A co-production between Anchor Bay and game company Electronic Arts, Dead Space: Downfall is meant to be a prequel to the superior horror video game of the title. It's made up of events that happen before you set down on the spaceship Ishimura to gorily dismember mutated humans at the start of the game and it gives us back-story into why it happened in the first place. Think The Thing mixed with Resident Evil and you get an idea of what to expect. What's too bad, though, is that while the game works brilliantly, this quick animated tie-in is pretty throwaway.

After finding an ancient artifact in deep space, the crew of the Ishimura is in strife. There's the businessmen who want to exploit it, the religious group dubbed "Unitologists" who want to worship it, and the hired crew, lead by security chief Vincent (Nika Futterman), who just want to do their jobs. However, things are about to take a turn for the worse when it turns out everyone on board has a lot more to worry about than petty squabbles after the artifact starts turning people onboard violent and starts not only twisting their minds but also mutating them.

It's these early moments, like when the wife of one of the crew takes part in a little self-mutilation before committing suicide, that tend to work the best here as the remainder of the movie finds Vincent and a rag-tag group of survivors fighting off the once human beasts while dealing with sub-baddie Dr. Kyne (Keith Szarabajka) who has evil intent regarding the relic.

While watching Dead Space: Downfall I was reminded of past efforts to create an animated tie-in to another, bigger, product. Things like Van Helsing: The London Assignment and the Chronicles of Riddick stop gap, Dark Fury. These are usually, in my eyes, a poor attempt to build excitement for the "main course" giving the viewer barely any meaty bites to sink their teeth into. They also strike me as more of a way to make a little bit of money on the side. That certainly feels like the case here as it fails to offer much in the way of excitement and wouldn't make me want to go out of my way to play the game.

The animation, which blends the traditional with some computer generated ones, looks okay if nothing special (though I did notice a few jerky moments) and it isn't helped much by generally weak voice work from a cast filled with familiar names like Bruce Boxleitner (Tron) and Kelly Hu (X2). And while it does sling a lot of grue as people have their jaws ripped off and are cut in half, there's not enough substance in the script by Justin Gray and comic book veteran Jimmy Palmiotti. There was an opportunity to build on the whole "corporation vs. religion" angle but given that this is: a) a tie-in to an action oriented game and b) it runs just over seventy minutes, I wouldn't be surprised if it got cut down in the early stages of production.

If you're a fan of the game, then by all means check this out, but if you've heard a lot about EA's survival horror romp in space and are curious where to begin you'll do yourself a much better favour by just going out an buying the game and ignoring this completely. You won't be missing anything by not watching this and it's not nearly strong enough to stand on its own - besides, I'm sure you'd rather gorily dismember the mutated creatures yourself than watch poorly written animated characters do the same. (Chris Hartley, 2/18/09)

Directed By: Chuck Patton.
Written By: Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Gray.

Starring: Nika Futterman, Bruce Boxleitner, Keith Szarabajka, Jim Cummings.

Picture Ratio: 1.78:1 Widescreen.

Picture Quality: It's a perfectly acceptable picture here as it doesn't suffer from jagged lines a lot of animation tends to and is clean of any debris.

Extras: We get trailers for both the movie and game, an art photo gallery, some deleted scenes that are mostly storyboards with sound attached, and an isolated music audio track. It's a pretty passable batch of stuff to say the least.