20131119: Horror Review--House of Bodies

House of Bodies

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. American live action feature length film 2013, NR, 78 minutes, horror. Spoken word is English.
2. IMDB: 5.5/10.0 from 304 audience ratings.
3. Rotten Tomatoes:  'No reviews yet...' and 'No scores yet.'
4. Netflix: 3.1/5.0 from 78,849 audience ratings.
5. Directed by: Alex Merkin.  Screenplay by Eddie Harris.
6. Starring: Terrence Howard as Starks, Queen Latifa as Nicole, Peter Fonda as Henry Lee Bishop, George Katt as Raylan Miller/Radar, Elizabeth Brissenden as Tracey, Alexz Johnson as Kelli, Juliana Harkavy as Tisha, Karlee Eldridge as Ambra, Francisco A. Pino as Darryl.


2. Setup and Plot
1. Henry Lee Bishop is on death row for a series of grisly murders.  Years later, he's still in jail, solitary mostly, and similar murders happen.  Detective Starks investigates, including going to the prison to talk to Bishop eyeball to eyeball.


2. A bunch of young idiots run a simulated-sex-and-murder-reenacted-over-Internet sort of business.  They strive for realism.  They fake each other out.  It seems the director intends that we don't know what is real or not with this group.


3. A deaf, speechless young man plays video games and visits gory websites.  One of these is 'House of Bodies' which supposedly was inspired by Henry Lee Bishop's place of residence.  This is the website of the idiots mentioned above.  In each room the young women re-enact murders committed there.  Our young man reads all this on the site.  That's the site's marketing ploy.


4. That's what the detectives are not seeing: the website seems to have generated at least one copycat killer. 


5. Tracey runs the house and the site.  Kelli is the new recruit who is a bit gun shy.  Tisha is more accustomed to the work.  Sadey left the job before she was murdered.


6. The deaf boy logs into the site, and Tracey assigns him to Kelli to talk to.  They get to know each other a bit.  Sadly, the killer comes in, then starts taking out the staff.


7. So, who gets out of this alive?


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: Murder mystery meets murder reenactment website; worth seeing Terrence Howard and Peter Fonda.
2. Four stars of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 9/10 Usually excellent.


2. Sound: 8/10 Usually quite good, but Terrence Howard was badly miked.  AM radio in the desert sounds better.  The incidental music was good for creepiness.


3. Acting: 8/10 Worth seeing for the interactions between Terrence Howard and Peter Fonda.


4. Screenplay: 8/10 Much better than I expected.  Plot progresses well, and the detective solves a mystery.