Blackwoods

Before inflicting HOUSE OF THE DEAD onto the world, in what the trade papers promise to be the first of several awful cinematic adaptations of video games, Uwe Boll made this cheap German-financed shot-in-British Columbia (though set in the U.S.) opus. The box makes it sound like another take on THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME, though only a few minutes of the movie towards the end could be considered so. The movie's more of a psychological thriller of sorts, trying hard to bring things together for a neat twist at the end, though the twist is one that's been used in several major Hollywood movies released in the past few years. It's a pretty dull and cheap affair for the most part, with a lot of unanswered questions such as that nude sequence near the end. Muldoon gives another sleepwalking performance that makes you wonder why he's a star even in the direct-to-video market. The movie's also not helped by Boll's *frequent* penchant for flashforwards (which naturally spoil some things to come), flashbacks (a number of which are not only repeated, but way too many times), and awful use of blurry slow-motion in these segments *plus* the "normal" parts of the movie! At least Clint Howard brings some welcome comic relief in his few brief scenes.