During an exclusive tour, a power breakdown inside a secret prison known as the Death House sends two agents fighting through a labyrinth of horrors while being pursued by a ruthless army of roaming inmates. As they fight to escape, the agents push toward the lowest depths of the facility where they learn a supernatural group of evil beings is their only chance for survival.

Death House wants to be The Expendables of horror films so bad that that’s how it marketed itself upon release. But it also wants to be The Devil’s Rejects sooooo bad. Or does it want to be A Clockwork Orange sooooo bad? Obviously, there’s a difference between taking inspiration from a film (okay) and straight up apeing one (so not okay). But name your cult classic, chances are there’s a derivative of it somewhere in this film.

On that note, name a modern horror veteran, and chances are they make an appearance or star in Death House. The cast boasts talents including Bill Moseley (The Devil’s Rejects), Dee Wallace (E.T.), Sid Haig (House of 1000 Corpses), Tony Todd (Candyman), Michael Berryman (The Hills Have Eyes), Vernon Wells (Commando), Kane Hodder (Hatchet), and Barbara Crampton (Re-Animator, one of my personal all-time fave films), amongst numerous others. So many, in fact, that the production team apparently ghosted Robert Englund during its development. But the fact that this amalgamation of actors was coordinated is something extraordinary. Alright, back to how I really felt about this movie.

In this film that somehow tops Rob Zombie in creating the perfect male-gazey creep experience, during an exclusive tour, a power breakdown inside a secret prison known as the Death House sends two agents fighting through a labyrinth of horrors while being pursued by a ruthless army of roaming inmates. As they fight to escape, the agents push toward the lowest depths of the facility where they learn a supernatural group of evil beings is their only chance for survival.

The dialogue being so stilted and performances thus being so wooden at first led me to believe that this was a lower-budget parody of high-budget sci-fi films, so I kept waiting for a punchline. And waiting. And waiting. And the payoff culminated in a wasted opportunity to take advantage of having such a seasoned cast, who were either given mere seconds of screen time or simply nothing to work with. Even Moseley’s cerebral end monologue, one about God’s demands for humanity to be slavish and obedient, is delivered with self-aware winces and an after-school-special attitude. Again, not his fault. Maybe it was the actors who requested the constantly dim lighting where there was nowhere else to hide.

The overall goal of Death House seems to be to herd as many horror stars imaginable into one movie, where each scene serves as an excuse to insert a new star as often as possible. But the filmmakers are so busy patting themselves on the back for it that every sense of direction is lost, both in the storyline and the expressions on the actors’ faces.

On the upside, there’s definitely enough guts and plasma splattering onto the camera lens to satisfy the gorehounds, so if that’s your thing, Death House certainly succeeded. In this scenario, my recommendation is to watch while listening to Enya through earbuds.