Chuck Patton's DEAD SPACE: DOWNFALL

A movie review by Dennis D. McDonald

This animated horror/sci-fi adventure is a prequel to the DEAD SPACE video game. An artifact is unearthed on a remote mining colony planet, the artifact is retrieved to orbit by the main ship, then all hell breaks loose when something gets loose in the morgueand starts killing, dismembering, and reanimating corpses.

Zombies, blood and guts, endless corridors, alien infestations, abundant cursing, religious fanatics, and a tough-as-nails female security officer combine to raise this modestly animated adventure above (just barely) a run of the mill factory-generated anime adventure.

It’s oddly entertaining. No sooner did I say to Number One Son, “These guys really need a Light Saber to deal with these bulletproof zombies,” than a character appears with an electronic chain saw he uses to slice and dice the rapidly multiplying bad guys.

There’s a lot of blood, screaming, crunching bones, and dismemberment in this movie. Its’ my understanding that this level of blood and gore is pretty standard nowadays for video games. That’s too bad. But I found this movie at least minimally intriguing. It’s solidly rooted in the Alien/Predator genre with doses of House on Haunted Hill and John Carpenter thrown in for good measure.

I was also reminded at times of the over the top ending of Peter Jackson’s ridiculous blood fest Dead Alive. But there’s no humor in Dead Space: Downfall, which is a missed opportunity.

Are there any funny horror/sci-fi adventures that deal in buckets of blood and zombie re-animation that I could rent next?

Viewed via an X-Box Live/Netflix streaming connection.

Review copyright (c) 2009 by Dennis D. McDonald