. THey pretty much carried the movie. DEfinitely one to check otu. It's going in my collection.
House of the Dead 2: Dead Aim crawls out from the festering womb of the steaming pile of a movie that was House of the Dead. Is it better than the first? Surprisingly, yes it is. But that's not saying much, now is it?
In House of the Dead 2, we find that one of the survivors from the first film got herself infected by the zombie-creating virus and is locked up in a science lab beneath a college by Professor Curien (Sid Haig). The Professor is attempting to use her blood to create a serum that will bring the dead back to life, ala Re-Animator. A couple of mistakes later and the Professor unwittingly unleashes the virus on to the campus, quickly infecting the student body. Now, 29 days later (get it?), a science team consisting of Alex (Saw II’s yummy, Emmanuelle Vaugier) and Ellis (Ed Quinn) are ordered to go to the campus, retrieve a blood sample from this locked-up, first generation zombie so that a cure can be created from it, and save the day by preventing the spread of the infection that is running rampant throughout the city. To ensure this two-person team succeeds in their mission, they will be escorted by a Special Forces team led by Dalton (Sticky Fingaz). If all this isn't enough, they must have this mission accomplished before Cruise missiles, launched by the government, level the entire college and everything in it.
Michael Hurst (Baby Juice Express) and Michael Altman (All Souls Day, House of the Dead) team up and fumble the ball with this one, delivering yet another entry in a long line of unintentionally funny horror movies that just cannot decide whether or not it wants to be serious or camp and ends up fusing them together in a most heinous way.
Emmanuelle Vaugier and Ed Quinn both do decent jobs, but their performances are so serious, it just doesn't mesh with the absolutely ridiculous dialog and scenarios. In one scene Alex and Ellis are having a heart-felt conversation about the death of Ellis’ brother. Near the end of the conversation, Ellis shoots a zombie point blank in the head, spraying blood all over their faces. Without flinching, the couple continues their conversation. This would have been great in an Evil Dead type film, but this film wants you to take it seriously and is almost like watching Mulder and Scully had they been placed in Return of the Living Dead. Bart (James Parks) is the greedy, sleazy antagonist in the film and James Park does a great job with him, especially in a nude, female zombie scene. Nadine Velazquez (My Name is Earl) is easy on the eyes, but just cannot act. She was completely unconvincing as any type of soldier and her scenes were almost too embarrassing to watch. This is also the case with Sid Haig. His part is small, but my god is it terrible. Most of this comes from the absolutely dreadful dialog that included gems like "Even now you hold the secrets to eternal life and you hold onto them, keeping me...alone...alone in the dark".
The creators of House of the Dead 2: Dead Aim also decided to take zombie traits from every zombie movie ever made to create zombies referred to as hypersapiens. We have your standard aimlessly shuffling hypersapiens, and we also have the running, 'holy crap he's pissed hypersapiens '. They also still remember their actions from when they were alive, mimicking them for all eternity. This includes hypersapiens in libraries reading books, a hypersapien librarian who shushes our heroes, and an entire hypersapien football team. On top of that, the hypersapiens are mutating. In an extremely short amount of time, the hypersapiens’ teeth are getting bigger 'to eat through armor'. All of this goofiness may have worked if they had shot for a camp purposes, but nothing in this film shows that this was supposed to be anything but a serious horror film.
The zombies mostly spread the virus via biting, but the characters have no issues getting blood all over their faces even when it could have been avoided. In one case, one character actually wipes zombie blood into their mouth, but never gets infected even when it is made clear that the virus IS spread by blood transfer. Also, the Special Forces team must be some of the worst soldiers Uncle Sam ever paid for as they are constantly picked off one by one, simply by walking backwards into the arms of a zombie and getting bit on the neck, arm or even ankle. This is in stark contrast to the two scientists who fight off a hundred zombies using a knife, an axe and even their hands...all without getting a single scratch. The special effects by Almost Human, Inc. are decent with most of the blood coming from bites, or after-death corpse munching. A scene of one of the heroes disemboweling a zombie was decent and the zombie makeup far surpassed the original. A few showcase zombies that had actual scenes with our heroes and not just part of the horde were quite good.
The fact that this is premiering on the Sci-Fi channel almost ensures that the nude scenes (there are quite a few) and the excessive gore scenes will be taken out and left for the UNRATED! DVD. Sadly, those scenes were the only thing that put this film in view-with-your-friends-while-drinking territory. Michael Hurst should have taken advantage of this opportunity as this is a sequel to one of the most abysmal movies in recent memory and there were no expectations from anyone. All that needed to be done was to lay down the basic plot, slather on the red stuff, throw in as much gut-munching, brain chomping, limb ripping violence as possible, top the whole thing off with an abundance of titties and maybe have some of the scenes IN A HOUSE OF THE DEAD. But instead, we get a movie in the same vein as other Sci-Fi Channel favorites like Sabertooth and Frankenfish but with zombies. Granted, House of the Dead 2: Dead Aim has couple decent performances, and better (but not great) gore than the original, but overall, it is exactly what most people were expecting; A lame sequel to an even lamer original.
It’s pretty sad when the opening title credits designed by Kevin Greutert are more exciting than the movie itself and the only part of this film that showcased any talent.
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