Adapted from a Sega-produced video game that in the late '90s rivaled Golden Tee as a barroom favorite, House Of The Dead at least deserves credit for staying true to its source material. Both game and movie consist of little more than zombies getting blown apart by gunfire. In fact, director Uwe Boll seems to have felt so strongly about staying true to his inspiration that in several of the punishingly edited, Matrix-derived action scenes, he cuts to footage taken directly from the game itself, complete with pixelated zombie action and on-screen instructions to "reload." He might have done better to include more, since the franchise doesn't seem much improved by the human element, and the game never resorts to having characters observe that it's gotten "…almost too quiet." The film opens on a cheery note, with well-scrubbed young people heading to a remote rave, where topless hotties writhe beneath Sega banners and the beer flows freely. Unfortunately, the rave organizers have made the mistake of choosing as their party spot a place called "Isla Del Morte," which is apparently Spanish for "Island Of Extras Wearing Supermarket Halloween Makeup." The arrival of zombies sours their booze-soaked utopian dream and forces interchangeable latecomers and a handful of survivors to run for their lives until, with the help of an old sea salt played by slumming Das Boot star Jürgen Prochnow, they find a cache of weapons. Much poorly choreographed gunplay, many lovingly rendered head explosions, and some half-assed exposition about centuries-old, immortality-seeking pirates follow, with nothing to recommend House Of The Dead to anyone but the most undiscriminating zombie-movie fans. One character describes the situation as being "just like out of a Romero movie." If only.