Resident Evil (2002)

Here's one thing we are familiar with about video game movies: they mostly suck, and critically and commercially fail. So far I have reviewed movies based on well-known video game titles such as Alone In The Dark, Street Fighter, Super Mario Bros, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, Hitman, Doom and  Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. Many who have watched these movies were dismayed by the acting, casting, storyline, dialogue, plot and writing, and the lack of the very essence from their video game source materials. Most of these titles were box office bomb and/or were critically derided by fans and critics alike.
So now I am going to review a movie, one so successful that to date it has been certified as the longest most successful video game movie of all time--this is Resident Evil.

So we start with a prologue: our main location is Raccoon City where we see that a pharmaceutical firm, Umbrella Corporation, is behind everything from household products and even genetic engineering. That's solid considering that this is the very setting of the game itself.



The plot revolves around getting into 'The Hive', finding out why the employees were 'killed', and then getting out alive. A team of Umbrella Corporation commandos are assigned to  this task and are accompanied by Alice and Matt. They find out the killing was perpetrated by "The Red Queen" who was trying to quell an outbreak of the T-virus which was responsible for the walking dead. Now we all know that when The Red Queen discharged nerve gas in The Hive, all the victims were knocked out. So how was it that they were sealed away underground when no one was spared the discharge? It's not like they all rose up and hid themselves away in bulky containers, only to be liberated by an E.M.P.

  

I recall the genre of the game is horror survival; unfortunately this movie fails to encapsulate such fear. Instead we have some flimsy dialogue, unintentional humour, cheesy CGI, some ear-aching scores,  never-ending series of expositions, and seizure-inducing flashbacks.These flashbacks are so frequent and repetitive that they would leave a viewer distracted and disoriented. If Alice is recovering her memory, that does not mean we have to be bombarded by flashing images.

The worst part of it is that a young British girl voices the Red Queen, the "homicidal bitch". Such a role is nowhere near appropriate for a child. Why not bring in an adult? Also, she was watching the whole incident on camera when someone threw the T-virus. So why did she not seal the doors before the perpetrator escaped? It would be questionable if she really intended to minimize the casualties and stem the outbreak.

 

Let me ask you one question: when you cut of part of a person or a whole person, wouldn't blood spill? So this movie blatantly negates the attribute and has us think that these people were already dead before the laser cut them up, when they were already alive! It is bewildering to have this writing bypass the director.



The only consolations are the zombie rottweilers and the Ultimate Hunter: although the CGI is poorly rendered, the makeup special effects and some animatronics do offer compensation to the viewers. They prove to be more menacing than the walking dead, and terrifying throughout the film.

This movie had an ample chance to score points but botches it as do other movies before it. It fails to live up to the video games it is based on, but still ends on a cliffhanger letting us viewers know that a sequel is to materialize.

 

This movie was directed by Paul W.S. Anderson.