When he finally confronts the mad genius behind the zombie outbreak in HOUSE OF THE DEAD, Rudy, our lead hunky zombie hunter barks, "You created it all so you could be immortal? WHY?" "So I could live forever!" the mad doctor replies, indicating that in addition to discovering the secret to eternal life, he does indeed know the dictionary definition of the word immortal.

And that's one of the smarter moments! This is a movie in which a character actually utters the phrase "It's almost too quiet," and means it unironically, and where another named Simon adds the phrase "Simon says" to casual conversation. It is a movie where people can watch their friends rendered limb from limb from ravaging hordes of flesh-craved monsters one moment, and find time to make out with tongues the next. Who says modern romance is dead? It’s just undead, baby.

It begins with Rudy (Jonathan Cherry), the lone survivor of the zombie massacre, whose voice-over informs us that he has just undergone a nightmare. He introduces us to his friends while narrating moments he did not witness and has no knowledge of, and tells us they will all die. 85 minutes later we return to the exact same moment, and indeed Rudy lives and everyone else dies, making it clear that on the remote chance you hadn't thought you'd been wasting your time, you most certainly were.

Rudy and his friends go to rave located on an island that is known as Isla Del Muerte, which I believe, roughly translates to Island of the Morty (The Dead now have their own island, having traded up from just the house of the video game). Unfortunately the rave goes sour faster than Woodstock '99 and by the time they arrive the place is lousy with zombies. The crew is ferried to the island by a boat captain named Kirk (Jurgen Prochnow, poor guy), whose weapon smuggling comes in handy when they are stranded on a island full of flesh-crazed dead, and by his sidekick Salish (Clint Howard, who I can’t help feel deserves this), whose bright yellow slicker comes in handy when it starts to rain.

If HOUSE OF THE DEAD has the ear for dialogue of a deaf person, it should come as no surprise that the director is a German named Uwe Boll who, since transplating himself to the States, has made a career of turning mediocre video games into horrendous films (According to my sources, his version of ALONE IN THE DARK is another standout moment in his unique oeuvre). He has a love of helicopter shots that come swooping down over the ocean toward a land mass or boat; if I had a nickel for every one of them in HOUSE OF THE DEAD I'd have fifteen nickels, which still isn't enough for a roll, but is a lot all things considered. This must be the "strong auteurist vision" he's described as having in the DVD booklet.

Already, this is enough to qualify HOUSE OF THE DEAD as a really bad movie, but no, it dares to go further. It cuts in random footage of from the video game to spice up the action or transition between scenes. It has enough slow-motion footage for a dozen movies, and incorporates it with 360-degree spinning shots which look interesting exactly once in the twelve minute sequence that uses them over and over. Not pretending they have any hint of originality, Boll describes these moments as "MATRIX shots" in his amusingly frank commentary track on the DEAD DVD.