Director: Michael Hurst
Year: 2005
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: House of the Dead II: Dead Aim; House of the Dead 2: All Guts, No Glory
Genre: Zombie
Plot:
After a viral outbreak at a college, a team of commandos escorts a recovery team through the zombie-infected campus to recover a potential cure for the zombie outbreak rumored to be hidden away in the bowels of the building only to force themselves into a deadly struggle to come out alive.
Review:
Overall this one was quite a decent and enjoyable zombie effort. One of the biggest points with this one is the rather impressive amount of general zombie action within this one that comes with all sorts of different encounter styles within here. The action of the opening quick- shots showing the zombie virus raging across the campus, the ensuing fraternity raid on the sorority that stumbles onto the zombie virus as well as the outbreak at the restaurant all manage to come off as rather fun quick ambushes that are highly enjoyable while setting up the larger scenes in here giving this a fine initial setup for the outbreak to come later on with the first instances of the virus spreading out into the community.
The film's at its best when dealing with the more-involved action scenes here which are quite exciting as the great encounter on the highway leading into the school at the very beginning show out-of-their-elements they are, the attempts to take over the school show off the incredibly fun times of the zombie encounters in the dorm rooms, the library and especially in the basement tunnels against the electrified fences and endless hordes of creatures coming through the rankings of their defenses which is exciting, action-packed scenes that make it really fun and genuinely enjoyable. Far more fun here is the film's last hour as there are even more encounters, some fun action and the best scenes here in the locker room and the battle in the lab which all feature into here for its better scenes.
The cast here does fine with what they have to do here. Emmanuelle Vaugier as scientist Alex does fine here, giving this the kind of out-of-her-element scientist that becomes far more capable as time goes on. Ed Quinn as military leader Alex is the stereotypical grunt who basically dead-pans his way through the entire thing without really changing much in the situation which makes for a bland time overall. The rest of the grunts are somewhat better, with Sticky Fingaz doing okay as the mission commander who gets in over his head with every decision, Victoria Pratt as tomboy soldier Henson, as the sleazehound/comic relief soldier O'Connor and Dan Southworth as the reckless hothead Nakagawa do okay with their roles. As well, we get bonus appearances by cult actors Sig Haig, Ellie Cornell and Mircea Munroe in brief appearances, and along with the rather bloody zombie action and make-up, all make for its positives to overcome its few flaws.
The biggest issue here is the fact that there are some incredibly flimsy plot attempts to connect this with the original as all this does to connect the two is a lame insert scene of an obscurely-filmed interrogation scene where they mention the exact virus from that one as the only cue to clue us in on the purpose for the scene. As this one never once makes mention of the virus being studied there, a move colossally stupid if that was true, nor allows the zombies any kind of behavior connection, there's very little reason here for the film's lackluster attempts to sell the story. The other real flaw here is the film's last half-hour of there being no purpose to return to the school as these could've been added on to the first escape so there's little point in going through the motions all over again. These here are the film's flaws.
Overview: ***1/2/5
A decidedly enjoyable if somewhat flawed follow-up to the original, this one offers up enough worthwhile elements to be a fine standalone effort and a decidedly decent follow-up. Give this a shot if you're willing to go into this kind of low-budget action-packed splatter film or a fan of the original, while those burned off by the first one or just looking for more from their films should avoid this altogether.
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