House 6: Dead Exposure
September 26, 2008
PH: Zombies! Well, sort of. “Dead Exposure” brings you through a photojournalist’s photo lab just at the dawn of the zombie rising. You kind of have to suspend your disbelief on this one: not so much that the dead are coming to life, but that a photographer can afford such a huge space. While on one hand the rave-sized surplus of black lights and weird spotty-skull monsters make for a good effect, it’s a bit anticlimactic since the zombies spend more time eating their victims than coming after you for a nibble, which is really disappointing. Am I not appetizing-looking? Look at these legs! They’d feed a whole horde of zombies! Damn foody zombies.
TC: Strobe lights are to haunted houses what Prince songs are to the dance floor: It’s just cheating. That said, this is some pretty effective cheating. The zombies are liberally coated with black light paint that brings them into sharp relief when the lights go up … for about a split second. Then you lose them again, and for all you know they’re about to stick a fork in your cranium. Especially unnerving is a large room filled with mannequins. You just know there’s got to be some scareactors freeze-framed among them, if only those lights would stay on …
