HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: DEATH HOUSE (2018) *

Death House features every star that’s been on the horror convention circuit for the past millennium.  We have Kane Hodder, Bill Moseley, Adrienne Barbeau, Debbie Rochon, Gunnar Hansen (who also gets a story credit), Dee Wallace, Camille Keaton, Barbara Crampton, Sid Haig, Tony Todd, and Michael Berryman, just to name a few.  Just because of that, you’d think it would be worth watching.  No such luck. 

Two government agents take a tour of a high-tech underground prison nicknamed “Death House”.  A combination of gas and virtual reality keep the prisoners in a catatonic state, and the worst-of-the-worst villains, “The Five Evils” are kept on the bottom floor.  Predictably, a power outage causes all the prisoners to escape, and the two agents have to fight their way to safety.  

Sounds like it can’t miss, but it’s an abomination in just about every way you can imagine.

Death House was billed as “The Expendables of Horror”, but it’s really anything but.  Talk about a shitty use of talent.  The titans of terror rarely appear on screen together and when they do, it’s fleeting.  Most of the cast are only around for precious few seconds of screen time or are virtually unrecognizable.  Many appear in what looks to be unrelated footage that was probably filmed on a smoke break during a convention appearance and dropped half-assed into the finished product.  It’s almost as if the director took a green screen to every convention he went to in order to get more stars into the movie.  Speaking of green screen, Death House features some of the worst green screen effects I’ve seen.  The virtual reality stuff is particularly annoying.  

The only effective sequence comes when our heroes stumble upon a room full of skinless prisoners.  They don’t want to escape though.  The LIKE it down there.  This scene would’ve made for its own interesting short film.  Too bad it’s sandwiched inside an otherwise nearly unwatchable mishmash.

Most of Death House is too dark to see.  Most of the time, that’s a blessing.  It also takes forever before we finally get to see the Five Evils in action.  Even then, all they do is stand around and gab for ten minutes or so. Who knew supreme evil’s superpower was talking people to death?