Despite having some pretty good ideas behind it, this movie was terrible.Good: The setting was interesting. A bunch of cam-girls who live in the house of a serial killer and people can pay to (watch them) act out serial killer-y fantasies. That's pretty unique and adequately creepy. You get to see some gore-y shots of dead girls and related. It had all the elements of a good horror movie...they just were totally misused. A few good actors. Terrance Howard and the serial killer dude had good chemistry. The deaf guy and the main girl were fine. Queen Latifah's cameo was well done. She should've played a bigger role though, would've been funny to see her as a main character in a slasher. It was shot well enough. Sets were good.Bad: Everything else. The storyline was written in such a disjointed way that it made no sense. It jumped around and was needlessly difficult to follow. You have the main storyline of a guy in the house murdering women which was super generic but decent. Then you have this other storyline with Terrance Howard which had almost NOTHING to do with the main storyline and was used in a way that rendered it completely pointless (way to waste your best actors). From the preview I expected this to be more like Silence of the Lambs, but it wasn't at all. The concept of a dude watching these girls die via webcam was OK, but not executed in an interesting or substantive way. It wouldn't have changed much if that part wasn't even in the movie (sadly, the same goes for Howard). And just when things start getting interesting, the movie prematurely ends with no resolution whatsoever. It felt like the director didn't quite know what type of movie they wanted to make and used elements of several (silence of the lambs, feardotcom, untraceable, etc), but was unable to connect and interweave them. Maybe it was just the version I saw, but the sound was abysmal. The music was WAY too loud and all of Howard / killer's dialog was nearly incomprehensible. There are also some stupid plot holes like how the kid magically "hacked" and got the power to turn back on in the house / website.

"You wanna talk about dead girls?" Henry Lee Bishop (Fonda) is a serial killer on death row for a brutal series of murders. The home where he went on his killing spree has been turned into a web based chat house where users can log on and talk to a woman who will reenact murders for them. When the girls in the house begin to actually be killed off Detective Starks (Howard) notices a similarity between the currant murders and the Bishop killings. He questions Bishop about what is going on. For personal reasons I'd rather not get into I have a strong dislike for Peter Fonda so really any movie with him in it automatically has two strikes against it. That being said he is only in this for about 10-15 minutes so that did help. As far as the movie goes it's nothing amazing. It is a pretty cookie cutter horror movie that is pretty predictable the entire time. There is a little twist to make it more exciting but nothing that is totally out of the blue. Your basic watch girls get naked and die movie. It never felt boring or slow but it never really grabbed you and sucked you in either. The best way to describe this is a fluff-horror movie. All of that said the movie is pretty entertaining and that is really what a movie should be after all. Also don't rent it just because Terrence Howard, Peter Fonda and Queen Latifah are in it, they are in it very little. Overall, an entertaining but generic horror movie. I give it a B.

Henry Lee Bishop is on death row for a series of grisly murders. Years later, he's still in jail, solitary mostly, and similar murders happen. Detective Starks investigates, including going to the prison to talk to Bishop eyeball to eyeball.A bunch of young idiots run a simulated-sex-and-murder-reenacted-over-Internet sort of business. They strive for realism. They fake each other out. It seems the director intends that we don't know what is real or not with this group.A deaf, speechless young man plays video games and visits gory websites. One of these is 'House of Bodies' which supposedly was inspired by Henry Lee Bishop's place of residence. This is the website of the idiots mentioned above. In each room the young women re-enact murders committed there. Our young man reads all this on the site. That's the site's marketing ploy.That's what the detectives are not seeing: the website seems to have generated at least one copycat killer. Tracey runs the house and the site. Kelli is the new recruit who is a bit gun shy. Tisha is more accustomed to the work. Sadey left the job before she was murdered.The deaf boy logs into the site, and Tracey assigns him to Kelli to talk to. They get to know each other a bit. Sadly, the killer comes in, then starts taking out the staff.So, who gets out of this alive?-----Scores-------Cinematography: 9/10 Usually excellent.Sound: 8/10 Usually quite good, but Terrence Howard was badly miked. AM radio in the desert sounds better. The incidental music was good for creepiness.Acting: 8/10 Worth seeing for the interactions between Terrence Howard and Peter Fonda.Screenplay: 8/10 Much better than I expected. Plot progresses well, and the detective solves a mystery.

*****WARNING: SPOILERS*****House of Bodies is a bit of a back-and-forth roller coaster, a feature that I like if it's well- executed. This movie does it quite nicely, in my opinion. Although it's predictable in the fact that everyone but the "good girl" dies, I enjoyed the irony behind it. There is some nudity, as with a lot of movies in the genre, but it is mild and far from distracting to the viewer. The characters were believable, although there were certain scenes that threw in the element of convenience for the sake of letting a certain character live longer. To go off of that, I would have liked a bit more violence, and less of the inmate and detective scene. Overall, not a bad flick. Give it a watch on Netflix, I'm glad I did.