Dead Space: Downfall (Blu-ray)

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"Dead Space: Downfall" is the animated prequel to Electronic Art's new "Dead Space" video game, available for PC, XBox 360, and PS3. While its video game counterpart is being touted as one of the best games of the year, this attempt at a straight-to-DVD tie-in fails to capture the same magic. "Downfall" simply rehashes information given in the video game, and it fails to stand on its own as a solo film. Even with its short, seventy-four-minute run time, the film feels too long and will likely bore any audience member with little interest in the game itself. "Dead Space" is one of the scariest things I've ever experienced, video game or otherwise, and "Downfall" feels like a cheap imitation of the story that it's attempting to flesh out.

Set five hundred years in the future, the video game "Dead Space" has you playing as Isaac, a crew member of a ship sent to inspect the derelict spaceship the USG Ishimura. Once aboard the seemingly abandoned ship, Isaac comes to find out that its inhabitants have been taken over by Necromorphs, which are essentially space-zombie demons. "Dead Space: Downfall" tells the story of how the crew of the Ishimura came to be hulking sacks of flesh hellbent on killing everything in their path.

During a mining mission in the most remote area of deep space, workers uncover an ancient religious relic that may prove the existence of God. The naïve crew brings the artifact onboard and immediately a wave of murders and suicides rip through the ship. Believing the incidents are completely unrelated, the captain who is aligned with the religion searching for the artifact keeps the item onboard his ship, which ultimately leads the crew to their death.

The fact that most of the Ishimura's crew die horribly painful deaths shouldn't be a shock to anyone familiar with the title. After all, the entire "Dead Space" video game revolves around the fact that you're aboard the Ishimura after the humans have been torn apart or changed into Necromorphs. I wouldn't recommend anyone interested in giving the video game a spin watch "Dead Space: Downfall" until they're at least halfway through the game, as it kind of takes the shock out of your first few encounters with the creatures. Actually, to be fair, I wouldn't recommend "Downfall" to anyone. This isn't a film worthy of a solo release; it should have just been included as an unlockable bonus feature in the game itself. I'm currently a little more than halfway through "Dead Space" myself, and I wish I had used the time I wasted watching this movie playing the game. Honestly, if I wasn't reviewing the film and just checking it out as a rental, I probably would have stuck it back in the mail after the twenty-minute mark and gone back to enjoying the game. And just to be clear, "Dead Space" is in fact one of the best game's I've played this year and possibly the scariest tension creator I've ever experienced. It makes the "Resident Evil" series look like "Spyro the Dragon."

Even with a few recognizable movie stars in the cast like Bruce Boxleitner ("Tron") and Kelly Hu ("The Scorpion King" and "X2"), the voice acting is just a few steps below mediocre. After all, how does one squander the efforts of Jim Cummings one of the greatest working voice actors in the business? If you don't know who Jim Cummings is, type his name into IMDB and be prepared to find out he's been in pretty much every animated TV show or movie since the late eighties. The animation, while uninspired and severely influenced by Peter Chung's "Aeon Flux," looks crystal clear on this Blu-ray disc. It's fairly gory with some brutal scenes involving the Necromorphs, but it's ultimately just a few steps away from the anime-drenched look of today's Saturday morning cartoons. I suspect that the art style is less forgiving when viewed on a standard-definition disc.