In 2003, Uwe Boll, the notorious and undisputed king of bad video game to film adaptations, gave us House Of The Dead. It was a terrible film, and was pretty much panned universally, but it actually turned a profit and because of that we're now forced to deal with the inevitable sequel - House Of The Dead II – Dead Aim. This time around, Boll was nowhere to be seen (he was off in Europe directing Bloodrayne, a film that may be remembered as his masterpiece years from now…) but unfortunately that doesn't prove to work in the film's favor. Whereas Uwe's 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.

After some frat boys crash a girl's dormitory, we see Professor Curien (Sid Haig of The Devil's Rejects) working late in the lab one night. He's a little irked that his experiments haven't re-animated the dead like he's hoped… or so he thinks. As it turns out, his experiments are working just fine and as he happens to turn his back on the naked corpse he injected with his re-agent (oops, I mean, serum), he finds that out the hard way when she chomps down on his neck. This, dear readers, is the beginning of a zombie outbreak that will spread across the campus very quickly, meaning that the government is going to have to kick things into high gear and send in some highly trained A.M.S. agents and a few special forces grunts to save the day.

Enter Dr. Alex Morgan (Emmanuelle Vaugier of Saw II), better known as Nightengale, and her partner Jake Ellis (Ed Quinn). These two, along with the team of soldiers lead by Sgt. Dalton (Sticky Fingaz) head into the heart of the campus, killing their way through hordes of undead students and faculty, in hopes of finding the original zombie that started the plague so that Morgan can extract a blood sample that they hope will lead way to the discovery of a cure for this horrible plague. The only problem is, they're on a tight schedule – they've only got a few hours to make this happen before a nuclear strike is called in to ensure that none of the zombies escape to spread the plague even further than it's already sprawled…

A strange and rather ineffective mix of stylized violence, splatter, and childish humor, House Of The Dead II is pretty much a waste of time. When Sid Haig brings nothing to his role, you know that the script is weak and further evidence of this pops up throughout the film with bad cliché after bad cliché creeping into the dialogue and horrible one liners coming out of nowhere at completely inappropriate times. Very little of it is funny (it seems like we're supposed to take this fairly seriously, meaning it's not quite a comedy despite the incessant attempts at wit), none of it is scary, and the movie rips off not only Resident Evil but also Re-Animator and even the ultra crappy Return Of The Living Dead: Necropolis (in both films a team has to go into a compound, fight insurmountable odds, and return unscathed to save mankind). The problem is that all of those films, even Necropolis (which sucked and sucked hard), do it better than House Of The Dead II leaving us with a film that feels like nothing more than a fast, cheap cash in on the horror/zombie craze that's currently running rampant in Hollywood.

Furthering the 'cheap cash in' theory is the fact that although this is obviously touted as a sequel it has almost nothing to do with the original film or the video game. In fact, it doesn't even take place in a house, though one could argue that calling your horror film Campus Of The Dead might not go over so well with the kids. The only real reference to the video game is during a firefight at which point one of the characters yells 'RELOAD!' but that's about it. There are a couple of nods to the original film in that the alpha zombie that they're looking for is supposed to be one of the surviving corpses from the island attack that Boll brought to life and Ellie Cornell shows up as Col. Jordan Jasper, reprising her role from the first movie, but story-wise, this could easily stand alone and in fact the original script was originally supposed to be a stand alone film before some marketing wizard decided to slap the House Of The Dead brand logo on top and pretend that it was some sort of follow up.

The characters are cookie-cutter formula folk, the script is predictable and borrows heavily from better genre efforts, and although the action kicks in fast and keeps up until the end, the movie somehow manages to be pretty much completely devoid of excitement. A couple of stand out scenes can be found if you're patient enough to wade through the piles of crap that surround them – a scene in a football field where our heroes have to run through a team of undead jocks is mildly amusing and a scene where one of the soldiers takes his picture with a naked corpse and makes crass jokes about her is a little disturbing – but that's it. All the make up effects and gore in the world can't save this one…

Video:

The 1.85.1 anamorphic widescreen on this disc is pretty nice despite an abundance of edge enhancement in some scenes and some mild to moderate aliasing. Black levels stay strong throughout, only showing mpeg compression in a couple of spots (which is good seeing as a whole lot of the film takes place at night or in dark places like the insides of the university… with the lights off!). Flesh tones look lifelike when they're supposed to and sickly and zombie-esque when the script calls for it – which is quite often, as there are an abundance of zombies in the movie. Color reproduction is strong and the strange dead flesh make up does look pretty good for the most part. There's a pretty decent level of both foreground and background detail present in the image almost entirely throughout the movie though some fine detail does get lost in the shadows from time to time. Thankfully this only happens sporadically and it isn't a regular occurrence. Overall though, House Of The Dead II does look pretty good on this DVD.