House of Blood (Chain Reaction)

Olaf Ittenbach 2006

On a road in the middle of no-where a bus full of criminals on route to prison collides with the car of Dr Douglas Madsen. With the guards out of the way the criminals take the doctor hostage and force him to follow them into the woods.   Here they encounter a strange house with even stranger inhabitants. And soon the blood begins to flow.

Some films are good, some are bad and some are so bad they loop round to good again. This film stays stubbornly in the bad camp.

Firstly, I've seen better acting in Nativity plays. This film is full of actors that think expressing anger means merely shouting and saying the f-word. This film even manages to have under-acting as well as overacting.

Not having enough plot to fill a whole film didn't seem to bother Ittenbach, who merely repeated the first half just in case you'd forgotten how bad it was.

Dialogue wise, Ittenbach wanted the strange family in the film to have an old worldly, even biblical essence and what expresses that better than adding -eth to the end of every word. I gave up trying to decipher what they were supposed to be saying, I doubt it enhanced the plot anyway.

House of Blood is one of those films that raises more questions than it answers, but not in a good way. A baffling plot, poor acting and dialogue that makes no sense add up to a cinematic experience that I hope I don't have to repeat anytime soon. It's rare I see films with so few redeeming qualities.

In short, it's crapeth.