At Home with John and Debbie

We rented two films on Sunday, and watched them that night and last night.

The first was House of the Dead.

It’s a film based on the Sega arcade game of the same name. What could possibly go wrong? In fact this is well known for being rubbish — yet not even bad enough to be good — and Debbie only chose it because she was trying to punish me for making her watch Zatoichi. If Soccer Dog: The Movie had been in stock, she would have rented that.

Acting: terrible. Plot: terrible. Action: terrible. Makeup: terrible. There was one reasonably nice use of Matrix bullet time, and a nice effect with a rotating camera that was overused until it wasn’t nice any more. It seemed to have absolutely nothing to do with the game, until right at the end, when a tenuous link is established — a link that only a Sega geek like me would spot.

The other was Creep.

Creep is a British horror film starring that girl from Run Lola Run as a girl who falls asleep waiting for the last train from Charing Cross Tube station. It soon becomes clear that she’s trapped in the Tube system, and that someone — or something — murderous is down there with her.

I was reminded that one of the TV adverts for the film consisted solely of four words, white on black, appearing one after the other.

CONTAINS
STRONG
BLOODY
VIOLENCE

(This is the rationale given for the 18 certificate)

I’d say that if you were a Tube user who likes a good scare, this has to be worth seeing. Conversely, if you don’t like a good scare, seeing this might put you off the Tube forever — although I suppose if you were staunch enough to respond to genuine Tube terror in a rational manner, mere fiction shouldn’t be a problem.

When the baddie is finally revealed, there’s a real risk of the Jeepers Creepers problem — where the looming threat turns out to be a man in a rubber suit — but happily, this is avoided.

Ken Campbell is in it. Ken Campbell! There aren’t enough films with Ken Campbell in them. Also, Vas Blackwood is in it. I found it difficult to take him seriously, when all I could think of was Winston from The Lenny Henry Show.

One particular scene is really, really, nasty. Yuk.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 27th, 2005 at 12:13 and is filed under Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.