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 hen
parents send their kids off to college, they
certainly aren't prepared to see them come home
between semesters zombied out. Such is the case
with "House of the Dead 2: Dead Aim",
the 2005 sequel to Uwe Boll's universally despised
2003 "House
of the Dead". Could this direct-to-video
sequel, soon to make its "world
premiere" on the dread Sci Fi Channel
("We're the Sci Fi Channel: Send us your
clichéd and illogical crap!"), be better
than the original? Or is the real question how
could it possibly
be any worst?
The storyline this time
around finds a college professor (genre vet Sid
Haig in a cameo) experimenting with eternal life,
when he unwittingly unleashes a zombie plague.
Soon, the college campus is infected and overrun
(told in flashcard style during the credits,
similar to the excellent opening of the recent
"Dawn
of the Dead" remake), and a unit of
special forces soldiers are sent in with two
scientists in tow to look for a "zero
generation" zombie, from which they hope to
make an antidote. Of course, things don't go as
planned, and scientists Ellis (Ed Quinn) and Alex
(the gorgeous Emmanuelle Vaugier) find themselves
trapped on zombie campus. Worst, their superiors
plan to lob a couple of cruise missiles at the
campus come daybreak, so our heroes must escape,
or die.
If you were looking for a
movie to show you how generic and formulaic horror
movies in
America
have become lately, you needn't look any further
than "Dead Aim". As expected, the
members of the film's Special Forces unit really
are "special". Which is to say, they are
as believable as highly skilled professional
warriors as Michael Moore is a 2-time Olympian.
They talk too much, they have no concept of
following orders, one is obese, another is
obviously psychotic, and when have you ever seen
not one, but two
token women in a Special Forces unit? And of
course the African American leader (played by
Sticky Fingaz -- no joke, that's his real name) is
all piss and vinegar. He also calls everyone
"kiddo", but I guess that's
"personality". Or something.
It behooves critics of the
genre not to bother dissecting the film's many,
many plot holes. Even knowing that movies like
"House of the Dead 2" are inherently
illogical and as believably plotted as your
average daytime soap opera, one still can't help
but feel some disappointment that the storyline is
barely an improvement over Uwe Boll's atrocious
original. No surprise that the writers can't even
remember if their Special Forces guys are Army or
Marine, or even if they've fought zombies before
or not. Sometimes they act like they have,
sometimes they don't have a clue. But make no
mistake, "Dead Aim" is indeed an
improvement over Boll's original, no matter how
slight. It may be stupid, but at least it wasn't as stupid. Sort of.
Then again, I'm being overly
negative. "Dead Aim" picks up tremendous
steam once the zombies attack en masse and the
script slices down the cast, leaving just the
scientists and the last surviving member of the
Special Forces unit. There's even some comedy to
be had, mostly thanks to James Parks, whose Bart
character is as depraved as they come. The film's
standout comedy sequence has Bart cajoling
superior officer Henson (Victoria Pratt) into
taking his picture with a recently killed female
zombie. Alas, Bart disappears after the 40-minute
mark, leaving a semi-serious stab at a zombie
movie.
The zombies themselves are a
mess. Sometimes they run, sometimes they hobble,
and other times they shuffle. And for some reason
their primary attack mode is to flail their arms
wildly at their would-be victims. Still, the
make-up is generally well done, and there's plenty
of gore for those who likes such things. The film
certainly earns its "R" rating, with a
large helping of blood and nudity, the latter
coming often in the beginning. One has to wonder
how much of this 90-minute movie will be cut for
broadcast TV consumption.
Truthfully, "Dead
Aim" would have worked better had it stuck to
camp and not taken the whole zombie thing too
seriously. If the approach had been to go for
laughs, then it would have been easier to accept
the two main characters wading through a sea of
zombies for about 10 minutes of continuous
screentime and not being bitten once. It seems
that in "Dead Aim", unless you're one of
the two leads, you'll get bitten automatically.
Hell, even a cruise missile couldn't kill one of
the leads, even though it apparently killed every
zombie on campus. How's that for invincibility?
The only leftover cast member
from the original is Ellie Cornell, who reprises
her role of Jordan Casper, now a Colonel (and
wheelchair bound!) in charge of the secret
military unit designated to deal with the zombie
problem. The career promotion for
Casper
is somewhat odd, as I always thought her character
in the original was a security guard? In the
leads, Emmanuelle Vaugier is pretty and
believable, as is Ed Quinn. The less said about
Sticky Fingaz and his troupe of fake movie
soldiers the better. Seriously, have there been
worst displays of "professional"
soldering then movies that have
"premiered" on the Sci Fi Channel?
And here's a thought: the
next time you find yourself stuck on a college
campus overrun by zombies, and you need to call
and tell your people to abort the planned bombing
of said campus, and your radios just happen to
have been destroyed, why not try a phone? It's a
college. Teeming with teenagers. Teenagers with
cellphones. Hundreds and hundreds of cellphones.
Everywhere. Try one. Morons.
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