Sick Product of a Sick System

Purely Joyful Movie!

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

I feel that there is a general atmosphere of misunderstandance(sic) surrounding this beautiful film. And indeed - is it so tempting to merely write it off as a yet another substandard, mindless gore-fest, but we'd be turning a blind eye to the inner core of what forms and holds this movie at line and above the rest. What this piece of art truly is, is a complex and nuanced critique of whole modern Hollywood storytelling.Allow me to elaborate: While on one hand we've this fairly standard -- although well made -- merry-splatter-go-a-round, brilliance can be found from every crack and seam of the non-consistent takes; Brilliance oozes from every plot inconsistency and unexplained twist and poorly chosen phrasing for dialogue, for it allows the viewer to really focus on what is important. That importance is in characters and character interaction.Instead of being treated the fairly standard "actor did an emotion, lets now explain why that emotion is important and what led to it!" and "this character is like this, now lets explain why he did something that does not 100% fit the off-movie stereotype!", we're given a rather witty collection of complex, inter-character dynamics. We see a character give a promise; It gets us to wonder, given the personality of this character, if his off-beat honor will disallow him from breaking it, or if his more.. evil.. side gets the best of him. Whichever way the answer is, I can guarantee that it showcases not only the brutality of the real world, but the ultimate emptiness and meaninglessness of human action. At the same time, the movie shows how human personalities and human ideals indeed have more sides to them than what is made apparent by modern easy-to-swallow -- and very shallow -- storytelling.We see stereotypes that go all the way into caricatures, but at the same time there are surprises and depth molded into their stories. The stereotype is there merely to create the contrast. There are touches of true human life that we can all relate to. This movie is not self-explanatory. It does not make comprehension easy on you. But at the same time, it and its characters feel natural and true. Not artificial and plastic. For that -- and its experimentation and braveness -- I give it 9/10.Still not recommended if you diss gore/splatter/horror and/or love Hollywood/lack a sense of humor.

Olaf Ittenbach's career as a director is an interesting but usually not good one. He started out directing low-budget splatter films like "Burning Moon", "Black Past" and "Premutos: Lord of the Dead", which got him a cult following. He then graduated to doing make-up and gore effects for things like Uwe Boll movies, and directing larger budgeted movies like "Legion of the Damned", "Garden of Love" and "Dard Divorce", which were attempts at doing more mainstream friendly horror. Another one of these attempts is 2006's "House of Blood" (originally called "Chain Reaction"), which suffice to say, is pretty bad.Dr. Douglas Madsen (Christopher Kriesa) has been taken hostage by a group of escaped convicts, who decide to take refuge in a cottage. Inside said cottage is a strange family that speaks in Olde English and also seems to double as a religious cult. The family then turns into bloodthirsty demons (is there any other kind?) and kills the criminals, but Dr. Madsen is saved by local girl Alice (Olaf's wife Martina), and ends up being interrogated by police (one of the officers is played by Jürgen Prochnow), and of course, they don't believe his story, so he ends up taking a bus ride to a prison with some inmates. The bus crashes, and you can guess what happens next.I'll say this much about "House of Blood": The gore and splatter FX are pretty impressive, the cinematography is good, and Kriesa delivers a good performance. Unfortunately, he delivers the only good performance, as everyone else is terrible, mostly just shouting profanities and pointing guns at each other. They are all supposed to be from America, and this is supposed to take place here, but most of the cast speaks with Germanic accents, and it was clearly shot in Germany. Also, while the gore is effective, there isn't enough, as the viewer has to wait for what feels like a very long time for the splatter to hit-until then it's a lot talking and yelling at one another.Then there's the fact that the direction, editing and script (which Ittenbach co-wrote with Thmosat Reitmar) are all pretty poor. If this was from a rookie director, it would be more acceptable, but Ittenbach has been making movies since 1989, and that this is his tenth movie. None of it feels like something that was directed by a man whose been making movies for seventeen years. It just feels like something directed by a hack looking to make a quick buck.All around, this is a terrible movie, with very little to recommend. If you want to watch a movie from Ittenbach, watch one of his earlier splatter movies. Those aren't great, but at least they're directed by someone who gave a damn about what he was making.

With his early, (very) low-budget splatter films, Olaf Ittenbach proved that he could make a well constructed horror movie, despite technical limitations and a cast that obviously needed a few more acting lessons. Therefore, since it had a larger budget, I was hoping that Chain Reaction would be a leap forward in terms of overall quality for the German master of gore. But apart from a some flashy CGI credits, a few crashes, and the presence of a 'real' actor (Jurgen Prochnow), not a lot has changed. In fact, to be honest, the acting is actually worse than usual, and the script... well, it maketh me laugh!A dead crow drops from a tree to the ground and dislodges a rock, which hits a car (belonging to a doctor), that crashes into a bus-load of violent criminals, who escape into the woods (taking the doctor hostage) and eventually wind up in a house occupied by weird religious folk (who speaketh in ye olde dialect), who then transform into flesh-eating demons. Phew!To be fair, I like the initial premise—that something as insignificant as a dead bird falling from a tree can set off a series of dreadful events—but unfortunately, so does Ittenbach. A lot. So much so, that he uses the idea three times within his film! After his captors are all killed, the good doctor escapes, only to run into the arms of the law, who suspect him of foul play and decide to keep him under lock and key whilst they investigate.The doctor is put on a DOC bus to be transferred to jail, and, guess what happens..... that's right—a dead crow drops from a tree to the ground and dislodges a rock, which hits a car, that crashes into the bus-load of violent criminals... and so on.And when a third dead crow causes even more trouble later on, one wonders whether it might be wise just to cut down all of the trees along this stretch of road, to bring down the accident rate.As always with an Ittenbach film, there is plenty of gruesome gore on display (with some very nasty crushed heads being the most sickening of these), but with quite a long running time, there are also periods in which the film is just too 'dry'. Some of these moments offer some (presumably) unintentional laughs (the aforementioned olde English spoken by the demon people is hilarious), but other parts are just plain dull. Jurgen Prochnow is given nothing much to do, there is lots of mundane chit-chat, and the whole 'deja-vu' angle quickly starts to irritate.Ittenbach is a director who has shown a lot of promise in the past; he certainly knows how to put together a decent gore scene. Perhaps, in future, if he gets a reasonable amount of dosh to spend, he should invest in a decent scriptwriter and get a better cast. I'm sure he has a horror 'classic' somewhere up his sleeve, however, on the strength of this effort, it's hard to believe.

the only reason why I'm giving this movie a 4 out of 10 is because there are some really good car crash effects, and you have to admit that for a low budget movie the effects in it are pretty descent, but plot is not a strong on this one,story either and the performance of the actors is really really bad, no true feelings, lack of emotion, and a lot of w.t.f scenes, this is a pretty disposable film, there are a million of them, better played, more effects, better photography, not so absurd choreography, etc... but the weakest link in this film i have to say and agree with many of you guys, are the dialogues, they are not firm, they lack of credibility and overall its too long for a movie that crazy! see it...if you dare!