- Title: Resident Evil
- IMDb: link
Spooky Sunday takes us back to Raccoon City and the rise of zombies. Based on the video game franchise, the 2002 horror flick features a group of soldiers going underground into a secret facility owned by the Umbrella Corporation where something has gone horribly wrong. Entering the labs through a mansion on the outskirts of town, the soldiers discover two people struggling with amnesia, one of whom they recognize as one of their own, who they take with them down into the Hive.
Various movie tropes can cater to a wide variety of tastes. Some you may like more than others, but it’s always up to the film to properly execute them. Resident Evil uses the amnesiac protagonist to good effect as Alice’s (Milla Jovovich) skills come back before her memory, slowly revealed in flashes, offering a late twist. Unfortunately, other than Jovovich, the humans offer little more than monster food other than perhaps Michelle Rodriguez as the rough and ready chick she would play in basically every film from The Fast and the Furious to Avatar.
While I think there are plenty of nods and references to the games that may provide some extra fun for fans, such as the reason for starting in a mansion (the locale of the first game), the film stands alone fairly well for those unfamiliar with the games. Just what the Umbrella Corporation was after is a bit unclear, but the idea of evil corporations pursuing profit at the expense of everything else is one of the themes of the film that works even better today than in 2002.
There’s not much to the script by notably awful writer/director Paul W.S. Anderson. The soldiers go into the labs below the surface in search of answers ending up swarmed by zombies and spend the rest of the movie fighting for their lives. As far as the sets involving the corporate offices and labs, and the look of the zombies and the more monstrous “likers,” the film stretches its budge to maximum effect.
Coming off The Fifth Element, which launched Jovovich into the mainstream, the film which would produce five sequels and a reboot, cementing her a spot in the horror/sci-fi genre and provide a lucrative franchise for both Jovovich and the studio. Resident Evil isn’t a great film, but it’s self-aware enough to know what kind of movie it is and not break out of the mold. The script is a bit too complicated including aspects such as an AI that takes out a number of soldiers before they reach the zombies, but once it becomes about simple survival it works well enough for a throwaway horror flick.
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