Ripping on DeadHouse feels a little mean. It's such an obviously low budget and amateurish number that you kind of want to cut it some slack. But it sucks so bad that you can't, in good conscience, do that.
Basically, your story is: Three friends (one dude and two sisters) are driving on a long trip to a relative's house. They almost run over a guy wandering on the side of the highway, and offer to give him a ride as payment for nearly killing him. The four of them seem to be a bit lost... and in a twist of bad luck, their car gets stuck in the mud! So they hoof it to go find some help.
The four of them come across a super dilapidated old farmhouse. (And it's For Real in rough shape. Apparently, cowriter-codirector Pablo Macho Maysonet IV fell through the floor of the house into the basement when he was searching for a place to shoot.) Despite it VERY OBVIOUSLY being the type of place you shouldn't go into... they go into it. Unfortunately, there are a couple of guys who live there who like to kill and torture people. And I guess sell their meat for food. Which begs the questions "why the torture?" Probably something along the lines of 'fear makes the meat more tender' or something. (Or maybe that was from another people-eating movie - who can say? I'm not watching DeadHouse again to find out.)
The first thing you can't help but notice is how cheap DeadHouse is. The low budget and/or inexperience is evident from the get-go - ugly looking shots, weird pixelization, and amateurish acting. But the real nail in the coffin of DeadHouse is the sound. There are large chunks of dialogue that you simply cannot hear. I put the captions on (thanks Amazon Instant) but they were no help either. You get more "...[inaudible]..." here than any film I've ever seen. I'm sure we're not missing anything good, but still - it's the principle of the thing.
The cheapness extends to it's villains too. There are two guys living in the DeadHouse (although I think KillingHouse would be more accurate) - one is this crazy-angry kind of metal looking dude in a jumpsuit (writer-director Maysonet), and the other is this hulking monster of a man in a pretty dumb mask. (NOT as good as the one on the box.) Plus, his outfit is augmented with not one but two kinds of tape - duct and black electric, for those keeping track. But he actually made me smile every time he was onscreen... he made me think of a great cover band - Fat Slipknot. The idea of a bunch of dumpy guys in terrible costumes playing bad Slipknot covers just kind of makes me laugh. Anyways, he's the "unstoppable force" of the film, and doesn't really do anything too crazy. Just kind of seems like a normal, run-of-the-mill killer to me. It's actually Maysonet's character named Kain that is the most menacing. He gets the best lines and and seems like a legitimately angry guy. Maybe he knows how the film is going to turn out. All joking aside, he's owned up to the film being bad and chalks it up to his inexperience at the time. Fair enough. He is the most engaging presence in the film, and it's not even close. The rest of the performances range from passable to quite poor.
There just isn't really any flow to DeadHouse - nothing really hooks you or draws you in as a viewer. Other than Fat Slipknot (and maybe an "[inaudible]" drinking game), the most memorable thing about the film for me was how in the DeadHouse universe, people sitting in the front seat of a car can't hear what people in the back seat are saying.
Gore? I honestly don't even remember. So I guess it can't be too bad - otherwise I'd remember it? No real tension to report on - the whole film is just so poorly shot/edited that it kind of sucks all of the air out of the action scenes.
So yeah, not a very good time at the movies. Even indie horror fans should probably steer clear of this one.
I would not recommend this film.
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