Resident Evil (the game) is one of my absolute favorite game
series. It turned me on to the survival horror genre, which, in recent time and
without good cause, has become an endangered species. That’s a topic for
another day though. The point I have here is that I automatically have a strong
bias toward the movies, despite never having watched them until recently. As I
don’t want this to be caught up throughout the review, I’m going to go over
every issue I have with it as a Resident Evil fan right now to get it out of
the way. Here goes:
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| I guess these two are the main characters... |
George Romero (Director of Night of the Living Dead, essentially
coined the zombie movie) initially had a script written for the film which
included at least almost all of the major characters from the first game in the
series, and was to be a horror/suspense movie which followed the plot of the
first game moderately closely, although Romero put his own spin on things here
and there. His script was then TURNED DOWN because he apparently wasn’t
“hip” enough to appeal to modern crowds. Instead, they decided to turn to Paul
W.S. Anderson, director of such brilliances as the beloved AVP: Alien vs.
Predator. (Taking a minute to collect myself) As far as being “Resident
Evil”… Well, take away that name and the name “Umbrella” and you’ll have
severed any connection it could possibly have with any of the games. The only
way they relate is that they both have zombies (and I should mention, the
zombies aren’t much like those in the games for a handful of reasons which I’ll
try to cover later on.) The entire mood of the film is anything but that of the
games. The games, like the film “Alien”, which I recently reviewed, have a
suspenseful atmosphere, and although it tends to be kept behind the scenes, a
deep plot as well. “Resident Evil” the film has neither of those things.
Now to my film-watching perspective. I’ll start out by saying that
it seems like Anderson has some sick fascination with brutally killing off
characters for no apparent reason. In fact (pseudo spoiler alert) he killed off
as many people as he possibly could through the course of the movie (by the way
DON'T WORRY TOO MUCH ABOUT SPOILERS, YOU PROBABLY WON'T WANT TO WATCH THE MOVIE
ANYWAY). The plot is all but non-existent. Basically (excluding the awful
intro) the movie immediately gets into the action, where everybody who has any
idea what’s going on (viewers included) is a generic agent with "special" training. From
there, it’s just pointless slaughter the whole way through. The most
significant problem with this is that there aren't even any zombies for the
first half of the movie. The agents (and everybody else at that) are murdered
(often in disgusting, B-movie like ways) by a computer. In fact, that’s really
the only kind of horror in this movie. For those of you who read my review of
"Alien", you'll remember how I talked about gore/shock films vs.
suspense/thriller films. This one falls on the opposite side from Alien, in the
B-movie, gory, cheap-scare section. Not that it’s scary much at all; most often
it’s just disgusting. Even when the zombies finally do show up, they aren't at
all like Resident Evil (game) zombies. Typical to bad horror films, the zombies
are naturally invincible, and (it gets better [hint of sarcasm]) EVERBODY IN
THIS MOVIE IS A B-MOVIE DUMB BLONDE! I swear, nobody watches their back, nobody
shoots until the zombie is on top of them, and overall there's just a complete
lack of common sense. I'd say it pulls you out of the movie, but in all honesty
I never was pulled into the movie to begin with. Now, the acting... was
average. Nothing absolutely terrible, but it’s hard to have good acting with a
script with generic people and minimal character development.
In fairness, this movie has a few shining moments (although it may
be that they're simply decent scenes among a sea of terrible, gory, pointless
ones. A few somewhat clever plot twists almost urge me to raise the verdict a
bit, but then there's the ending... Oh boy... The ending...how can I say
this...SUCKED (Predictably so, in accordance with the rest of the film). The
metal soundtrack was laughably bad. Sound effects were pretty good though.
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| Why is this a thing? At least there's a Cerberus...sort of... |
Alright, let me sum up my points. It bears almost no resemblance
to the game, the plot is mediocre at best, the horror, when present, is of the
cheap, senseless, B-movie kind, all of the gore and blood and killing and death
are, well, senseless and pointless. Instead of creating a tense, mysterious
atmosphere, it seems that Anderson wanted to disturb viewers by being
unbelievably disgusting and gruesome. And none of that is on account of the
zombies, other than that unbelievable factor. I give this movie a 3/10.
Don't bother watching unless it’s just to say that you did. And trust me,
that's not saying much. And to think George Romero might have directed it....
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