Gaming and Film: The Uwe Boll Mishaps

As long as video games have been around to be licensed, people have sought to make money off of them in film. While the quality that exists between the two, whether game to movie or movie to game, has been relatively low, none match the striking bad quality of an Uwe Boll film. From House of the Dead to the immortal Alone in the Dark, each film adaptation has been beyond what would normally be called laughable and gone shooting past what we define as horrible. However, the most disturbing thing in all of this is that Boll continues to direct worse video game movies, leaving fans of many series to deal with a horrendous addition to their game's universe.

Alone in the Dark is credited with jump starting the survival horror genre, which went on to be perfected by the likes of Resident Evil and Silent Hill. Released in 2005, the film adaptation has not only been called one of the worst adaptations of all time but it is routinely named one of the worst movies ever made. Many cite Tara Reid's performance, or lack thereof as one of the film's many extremely low points. Both Stephen Dorff and Christian Slater seem to be on another planet in most scenes and overall absolutely nothing makes any sense. By most estimations of this film both technical and intangible attributes pale in comparison to watching paint dry on a wall or watching a mating conjugation between two fruit flies. Sadly, this steaming pile of bad film is neither the first nor the last in a long line of crap that has come by way of Uwe Boll.

Boll's first foray into ruining a video game franchise was with 2003's House of the Dead. House of the Dead is a notable on-rails first person shooter that was made popular mostly through arcade play. Ninety minutes of pure crap one would have to wonder who exactly had the audacity to submit this as a script and who was inebriated enough to accept it? Terrible, terrible acting the likes of which the world has never seen before and scenes so utterly ridiculous-it's amazing that people actually paid to see this and that it was actually a popular DVD overseas.