December 16, 2023

Resident Evil.

Review #2158: Resident Evil.

Cast: 
Milla Jovovich (Alice), Michelle Rodriguez (Rain Ocampo), Eric Mabius (Matthew "Matt" Addison), James Purefoy (Spence Parks), Martin Crewes (Chad Kaplan), Colin Salmon (James "One" Shade), Ryan McCluskey (Mr. Grey), Oscar Pearce (Mr. Green), Indra OvĂ© (Ms. Black), and Michaela Dicker (Red Queen) Written and Directed by Paul W. S. Anderson. (#1670 - Mortal Kombat and #1688 - Alien vs. Predator)

Review: 
"This film is the explanatory prequel that game players have always wanted to see, using the scary mechanisms and devices that have become part of the Resident Evil cyber culture. I felt the idea was the correct approach for both people who had never heard of the game and for the avid players who will get all the references included just for them."

Surprisingly, I had thought about doing this film in each of the last two fall seasons. I thought to myself, hmm, I hear it has zombies, why not think of it? Well, sometimes things just don't go your way (. The source material for the film is what else but a video game (known as Biohazard in Japan and Southeast Asia but Resident Evil everywhere else), as created by Shinji Mikami and Tokuro Fujiwara that was created in 1996. Constantin Film purchased the film rights a year after the release of the first game and had a handful of names considered in the development process. Somehow, they went through the process of enlisting script ideas from a line that went from Alan B. McElroy to George A. Romero to Jamie Blanks and said no each time. So... they instead went with a man who apparently wrote a script that was a "ripoff" of the aforementioned Evil game after playing it. Made on a budget of roughly $33 million, the resulting success with audiences led to a slew of sequels in Apocalypse (2004), Extinction (2007), Afterlife (2010), Retribution (2012), and The Final Chapter (2016), for which Jovovich was featured as the one consistent star to go with Anderson being the writer of each one (while directing most of the sequels). 

They wanted to make a movie that wouldn't imitate the game in every detail but instead try to siphon that shock and horror feeling for a film. This is the kind of movie you could probably watch while doing your taxes. Things that barely register as things happen in the film that actually made me wonder how you can read a George A. Romero script, see it as destined for the "NC-17" rating and decide, nay, we must go with Paul W. S. Anderson. I find more urgency in looking for the remote that may or may not be wedged somewhere in the space between the couch and the wall than what happens in this puddle of a movie. I never played the Resident Evil video games, but I can certainly say that it is pretty hard to get me spooked when playing a video game in general...what the hell is different from film-to-video game adaptation? I can't even call this a fun type of B-movie, because it really manages to make 100 minutes feel like a tremendous waste of time in terms of the idea of trying to "shock" me with nonsense. One whole film goes by and I feel like nothing has happened to make one want to see sequels of this, with the "Umbrella Corporation" and their massive interest in dominating the markets and being used for the military just gives me a blank expression. Jovovich seems unsure as to where to really go in terms of "follow the path as the action lead", and it isn't exactly the best compliment when the only noteworthy sequence to highlight is a "flying kick" applied to a effects creature. The rest of the actors seem clinically stuck in second gear, with that bare idea of interest that really makes me wonder if Uwe Boll saw stuff like this and decided that he could do video game movies just like that. Even the scene of folks trying to escape deadly lasers (ones that slice you in the same way one wishes they could slice beef) just seems bland. It is a "5" because it doesn't give me that particular feeling of being just short of mediocrity but instead being shorter than even the too-average things. You really find a feeling of "phone it in" when it comes to thinking about this film, where it is not particularly good in any one consistent territory nor terrible in all of the aspects to really scare someone out. One either goes with the flow and looks further with those other features or they move on with their day and do something else. 

Overall, I give it 5 out of 10 stars.

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