House of the Dead 2 (film)

House of the Dead 2
Directed by	Michael Hurst
Produced by	Mark A. Altman Mark Gottwald
Written by	Mark A. Altman Michael Roesch Peter Scheerer
Starring	Emmanuelle Vaugier Ed Quinn Victoria Pratt Nadine Velazquez Mircea Monroe Ellie Cornell with Sticky Fingaz and Sid Haig
Distributed by	Lionsgate
Release date(s)	October 14, 2005 (2005-10-14) (Sitges Film Festival) February 11, 2006 (2006-02-11) (United States: TV premiere) October 23, 2006 (2006-10-23) (United Kingdom: DVD premiere)
Running time	95 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$6,000,000

House of the Dead 2 (alternately titled House of the Dead II: Dead Aim) is the 2005 sequel to Brightlight Pictures' 2003's House of the Dead. The movie is directed by Michael Hurst and premiered at the Sitges Film Festival in Spain on October 14, 2005 and premiered in the United States on the SciFi Channel on February 11, 2006.

Plot

Taking place shortly after the original, a professor at the fictional Cuesta Verde University has managed to subdue and contain a "Hyper sapiens" (a scientific inaccuracy, as the species, not the genus, would be changed for two organisms as similar as humans and dead humans) specimen (revealed to be a survivor from the previous film, who was given the infection when her ex-boyfriend tried to bring her back from the dead). He experiments, trying to determine the source of her immortality, with apparent disregard for the rotted state of her body. When he has created a serum that he believes will bring back the dead and grant immortality, he murders one of his students and brings her back to his lab. He cuts off all of her clothes and then he injects her with the serum. She returns to life and infects the professor, then breaks out of the building and begins infecting students when they try to help her (as she was stripped naked by the professor).

A month later, the university has a full-fledged outbreak, which is confirmed by AMC reconnaissance teams. Ellis, an agent for AMS, goes in search of his fellow agent, Alexandra Morgan, also known as Nightingale. He finds her on a date at a restaurant, but before his arrival, the cook was bitten by the infected professor while on break. Alexandra is forced to execute the zombies on site, and returns to base with Ellis. They are ordered by Colonel Jordan Casper to retrieve a blood sample from the originally infected specimen on campus, warning that missiles will level the campus at midnight, regardless of whether the agents are still present or not. She assigns a gender-mixed Special Forces team of U.S. Marines to provide them with backup. Ellis openly questions the competence of the soldiers, leading to friction between the two units.

Upon arrival at Cuesta Verde University, the soldiers encounter zombies. Their newest member, an overweight private who has no combat experience panics and falls to the ground. A second member of his team engages the zombie, but his M16A4 is knocked away before he can fire. He and the zombie engage in hand-to-hand combat. The zombie is killed, but is able to bite the soldier on the hand. He attempts to hide the injury, but is discovered and his arm is severed in an attempt to stem the infection. He transforms into a zombie despite the amputation, and bites the squad medic, before both are executed by Ellis. The team continues forward into the university proper.

They proceed to battle through the hordes of infected, splitting into two teams to search for the original zombie. Two female soldiers, Lieutenant Henson (despite being a commissioned officer, she is under the command of the lower ranking Sergeant Griffin) and Private Rodriguez, and a male soldier, Bart investigate the dorms. They break into a female dormitory where they find the deceased naked body of a zombie. Bart attempts to pose and have a picture taken with the corpse, and is bitten by a mosquito trapped in the room. Fearing contamination, but unwilling to execute Bart, who is threatening them with a handgun, Henson handcuffs Bart to a radiator and the two soldiers exit the room, falling back to the van. Meanwhile, the second team, including Ellis and Alexandra, are attacked multiple times. Eventually, every soldier escorting them is killed, including the leader of the unit, Sergeant Griffin. They fight their way to the professor's laboratory, and find the original specimen still imprisoned, as well as a pair of students who had survived. They enter the confinement room and extract blood from the zombie, but are forced to kill it when it breaks free. The two students who had allowed them into the confinement room are overrun and torn apart by zombies, and the two agents escape while the zombies are feeding on the bodies.

As this occurs, Henson and Rodriguez make it to the extraction vehicle, a van. There, they prepare to rescue the agents, but Rodriguez is bitten by a zombie who was locked in the back of the van by the soldier assigned to guard it. Henson executes Rodriguez, and the duo arrive in front of the science building as Ellis and Alexandra fight their way through a horde of zombies. The agents make it to the van, but the blood sample vial is destroyed in the process. They are forced to turn back, with ten minutes before missiles level the campus, and fight their way back to the confinement room. They retrieve a second vial, but Henson is bitten on the ankle. She remains behind and commits suicide, as the agents escape by smearing zombie blood and tissue on themselves, disguising themselves as zombies. They escape back to the van, where they find that Bart broke free from the dormitory by amputating his hand. He threatens Ellis at gunpoint, arguing that they could make millions from the vial of blood. Ellis is forced to give him the vial. Bart decides to kill Ellis anyway, but is shot in the back by Alexandra before he can. His dying action is to pull the pin on a hand grenade, destroying the vial in the process. The two agents escape before the missiles level the campus. Alexandra is wounded, but uncertain of whether it's a bite or not. Ellis refuses to execute her, and the two leave the city, finding that the infection has spread to the rest of the city.

Cast

• Emmanuelle Vaugier as Alexandra 'Nightingale' Morgan
• Ed Quinn as Ellis
• Sticky Fingaz as Dalton
• Steve Monroe as O'Conner
• Victoria Pratt as Henson
• James Parks Bart (as James Jean Parks)
• Billy Brown as Griffin
• Nadine Velazquez as Rodriguez
• Mircea Monroe as Sarah Curtis
• Ellie Cornell as Jordan Casper
• Jonathan Cherry as Rudy Curien (archives)
• Danielle Burgio as Alicia/Patient Zero (archives)
• Sid Haig as Professor Curien

Critical reaction

Like the first film, House of the Dead 2 was panned by critics.

• "While there are one or two intriguing moments spread throughout the film's interminable 95 minutes — i.e., the zombie virus can be spread by mosquitoes — House of the Dead II is undoubtedly one of the worst horror sequels to come around in a good long while." — Reel Film
• "Whereas [the first] film was so bad it was almost good (at least we could laugh at it), this straight-to-video sequel is just flat-out bad, and unfortunately, it's flat-out dull. ... House of the Dead II commits the ultimate celluloid sin – it's boring." — DVD Talk
• "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 [House of the Dead II]. ... [It's] indeed an improvement over Boll's original [but it] would have worked better had it stuck to camp and not taken the whole zombie thing too seriously." — Beyond Hollywood
• "House of the Dead II is not as bad as the original by any stretch of the imagination. Is it a good film? Not really. But at least the filmmakers can always claim that it joins an elite selection of sequels which are better than their predecessors. ... It's still a sub-par zombie flick which is too monotonous for its own good." — Popcorn Pictures
• " I'll be kind enough to say that some of the cheeky lines and goofy acting had me at least mildly entertained, but this is all kiddy-level play acting, with a few zombies shambling around in befuddlement. ... I love me some zombies, but this is a redundant exercise in running a video game franchise into the ground." — Mutant Reviewers From Hell
• "[It's] the cinematic equivalent of a rectal exam. Uncomfortable, embarrassing, painful, disconcerting, you just want it to end already, and when you're done you're bitter and sour. And you can't shake that feeling that you've been violated." — Cinema Crazed

Connection to games

The movie is based on the video game series The House of the Dead much more so than the previous film. Both feature some kind of medical facility overrun by zombies, and AMS agents are dispatched to contain it. This movie also shows the 4th game as the AMS agents struggle to break free from the zombies. In this film, AMS agents are dressed up as rogue commandos, and just like in The House of the Dead III, some of them are killed or turned into zombies. Both AMS commandos survive in the ending of the movie, not in the game. The survivors are Ellis and Alex (AMS commandos).

The subtitle for which the film is known is also the name of one installment of another survival horror game: Resident Evil: Dead Aim.

Sequel

A third movie, currently titled House of the Dead 3, with the name subject to change, has been discussed since late 2006. Michael Hurst is replacing Uwe Boll as the director of this movie, and Mark A. Altman said: "It's a completely different approach to the material than the first two films and I doubt it will even be called House of the Dead 3." Unlike House of the Dead 2, the producers aren't planning on releasing House of the Dead 3 direct to DVD, but to theatre.

External links

• House of the Dead 2 at the Internet Movie Database
• House of the Dead 2 at AllRovi