Death House

I love super bad horror movies. But not this bad. Sid Haig, Michael Berryman, Gunnar Hansen, Kane Hodder, Dee Wallace, Barbara Crampton, R.A Mihalov, Tony Todd, Bill Mosely.....wasn't enough to save this drivel. Saying it made zero sense is giving it too much credit. If you like lots of gore and boobies and 80's Moog synth sound F/X, then by all means...sit through this.

I don't know what's worse... the fact that this movie is an absolute mess or that I wanted to love it and it left me with blue balls. The lighting is awful, the editing was done by a blind and deaf person, and the ending makes zero sense. The only reason it got as many stars as it did was because they did manage to corral a lot of horror legends into one place.

When I heard of this movie, I was very excited due the movie having all of my favorite horror movie icons and the trailer made the movie look better than it actually was. The script (IMO) did not explain any of the back stories of the characters, the script seemed to be a bland story and the story seemed to jump around a lot and was seemed to be written by a bored tenth grader. The graphic nature of the horror (Especially the half alive skeleton people in the cooler was a cool affect and the scream was very unnerving and probably the best part of the movie. I wish they did a back ground story on the half alive people.) is why I am scoring this a three. Without the graphic parts I would have given this a one. This movie would be ok for a time waster but nothing more. The crew could have done so much more with the story but did not. I think this should have been a mini-series instead of a movie where time could have been given for the background of the characters.

I saw the Death House Twitter account begging for people to give positive reviews for the movie, as according to them, the 'Trolls' have had a go at it. So i will give this an honest constructive. It is true amateur reviewers will often either give a movie an extreme rating, either 1 or a 10 . Neither of which is particularly helpful . So i'll go through the positives and negatives of what i can contribute to the conversation .

What worked?

• It is fun to spot all the plethora of horror and B-movie actors , some of which only have a brief walk on performance.
• There is one truly stand out scene , where there is a bunch of skinless zombie like creatures, that does look really impressive effects wise.
• Kane Hodder is pretty good in this

What didn't work

• Too concerned with setting up a sequel with Tony Todd's character
• The cinematography is very poor. It's far too dark and under lit, making it impossible to see what is going on sometimes. I appreciate it's taking place in an underground prison, but you have to write your script and film it so people can see what is going on. Besides, no one is watching this for realism.
• With the exception of the scene mentioned above. The effects are very poor. Horrible green scree, poor cgi after effects and even other practical effects look bad
• The acting isn't good , our two lead protagonists are wooden, and even veteran actors like Dee Wallace turn in a poor performance. It seem like the director has done one take, and just accepted it.
• The biggest issue is the story and script . It is all over the place , it simply doesn't make a lick of sense from beginning to end . Right from the start where it's never fully explained who and why our two lead characters are and what they are doing there at the beginning of the movie, right up until the end with the quite frankly embarrassing 'Five evils ' scene. The narrative structure is so poor, confusing and convoluted

Ultimately this movie should have invested it's finances behind the camera rather than being so concerned with all the cameos , which ends up being really a waste of the actors time .

A real waste of an opportunity and concept . Although i don't like this typical internet behavior of it's either a 1 or a 10 . I think it's equally deplorable for a film company to essentially coerce the weak minded to giving overly favorable reviews.

Omfg. This is horrible. There's an interesting premise, with loads of potential. Science mixed with supernatural... and the cast is a powerhouse of horror icons...

But the acting is horrible, the gore laughable, the nudity gratuitous, the acting is phoned in primarily, and the cgi so low budget it makes the first resident evil look like a masterpiece. And it was made recently. I've seen better cgi from college students on their midterms.

Its sequenced like a video game. Not even a video game movie. A video game. But then it goes no where with it.

Resolution leaves room for sequel, but its all so rushed you dont want one.

Its not even worth the one viewing.

However... if someone with the right budget and a platform willing to give it a few seasons with intent of final resolution via a movie... the plot could be properly flushed out to really do the basic story concept justice.

Not netflix. They seem content with 3season runs. Something like HBO. And with a research team capable of making the science and history aspects enough screentime and accuracy to make it concievable IRL. Like... googling plot points should yield enough real life similarities to make you paranoid.