A discussion on a recent podcast we recorded made me realize that I had missed watching one of Uwe Boll’s video game adaptation movies, House of the Dead. How could this be? It was the triple threat: Uwe Boll, video game and ZOMBIES! How did I ever miss this? On my journey of discovery, I decided to re-watch *all* of the video game movies and give my thoughts.
Historically, Uwe Boll’s video game adaptations haven’t done terribly great at the box office, both foreign and domestic. To date, the only one to make its budget back was the first one, House of the Dead. DVD sales must really be helping on the back end because he still gets hired as a director and given bigger and bigger budgets.
House of the Dead (2003) – Uwe Boll’s first foray into the adaptation game left a lot of people underwhelmed. I am not one of them. I thought this movie was a hell of a lot of fun, mostly because of how bad it was. I was pleasantly surprised to see Jürgen Prochnow as one of the leads. One of the big fails of this movie, however, is the use of short clips from the video game it’s based on as scene transitions. For the most part, they’re trying to force the building tension, but fail miserably because it interrupts the flow of the movie.
Alone in the Dark (2005) – For the most part, it’s a half decent action movie, with semi-decent acting from the main characters. Well, that’s not entirely true. Tara Reid plays an archeologist and, in my opinion, is the single worst part of this movie. A cardboard cutout of Meryl Streep would have had greater acting range. Her casting was about as “inspired” as Denise Richards, the nuclear scientist in The World Is Not Enough. Probably the second from the bottom of all of his VGA movies.
Bloodrayne (2005) – By far, this is the weakest of the 6 films. Despite having some fairly good actors, like Sir Ben Kingsley and Udo Kier, and beautiful sets, the too-rich story overpowers everything else. It tries to force about 2-3 minutes of information into each minute on screen, resulting in a jumbled mess that jumps around too quickly to make much sense. Every actor pretty much phones it in (I’m especially talking to you, Michael Madsen), except for Michelle Rodriguez, who stumps around and grunts like every one of her other movie performances. Very macho.
In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (2007) – As I’m writing this, I’d have to say that this is my favorite of the bunch. Allen will try to tell you that it’s just because of my perfectly natural male crush on Jason Statham, but it’s more than that. There’s a lot of attention to detail in the sets and it looks like they had some fun making it. It’s not quite as campy as Hercules or Xena, but it approaches it at times. Apart from Statham, the rest of the cast reads like a who’s who of used to be a-listers and solid b-list performers. Uwe also brings back several of his recurring actors, like Kristanna Lokken and Will Sanderson. If you could replace Ray Liotta, as the main bad guy, with someone that could act/emote, I would put this on par with Conan the Barbarian.
Postal (2007) – This is the most tongue-in-cheek of all of Boll’s VGA movies. This, by itself, elevates it to about second place on my list. It has Osama Bin Laden, terrorists, George Bush, cultists, and one really unlucky guy that’s had enough. Uwe owns the fact that this is a bad movie and has some fun with it, although the last third of the movie got to be a bit too slapstick for my tastes. Some of the jokes in it, like the 9/11 gag at the beginning and the Nazi gold financing, might seem a bit taboo for some, but they’re funny just the same. The DVD special features has the boxing matches between Boll and some of his online critics that he originally wanted to work into the film, but couldn’t find a place for. A word of advice after watching the boxing: Don’t piss off Uwe Boll.
Far Cry (2008) – Boll brings back Udo Kier as a mad geneticist in this adaptation about super soldiers that kind of smelled like Universal Soldier, only not quite as tightly made film-wise. I kind of enjoyed it as I was watching it, but was a little distracted by too much familiar local scenery. This was the 5th of his 6 video game movies to be shot in and around Vancouver, British Columbia. I’m not exactly sure what I would do to make this movie much better.
I think that Uwe Boll gets unfairly maligned as a director and his movies are much better than people give them credit for. If I went by their rating on the IMDb or Rotten Tomatoes, I’d never have seen any of them. I’m looking forward to his next adaptation: Zombie Massacre. Like I said at the beginning – It’s the trifecta: Uwe Boll, video game adaptation and it’s got zombies… how could I not like it?
I know some people will say that Bloodrayne 2 should be on this list. I disagree. It’s a sequel to Bloodrayne and not an adaptation of the second Bloodrayne video game. Purists will argue that the first Bloodrayne movie doesn’t follow the video game because it’s set some 200 years before the actual video game, but it was the first movie to be adapted from the game. Semantics, I know, but I’m sticking to it. Not sure if I could handle more Bloodrayne.
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