Dead House

Far too much of what follows is nothing but a variation on that abysmal scene; yes, the movie’s got zombies, and their presence is foreshadowed to the audience early on, but they’re of no import whatsoever until the final third. So, instead, much of the Dead House‘s (at least, mercifully brief) running time is spent with the three pieces of human garbage seen in the opening – talkative ringleader Nibbio (Danny Cutler), his squeamish younger brother Brett (Alex Southern), and the drooling sadist Testamento (Alex Lucchesi) – as they threaten and torture a normal-seeming upper-class family in their supposedly isolated countryside mansion (in one shot, it looks like they’ve got a very nearby next-door neighbor, but never mind).

The family’s patriarch, John (David White), is working on some type of military experiment in his basement laboratory, but Nibbio and his crew don’t know anything about it – they’re just there to continue their ongoing robbery and pillaging spree. And, so it goes: John’s wife, Elena (Kate Marie Davies), is repeatedly threatened with rape, John is sexually humiliated in front of her, and the couple’s two kids are menaced with handguns and straight razors. All the while, Nibbio spouts off pseudo-philosophical bullshit like someone who’s seen a few too many British gangster movies (one longs for the mordant humor of Jonathan Glazer’s Sexy Beast), and there isn’t a shred of self-awareness to any of it.

“…the three pieces of human garbage…threaten and torture a normal-seeming upper-class family in their supposedly isolated countryside mansion…”

The longer that Dead House goes on before getting to the monster business, the less a chance it has to redeem itself for the alternately tiresome, stupid, and sickening stuff that leads up to it. And, indeed, when the promised carnage finally arrives, it’s almost a complete letdown. The makeup effects work is actually quite good, but the attacks are lazily staged and devoid of scares, and, as if to disappoint even the gore-hounds in the audience, the film almost always pans or cuts away from things like gunshots, impalings, and the like – no doubt for budgetary reasons, because, obviously, nobody was shooting for a PG-13 rating, here. There’s simply no satisfying payoff for all the nastiness that the filmmakers spend such an agonizingly long time setting up, and when the most odious of the antagonists is bloodlessly dispatched off-screen, the film’s total disregard for its audience is made complete.