In 1996, Capcom, a Japanese video game company, released the first game in their hit series Resident Evil. It was the first game ever released that contained all the staples of the zombie-horror movie genre, and Resient Evil became a household name worldwide. It contained all the makings of a great movie; an expansive plot, rounded characters, and most important of all, zombies. It was no surprise then, that in 2002 the first Resident Evil film was made.
Resident Evil stars Milla Jovovich as Alice, a special member of the Umbrella Corporation with serious amnesia. Waking up in a mansion, Alice and Matt (Eric Mabius) are taken away by employees of Umbrella and sent into The Hive, a genetic research facility located deep underground. The group travels through The Hive where madness ensues as the remnants of the scientists in the lab attack them, now zombified due to the virus that Umbrella developed and has now leaked.
Having no connections with the series it is based off of, Resident Evil does a poor job of being the “ultimate game-movie tie-in” it was expected to be. The characters, while all stereotypical of the horror genre, have no real personalities. Alice’s character is created by the flashbacks she suffers, as she is a recent amnesiac, but it does a poor job of putting her on a relatable level with the audience. The flashbacks seem to serve as a deus ex machina type of device, only appearing when it is most convenient to progress the story. The rest of the characters have even less character development; when they aren’t being bitten by zombies, they’re yelling and shouting at each other. There is no real connection between any of the characters, and by the end of the movie when most of them are dead, you don’t really care all that much.
The plot revolves around the illegal activities of the Umbrella Corporation as the characters fight to survive what seems to be a breach in security. This, for all intents and purposes, should be a b-movie effort and nothing more. The plot tries to touch upon the theme of corporate corruption, but ultimately it’s just an excuse for the zombies to exist. The set pieces attempt to be epic in scale, but they fall short of other great movies, mimicking the style but not the success. Nothing serves as a shocker to the viewer despite some cheap scares and a character defection that was all too expected. Alice is able to get herself out of almost any situation, and she serves as the stereotypical badass heroine. The way she inherits these qualities, however, is ludicrous and far-fetched.
As a tie in with the successful game, it was expected that this would be the ultimate survival horror movie. It settles for a mediocre attempt at a genre that has already made its niche and doesn’t want to be changed. The set pieces are lame, the protagonists and antagonists are unbelievable, and even the zombies, perhaps the most important part of the film, are second-rate at best. This film doesn’t capture the gritty, horrific atmosphere of its counterpart; instead, it settles for an action flick that tries to be too much at some parts, yet fails at the entire concept of zombie horror. As the film closes and Milla Jovovich walks away into the destroyed, zombie-infested nightmare, so should you walk away from this nightmare of a movie.
That is, until, Resident Evil 2, the film, is released.
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