Resident Evil

Reader M. Grochmal writes with his brief review of Resident Evil, below. Yes, Resident Evil the game has been turned into Resident Evil, the movie. You have been warned.

The latest in a line of video game adaptations, Resident Evil was released over the weekend. While past conversions such as Super Mario Brothers and Street Fighter were box-office flops, Resident Evil has the chance to break the game-to-movie-flop habit. While the movie is not a straight port of the game, it can still offer a good viewing experience.

The movie takes place in Raccoon City, USA, within a secret underground research lab called The Hive. The lab's work on a cell regeneration medicine ("the T-Cell serum:) for the Umbrella Corporation has a very negative side effect: it reverts the donor into a creature with basic instinctive needs. A lab experiment causes the virus to be released in the air circulation system and, after a logic snafu from the Red Queen (The Hive's AI), this AI quarantines the lab and kills everyone who may have been exposed to the virus.

A SWAT team (not STARS, for the Resident faithful), is sent to find out what's going on. After finding Alice (Milla Jovovich), they break into the HIVE. The Red Queen's traps have fun with the troops, and one they figure things are going their way, the dead scientists of the HIVE are released. On top of that, they're all thirsty for blood.

From here, it goes into a Night of the Living Dead shoot-and-scream-a-thon. There are some genuine scares, but most of them are peppered with shouting and running. There wasn't enough time to get to know the characters before they start getting killed off. The movie tries to be like Aliens in some respects, and sometimes it works.

Plot notwithstanding, the movie still offers a good viewing. It is a shame that George Romero didn't take the project, as was the original plan. Instead, it was taken by Paul Anderson (Soldier, Event Horizon, Mortal Kombat), whose influences show with strobe lights, dark passageways, and a loud soundtrack. Go and see it during the matinee, or wait for it on video. AfterThought: For those who are also fans of anime, here is a video you may wish to download: Resident Eva . It uses the trailer's audio track and makes good use of Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Comments

mirror

[lburdet]

i will post a mirror of the mpeg file, as soon as it finishes... assuming it finishes. please, just wait for it to finish, and it'll be on http://www25.brinkster.com/hexanova have pity on the poor guy...:)

Re:Oh my.

[Mike A.]

DSL, actually. Thanks for caring, anyway. :)

Re:Milla Jovavich

[MisterBlister]

They did stick Milla is a short dress, and showed a few semi-nude scenes in a shower, etc. And lucky for them... If they hadn't, I'd have burned down the theater I saw this in... Because otherwise this is a VERY VERY BAD MOVIE, even for a video game to movie conversion. This movie is "Street Fighter: The Movie" bad.

Re:Not all video game movies are flops

[MisterBlister]

Also, the original Mortal Kombat (which Paul Anderson..not to be confused with Paul Thomas Anderson, who directs REAL movies), was a modest hit.

Thoughts on the movie...

[wd123]

After seeing this piece of trash, someone pointed me to a review of the movie by Roger Ebert. Here's the link, and below is the first paragraph of the review. It's pretty funny, and it sums up the movie very well:

"Resident Evil" is a zombie movie set in the 21st century and therefore reflects several advances over 20th century films. For example, in 20th century slasher movies, knife blades make a sharpening noise when being whisked through thin air. In the 21st century, large metallic objects make crashing noises just by being looked at.

...

George Romero

[Evangelion]

If you go over to Coming Attractions, you'll discover that George Romero wanted the project quite a bit, and had alot of cool ideas.

"But the biggest damn shame was Resident Evil. We busted balls writing drafts of that screenplay. I'm talkin' marathons, seventy-two hours straight. I really wanted this project. I had directed a TV commercial for ResEv II, and being on the set again with zombies (by Screamin' Mad George), I was hooked. Deep in my heart, I felt that ResEv was a rip-off of Night of the Living Dead. I had no legal case, but I was resentful. And torn...because I liked the video game. I wanted to do the film partly because I wanted to say, 'Look here! This is how you do this shit!'"

Capcom apparently didn't like being shown how to make a Zombie franchise.

Here's to hoping that RE starts a resurgance of Zombie movies so we can see George in action again.

Pong, The Movie

[Bonker]

http://www.youngprimitive.cz/pong.html

Some people just have way the fuck too much time on their hands.

Re:Decent movies stand alone

[NeMon'ess]

You could be farther from the truth, but not by much. The special effects blew, except for the after effect of the laser grid on someones face. The audio sucked. I don't know which bands they pulled tracks from, but since it was mixed to loud and distorting it I don't see how it was any different from noise. The acting was pretty good, but the characters were so thin I didn't give a damn about a single one of them. As for gore, all I saw were a bunch of shots where the main characters' hands were bloody as they clutched their wounds. The zombies don't spurt blood when hit. When the zombies pull a good guy into their clutches its just a sea of hands and no blood as his skin gets ripped open. Oh, and did I mention not many zombies got killed? Unlike the game, where ammo is improbably laying around all over the place, in the movie the good guys run almost out of ammo before the half way point. That means the whole second half is them running, getting picked off, and running some more, getting picked off again. It was obvious who was going to die, and generally predictable how.

The movie and games are full of fake science, but can anyone explain to me why the zombies can not feed on each other but must consume creatures that are alive?

OMFG I Hated this movie

[_ph1ux_]

ok- so I went to the SF metreon last night to see RE...

Milla is a cutie and all but my lord that was THE WORST sound I have ever heard in a movie. I sat there the *entire* movie with my ears plugged.

the sharp very very loud stabbing sounds to add some dramatic effect to _every_ turn of milla's head was just making me wince through the whole thing.

I think that the only reason that milla was in there was to over deliver on her signature surprised look.

and the other girl - michelle rodriguez. WORST ACRTESS in recent memory. I wanted to punch her by the end of the flick.

ALL in all - RE SUCKED MAJOR ASS. dont waste a dime.

Nude Surprise!

[majestyk2000]

I wonder how many parents are going to freak out with that full-frontal crotch shot Milla gives us near the end? I mean, it's quick, but it sure is fine. Yes, it's an R rated movie, but you don't see short fuzzies in most movies.

no one's mentioned it but I'm a nit-picker

[xA-bx]

The team sent into The Hive were neither STARS nor SWAT, it was a team sent by Umbrella Corp. themselves. Hence the detailed maps, knowledge and equipment to disable Red Queen, and lack of communication with reinforcements. They were sent to investigate what happened to Red Queen and to shut her down, and thanks to Umbrella concealing The Hive well underground, no SWAT team would've even known about it, let alone Red Queen or the T-Virus.