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Shotgun Jones
May 19, 2003

by Ozmaugh
Directed by: Mike Hurst
Starring: Emmanuelle Vaugier, Ed Quinn, Sticky Fingaz


Good Heavens, they made a sequel to this!

Last night, the Sci-Fi channel premiered a sequel to everyone's favorite zombie movie, House of the Dead. This would seem laughable until you find out who was the director, and it's not Uwe Boll. Yes, while the good Doctor was out doing everything he can to turn "Bloodrayne" into a sea of bored actors and confusion, Mike Hurst was at the helm of this sequel. One would think that the folks at Lions Gate would've had enough sense to not allow Boll to direct, but in reality, Boll was offered the chance to direct, but he turned it down so that he can work on Bloodrayne. This decision just might have made the sequel more bearable than the first.



The film starts out with a fraternity performing a hazing ritual to their newest brother. This hazing ritual consists of catching the new guy in the act of taking his girlfriend's virginity, and taking a picture. She gets pissed off and leaves, only to get hit by her professor's car. He kills her and brings her back to a lab to perform an experiment on her. He gives her a shot, hoping that it would bring her back to life. It doesn't, and he complains about how he is kept "alone...Alone in the Dark." I guess not having Uwe Boll at the helm didn't stop the screenwriter from name-dropping another one of his atrocities.



The film supposedly takes place after the first one, but the only reference I got came after the beginning credits, when Alex (played by Emmanuelle Vaugier) is on a date with what looks like the narrator of the first movie. They're out enjoying themselves at a fancy restaurant, just enjoying themselves. The chef, who looks a bit like Super Mario from that Super Mario Super Show in the late `80's, goes out for a break and gets attacked by a zombie. Alex goes back to the kitchen, shoots the chef, and then reveals to the guy who looks like he was in the first movie that her job is to "kill zombies."



This leads us to the plot of the film. Apparently, the latest outbreak started at a college, and a bunch of army guys are sent on a mission to kill the zombies that walk the campus. So this movie still isn't exactly "House of the Dead," but at least it takes place in a couple of buildings, and not a goddamn island. Apparently, the blonde cop who got killed in the first film was able to revive and become a Colonel. If the movie was supposed to tie up loose ends from its predecessor, it's not doing a very good job of it. Still, they agree to the mission.



While the army is out killing the zombies, they manage to get a blood sample from one of them. They have to take it to the scientists at AMS, but Bart (played by James Parks) decides to take it to the pharmacutical companies so he can get rich. He gets knocked out, and they continue killing the zombies until missles blow up the entire campus. The movie ends with a zombified Bart managing to get the sample before getting killed and breaking the test tube. Almost everyone is dead and the movie ends with a news report of the outbreak spreading, leaving room open for a third movie.



This movie was much better than the first one in many ways. The first movie was a mess of bullet-time effects, clips from the video game spliced into the movie, "Game Over" screens accompanying character deaths, and a ridiculous premise of the dead walking an island where the "Rave of the Century where only 40 people show up" is held. Absolutely none of this is on display in the sequel. However, not all of the loose ends from the first one seem to be tied up in this one. The only loose end I got was that the girl who got stabbed between the boobs in the first one was revived with a serum and caged. There's also AMS Agent Ellis (played by Ed Quinn) mourning his brother Tom, who apparently got killed in the first one, but I don't remember seeing that happening, probably because I got lost in the sea of "hey, look at what we can do with computer effects!" I saw this one as more of a remake that shows us what the first one would've been like had the creators decided not to be retarded. Maybe the abscence of Uwe Boll actually made this movie better. God only knows what a mess it might have been if he did sign on to direct it.



Another improvement is the zombies, who in the first one did not really act like zombies. I had a hard time believing that zombies can run, jump, swim, and fight. These ones are more believable, as they didn't do any of that. The pacing was pretty fast at first, but it seemed to drag on at the end. Also, the dialogue did get pretty laughable at times (one example was when one of the army guys whined about how "They got the sarge, man! Not the sarge! They got the saaaaaarge!")



The movie comes out on DVD on February 27. It's a vast improvement over the first one, though it's still pretty mediocre. If nothing else, it's at least worth a rent just to see how not having Uwe Boll direct the movie and not piling on lovely gimmick effects can make a movie better. If the first one was like this, then maybe, just maybe, the franchise could've given Resident Evil a run for its money.

RATING: 2.5

PROS: No video game footage, bullet time effects, retarded rave music, or Uwe Boll.
CONS: Dialogue is still pretty corny at times, didn't tie up a lot of loose ends from the first.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0435665/

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