Reaction & Review | Dead Space: Downfall

Welcome, one and all, to an all new Reaction & Review. Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, I'm gonna be covering an animated film from 2008. That movie is "Dead Space: Downfall".

Now this movie, from what little I do know about it, is a tie-in to the Dead Space video game series that is published by EA Games. And from what little information I read, this movie is apparently a prequel to the first Dead Space game, and also takes place after a limited comic series that I've never read. So any details from that comic series are not gonna be addressed here in this review. I'm purely gonna review this movie on it's own standards. And a little bit of a spoiler here for what is to come, there is another animated Dead Space movie that I plan on covering later this month. So stay tuned for that if you're curious.

Now I should mention that I've only played the first Dead Space game on the Xbox 360. And it actually wound up kinda surprising me a bit by being rather fun, because I'm usually someone who's not normally into the survival horror genre. Not because of it's supposed scare factor, but more so that my past experiences with survival horror games haven't always been positive. But the first Dead Space game was actually pretty fun. And thanks to that game, I was more open to go back and play more survival horror games. Most notably, I have played games like Resident Evil's 4 and 5, along with Resident Evil: Revelations, and my experiences with those games have gotten more comfortable thanks to my experience playing Dead Space.

So with all this in mind, I'm hoping for this movie to be pretty good. I don't really know what to expect, given that it's a prequel and all, but I'm hoping for the best here. And the only way I'm gonna find out how good or bad this movie could possibly be, is if I shut up, and I push play, and I'm gonna do that right now. So, without further ado, it's time to kick back, relax, and check out "Dead Space: Downfall".

16 minutes later

All right, guys, this movie hasn't really given me much to work with, but I can say that the CG in this movie, at least so far anyway, looks homely as shit. Seriously, guys, this CG looks like it came out of the early 90's rather than 2008. It looks rather bad, and I'm probably gonna have to get use to this kind of CG for the next hour or so.

11 minutes later

Well, we finally got our first look at the Necromorphs in it's physical form. And damn, there's a lot of them already, too! Hopefully, this will turn the movie around in a positive way, since it's been kinda dull up to this point.

12 minutes later

OK, that's sort of new. I've seen these Necromorphs do a lot of disgusting things, but I've never seen one cut off a person's jaw off like that! That was certainly new, guys. And pretty cool, too.

4 minutes later

You know, guys, it's funny. The acting in this movie has been fairly decent, so far. The one actor who's phoning in the worst performance in this movie, however, is Jim Cummings. Yes, THE Jim Cummings is turning in the worst performance in this entire movie! And I know that sounds rather blasphemous, given his stellar track record, but I'm gonna talk more about his god-awful performance here later when this movie is done.

8 minutes later

Well...that certainly was a rather gruesome way to get cut by one of those chainsaw beam blades. It's just kind of a pity that she had no personality or depth to her character, so I can't really say that I feel sorry for her.

The Review

Well, guys, that was "Dead Space: Downfall". Let me go ahead and shut the film off...OK. So...where to begin? Well, I went into this movie, unsure of how it was going to turn out. And after watching it...I can say that it was...OK. I wanted to like it more, but it's unfortunately boggled down by certain issues that I'll get into later.

For now, though, I'm just gonna start with the writing. Now I've talked about this before many times in the past, but it bears repeating. When you're doing an adaptation of something into film, whether it's a video game, or a comic book, or whatever, you kinda have to take some liberties with what you're adapting. Otherwise, your movie has a good chance of being rather bland. I can remember watching something like "Bayonetta: Bloody Fate", where that movie stayed very close to it's source material, but also kinda suffered a bit because it didn't take a whole lot of risks, such as certain lines of dialogue that came from the game which were clumsily added into the film. You can read more about it in my review of that somewhere in my Season 2 file on my DA page. But shameless plugging aside, you kinda get the gist of where I'm getting at when it comes to that kind of subject. Now when it comes to this movie, the one thing I can definitely give it is that it actually feels like you're in the world of Dead Space. The atmosphere, the Necromorphs fucking with everyone's minds on the ship, the gore and violence, it is ALL there. So when it comes to replicating the world of Dead Space, this movie nails that down almost perfectly. And I have to give it major props for getting that much down.

Unfortunately, almost everything else that I'm about to discuss are mostly negatives. To start with, the writing here is kind of a mixed bag. Our story here is perfectly fine. Now again, I have no idea how much I'm missing here when it comes to the comics that this movie supposedly takes place after. However, as I've stated earlier, I have to review this movie by it's own merits. So basically, there's this Artifact that gets discovered on some deserted planet. Which ends up being taken aboard the Ishimura, which is basically this ship that is being commanded by Captain Mathias. He wants to take it so that his crew can study the Artifact, as they try to take it back to Earth for the Church. And then it leads into the Necromorphs slowly taking over the ship, as they being killing off the crew members by either dismembering them, or make them go insane which would cause them to kill themselves. And the only ones that can help are a team of soldiers lead by our main character Alissa Vincent. And speaking of which, let's talk about the characters in this movie. To make it simple for you, guys, nobody has any real personality or depth to their characters. I can remember a lot of character names, such as Alissa, who's mostly stoic throughout the film. Samuel Irons, who I THINK is suppose to be Native American, but I'm not totally sure. Shen, who has blue hair and I think is suppose to be Asian, but again, I have no idea for sure. Ramirez, who I don't remember anything about. Dr. Kyne, who I believe was in the first Dead Space game, it's been a while since I last played it. And Captain Mathias, who's basically just a meathead captain throughout a majority of the film before his mind slowly gets corrupted and goes insane. And that's it. Nobody else is even worth mentioning, because they're all personality free, and nothing about them stands out about their characters, aside from some of them saying 'fuck' a lot. Which got a little bit old, pretty quickly. Mind you, this is coming from someone who curses quite a bit, but this movie kinda turned it up a notch when it came to it's characters cursing.

Now, while I will say that the tension in this movie does kind of exist, what ends up killing it for me is the opening sequence. And in order for me to get to that, I have to talk about the ending. So if you have interest in watching this movie, you may want to either skip this entire paragraph, or stop reading all together, because I have to talk about spoilers here. So right towards the end of the film, Alissa is giving out a recorded SOS message to anyone that might be listening to her message. Once she gives that out, she opens the hatch which sucks most of the Necromorphs into space, along with the beacon that contains Alissa's message. And then she also gets sucked into space shortly afterwards, thus dying. Which then leads into the events of the first Dead Space game. Now, what exactly is the problem here? Well, that SOS message that we're shown by Alissa...is also shown right at the very BEGINNING of the movie. Which means that a lot of the tension in this movie gets shot down, because you already know what's going to happen! Now I probably would've been fine with this, if there was any reason to care about these characters. But like I already said, nobody has any real defining characters traits, and the character themselves are shallow as shit. The only ones that are worth mentioning are Dr. Kyne and one other person who I won't mention, because they both are in the first Dead Space game. Beyond that, everyone else remains personality free, and by the time that they get killed off by the Necromorphs, I honestly couldn't have been happier to see them die. Mostly because the Necromorphs are far more interesting than our shitty characters.

So on that note, the writing here, as I just stated, is kind of a mixed bag. It captures the look and feel of a Dead Space game, but the characters and the placement of the SOS message at the beginning of the film stops it from being great. Now with that said, let's get into the voice acting. And I am gonna say, again, that most of the acting here is fairly decent. Even though most of the characters were painfully shallow, the actors were still able to give out some kind of meaningful performance here. However, unfortunately, this leads me into talking about the worst actor in this entire movie. And that actor is Jim Cummings. On the off chance that you, somehow, don't know who he is, Jim Cummings has been a voice acting veteran for the better part of almost 40 years. Most of his voice acting credits come from Disney cartoons, and most people who grew up with his work consider him a voice acting god. Hell, you could give him almost any kind of script and he would still be able to turn it into solid gold. Except here, that is NOT the case. He voices Captain Mathias in this movie, and I can tell you from his performance here that Jim Cummings just did not care. At all! And I believe I know why his performance in this movie was so bad. You see, he only has 2 ranges when it comes to voicing Captain Mathias. He will either sound like he's whispering, which is suppose to be his normal voice. Or, he will try to sound over the top by sounding as angry as possible...and it doesn't work! Mostly because his character in this movie is just a meathead captain with no thought of his own. And when he tries to sound angry, I can hear that he was trying to ham it up towards the very end until his character dies, but it sounds so unnatural here that I honestly just wanted his character to die sooner, so that way I didn't have to hear Jim Cummings try so hard to sound he like gave a shit! But again, he didn't care. And as a result, he phoned in the worst showing in this entire movie. Which is something I never thought I'd say about him, but it's definitely the case when it comes to his performance in this film.

So anyway, let's put aside the acting, because I've said all I can about it, and let's get into the animation. Now, when it comes to the hand drawn animation, it looks OK. None of it is amazing by any stretch, but it's certainly not awful either. The character models are pretty good, which also includes the Necromorphs, as they look spot on with their designs from the game into this movie. The only bits of it that are kinda cheap are some of the mouth movements not exactly lining up with their given dialogue. But that's honestly more of a nitpick, and you would really have to notice it like I did if you're an animation enthusiast. But what's really noticeable about this movie is the CG. Oh boy, the CG...where the hell do I even begin? Well, to start with, I mentioned earlier that the CG in this movie looks like it came out of the late 90's rather than 2008. And I stand by that statement, because this kind of CG would've been prevalent back in the days of a PlayStation 1 cutscene. And what's funny about that is that this movie came out shortly after the first Dead Space game, which was originally both on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, and you have CG that matches a late 90's PlayStation 1 cutscene. That is rather sad when you think about it. Not only that, but some of the CG looks like it may have been made in low resolution. Mostly when it comes to the interior designs, and especially when you get to see signs that the Necromorphs have overtaken the ship. For whatever reason, this kind of CG looks noticeably worse here! I don't know if that was because I watched this movie off YouTube and it may have had something to with the version I was watching, or if it just naturally looks ugly as shit. Which would make sense, given the nature of this movie's CG looking like a PlayStation 1 cutscene. So yeah, the animation here, at least on the 2D side of things, looks decent, but the CG in this movie looks painfully ugly.

Sound-mix here is mixed fine. There is very little to no music playing during certain scenes, in which our team of heroes are searching in dark areas where the Necromorphs might be lurking. This stuff is great. And again, it goes back to what I mentioned earlier in how this movie was able to capture the look and feel of Dead Space. And that is awesome to see. What little music is used here sounds haunting and it definitely does it's job here.

So ultimately, guys, when everything is said and done, can I recommend "Dead Space: Downfall"? Um...hmm...it's kind of a difficult call here. If you can, somehow, overlook the glaring flaws that this movie has, especially when it comes to it's shallow characters and awful CG, then you might be able to find something here that's decent. In fact, I'll even go ahead and mention that the movie is also really short. It's only about 75 minutes long, so if you have that much time to spare, then by all means, you can go ahead and check it out. But could I recommend a physical purchase for DVD or Blu-ray? Honestly...unless if you're a die-hard fan of this particular franchise, then no. You can probably skip this, because only fans of that franchise would get a kick out of this movie. Horror fanatics, maybe also. But for everyone else, no. There's really not a whole lot here that's gonna keep you interested. I'm still gonna be checking out the second Dead Space movie later on this month, and I'm hoping that one is gonna be better than this movie. But I'm not totally sure if that's gonna be the case or not, considering that this movie leans being painfully average. For now, though, I'm just gonna go back and continue playing my copy of Resident Evil Zero. I just recently downloaded it on my Switch, so I'm gonna go and do that next after I get done putting this review together.

Anyway, guys, with that, we come to the close of another Reaction & Review. Until next time, ladies and gentlemen, take care, and I will see you all later. Peace.