Dead Space: Downfall

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Dead Space: Downfall is a Direct-to-Video Prequel to Dead Space set in the Dead Space universe. It goes into detail about what happend onboard the USG Ishimura and the state it is in when Isaac and the player reach it at the beginning of Dead Space.

The Red Marker is brought onboard the Ishimura. Meanwhile the colony on Aegis VII is attack by Necrmorphs. One of the colonists escapes with the corpse of his dead wife and heads to the Ishimura, unaware that his wife is turning into a Necromorph. Onboard the Ishimura the Unitologists want to worship the Marker, and start to otherwise go insane.

The colonists ship crashes into the Ishimura and the Necromorph escapes, eventually making its way down to the morgue and inficting all the bodies down there. A team of crew members, led by chief of security Alissa Vincent, try to fight their way from the morgue to the top of the ship, but get picked off one by one. Eventually Vincent makes it the Marker, where she records everything that happened on a video log, sends out the distress beacon that the Isaac and the rest of the USG Kellion finds, and kills herself by opening the airlock.

Tropes used in Dead Space: Downfall include:
  • Action Girl: Vincent and Shen.
  • Apocalyptic Log: The log Vincent records explaining what happened on the ship.
  • Ascended Extra: Dr. Kryne played a fairly small part in the first game, but here he's treated more like a main character. Captain Mathius also gets a pretty decent amount of screen time before his death.
  • Call Back: At the very beginning of the movie, the first thing you see is the back of an engineer wearing the same suit as Isaac. It looks almost like a shot from the original game, complete with camera angle.
  • The Cassandra: Also Vincent.
  • Cluster F-Bomb
  • Chainsaw Good: The other survivors decide that Irons's idea of using a chainsaw against the Necromorphs is a good idea after Irons uses it against one.
  • Conspicuous CG: The Spaceships and some backgrounds.
  • Dark-Skinned Redhead: Vincent again.
  • Did Not Do the Research: It feels like whoever wrote the movie did not know anything about the game's script. None of the game's actual weapons make an appearance (the main characters start off with a kind of pistol, then graduate to energy chainsaws, while an energy-bladed pick is seen once), the infection spreads much faster than it actually happened, and even the entire subplot with Dr. Mercer and his religious mania is cut out.
  • Downer Ending: Everyone is killed and the Ishimura is a death trap.
  • Eye Scream: In the games, you only saw a video log of it; in the movie, you get to watch Mathius get stabbed in the eye up close. Then it goes further into this trope when after he gets impaled in the eye, he falls onto the floor, driving it into his brain.
  • Fan Disservice: A young woman wearing only a towel is seen being stabbed and killed without the towel so much as coming undone. What we do get to see is a large fat mans fully uncensored penis.
  • Five-Man Band:
  • Foregone Conclusion: Even when the movie takes a few liberties with the plot, anyone who has knowledge of the game knows how this will end. Everyone dies and the ship is lost to the monster infestation. Even the opening scene lays it all out by showing Vincent's final recording declaring her the only remaining survivor.
  • Gentle Giant: Samuel Irons.
  • Hey, It's That Voice!: Bruce Boxleitner as Barrow and Keith Szarabajka reprising Dr. Kryne from the game; among others.
  • High-Pressure Blood: Why don't the plasma saws cauterise wounds instead of this happening?
  • Honor Before Reason: Elisa
  • How We Got Here: The movie starts as Vincent is recording her log, then flashes back to how everything started.
  • Idiot Ball: Captain Mathius holds onto it pretty tightly.
    • Then again, he is a Unitologist, and going crazy.
  • It Has Been an Honor: Ramirez, to Vincent.
  • Magical Native American: Samuel Irons, who gets bonus points for being the only Unitologist in the entire series who is not evil and does not go insane.
  • Kill'Em All: Almost. Only Kine makes it to the main game. Everyone else, including the protaganist, is dead by the end.
  • Limited Animation: One of the common complaints about the film.
  • Male Frontal Nudity
  • Sanity Slippage: Affects some waaay more than others.
  • You Gotta Have Blue Hair: Shen.
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