Studio:      Cleopatra Entertainment
Director:    B. Harrison Smith
Writer:      B. Harrison Smith, Gunnar Hansen
Producer:  Rick Finkelstein, Steven Chase
Stars:     Cody Longo, Cortney Palm, Adrienne Barbeau, Michael Berryman, Barbara Crampton, Sid Haig, Kane Hodder, Lloyd Kaufman, Bill Moseley, Tony Todd, Dee Wallace

Review Score:

Summary:

A power failure forces researchers and special agents to fight their way out of a futuristic prison housing the world’s worst killers.

Synopsis:

Agent Toria Boon flashes back to killing a mother and son to keep her cover intact while investigating neo-Nazi Alois Sieg. Boon recalls shooting Sieg’s leg and taking him into custody.

While being escorted by guards, Sieg taunts Boon when she arrives at Death House, a futuristic federal prison and research center where prisoners are confined to virtual environments whose crime simulations allow their behavior to be studied. Captain Victor Galan greets Boon before introducing her to Doctor Eileen Fletcher and fellow agent Jae Novak.

Galan escorts Boon to a holographic cell where, at her request, she confronts the serial killer who murdered her mother Kristi. After watching a live reenactment of her mother’s death, Boon executes the killer.

Dr. Fletcher demonstrates for Novak how the facility’s technology keeps a serial killer nicknamed ‘Leatherlace’ pacified by broadcasting holograms of her father Albert Kenney. When Boon returns, Fletcher introduces Novak and Boon to her colleague Doctor Karen Redmane, who explains more about how Death House uses drugs and machines to keep inmates docile.

Boon and Novak take a virtual tour of Death House. The tour explains that the lowest of the facility’s nine levels houses ‘The Five Evils,’ who consist of dangerous killers Hirace Giger, Balthoria, Alexi Nela, Crau, and Thile.

Novak confronts ‘The Icicle Killer’ inside another simulation. The Icicle Killer taunts Novak.

Outside, a mysterious boy attacks a perimeter guard. The boy plants an electronic device inside the dying guard’s stomach.

While showering together, Boon and Novak discuss how they don’t remember details of their outside lives.

Dr. Redmane presents Sieg to the two agents. Doctor Bennett details how his staff drafts homeless people to be sacrificed as victims in Death House’s murder simulation studies. Redmane also introduces the agents to three men claiming to be various incarnations of Satan.

Doctor Challis discovers the electronic device while performing surgery on the injured guard. Removing the device triggers a power failure throughout the facility, trapping Boon and Novak in an elevator with Dr. Fletcher.

Sieg and other Death House inmates break loose and begin slaughtering guards. Sieg tries rallying everyone together, but is suddenly shot before another inmate tears out his guts. Sieg unexpectedly rises from the floor. Sieg tells the inmates that the only way out is by joining him to go down to The Five Evils. Sieg kills his attacker and begins leading the other inmates through their revolt.

Boon, Novak, and Dr. Fletcher climb out of the elevator shaft and fight their way through attacking inmates. The trio briefly stops in a room of skinned-alive subjects.

Sieg frees the three Satans. Two of the men murder Dr. Redmane.

Boon, Novak, and Dr. Fletcher hide from Sieg by clinging to bodies hanging in a staging room of homeless victims. Fletcher loses her grip and falls to her death.

Reasoning that The Five Evils offer the best chance of escape, Boon and Novak descend down an elevator shaft to the facility’s lowest level. When they confront the villainous quintet, Giger explains that there are multiple Death Houses being used to breed a new race that is neither good nor evil with technology as their new god. Flashbacks show Boon and Novak being previously subjected to Death House’s experiments. Giger goes on to say that they need to be released so the agents can pursue them, maintaining the balance of good and evil in the world.

Sieg enters. Sieg reveals that he has followed The Five Evils to become immortal like them. Giger responds that Sieg disgusts them and has merely been played as a pawn in their escape plan.

Gas releases throughout Death House, causing inmates to collapse. Sieg painfully disintegrates. Giger philosophizes about a clean slate and being free from original sin as he and the other four stand over where Sieg’s body was.

The facility comes back online. Boon and Novak escape outside. Boon mentions that they don’t know who they really are. Novak replies, “let’s go find out.”

Review:

Usually when someone dubs something “the worst movie I’ve ever seen,” you can amusedly roll both eyes under an assumption s/he is exaggerating. If someone were to say that about “Death House” however, I wouldn’t necessarily be quick to categorize the claim as hyperbole. Way too much trash exists out there for “Death House” to legitimately rank as “the worst horror movie of all-time.” But it’s at least in the running for “worst horror movie of the year.”

Following the film’s lazy lead, I frankly don’t feel like expending much effort on a formal critique. “Death House” is simply awful. Any shill who asserts differently is straight up full of sh*t.

Manufactured marketing desperately desires to push “Death House” as ‘The Expendables of Horror.’ While I did find two other films that made the exact same claim prior to “Death House” (“Smothered” and “William Froste”), I couldn’t dig up a source that verified this tagline as being birthed by anybody other than the filmmakers.

Not that I blame producers for trying. When the entirety of the budget was obviously blown pointlessly procuring a roster of 80s horror stars who, if we’re being brutally honest, are now known for convention appearances and diminishing credibility with cameos in DTV drivel like this, I’d tout it too. After all, “Death House” has nothing else of note to offer.

Vacant acting. Insultingly outdated effects. A nonsensically silly storyline. There’s really no benefit to detailing this monstrous mess any further. Everything about “Death House” absolutely embarrasses everyone whose name appears in its orbit.

Although the main focus stays on the exhaustive list of horror’s who’s who appearing in the film, perhaps some conjectured insight can be gleaned from the names no longer tied to the project. A 2015 report on preproduction, which teased a drastically different plot and character roster, tied Robert Englund, Doug Bradley, and Ken Foree to the title. Apparently their management had better moves for backing out than Kane Hodder, Dee Wallace, and Barbara Crampton, who bear the brunt of career bruising by being the only icons with more than a mere minute of screentime.

Having to see longtime favorites drowning so deep in the gutter is like having to visit a cancer-stricken loved one dying in a soiled deathbed. It’s uncomfortable seeing them like this.

One of the more baffling “now you see him, now you don’t” faces in “Death House” has to be Danny Trejo, who briefly appears in the movie, but conspicuously doesn’t appear in the credits. Trejo isn’t exactly selective about his work. As an actor who does indies by the hour, if you can meet his rate, he’ll show up for virtually any one-and-done scene. Assuming it isn’t an oversight (although “Death House” isn’t shy about shouting everyone else’s credit), for Trejo to not have his name placed prominently, or at all, really says something.

“Death House” started as a story from late ‘Leatherface’ actor and author Gunnar Hansen. Hansen was known for academic endeavors, having taught college courses in addition to writing nonfiction histories of America’s Barrier Islands and Maine’s Mount Desert. I’m guessing Hansen’s mind is responsible for “Death House’s” cursory parallels to ‘Dante’s Inferno’ and Nietzsche-influenced philosophies. I’m guessing a lesser mind corrupted Hansen’s ideological framework into a muddled lump of blather about software being dogma in a technological religion or something. Hansen definitely didn’t write Kane Hodder’s character threatening a woman with, “I will f*ck you in Hell.”

Maybe “Death House” would have fared better under different circumstances. Maybe an accomplished director would have pulled an actual performance out of one of the visibly disinterested genre vets (Dee Wallace barely masks annoyed contempt as she counts the seconds before she can continue chewing out her agent). Maybe a capable cinematographer would have lit the warehouse set so viewers could actually see the action, or suggested not staging 70% of scenes in front of a green screen with poorly rendered CGI backdrops. And maybe a responsible producer would have stopped cutting checks for horror celebs to stand still in the background for novelty value and apply that cash in a narratively beneficial manner instead.

Or maybe its inept fiction, which includes bizarre Tony Todd bookends that feel pulled from a totally different movie, and clumsy camerawork, which often looks like it was shot on a first-generation iPhone, doomed “Death House” from the start. All I know for certain is that 85-minute movies rarely feel like this much of an interminable slog.

NOTE: There is a mid-credits scene.

Review Score: 20