Theatre of the Dead #11 - Resident Evil (2002)

Director: Paul W.S. Anderson Stars: Milla Jovovich, Michelle Rodriguez

Review:


Resident Evil (2002) actually came out before 28 Days Later, but I do not consider that it is this film which revived the zombie genre. It just could not be.

Resident Evil is a survival horror video game first release on the Playstation, and spawned many sequels. Not being an extreme hardcore fan, I am still able to tell this movie adaptation is nothing like the game.

Naked Milla Jovovich is so memoriable in The Fifth Element (1997), they think she have to be naked here.

The movies opens telling us Umbrella is a super-power corporate that deals with military weaponry. A testube breaks and whole office were shut down by a fire-drill, which release poison gases to kill them. Later we see Milla Jovovich wakes up naked in a bathroom, and cant remember nothing. Gamers of the first game may think, so she is gonna explore the place, which is a mason, like in the first game. Nope. She met a self-claimed police officer outside, and a bunch of special forces arrive, and took them down to the lab, in which the mason is just a cover for an entrance. So 90% of the story went on in the underground lab, and the mason is just for show.

The A.I. killing the special forces with lazers. It killed several guys with a single beam and the leader with this.
Why not just the net beams at the first place?
Even better, why didnt you gas them like the others, especially after they take off their masks?

I am not a movie-watcher that usually nitpick plotholes, but I just could not stand this movie. Okay so the mason was a cover for a secret entrance to a highly confidently labratory? Why would you build such a big mason out of nowhere in jungle to cover it up? Why wouldnt you build something that nobody would be willing to visit, like a small wooden house or a public toilet maybe? The special forces found that the map was different, in which a place the map showing should be a dinning hall, turns out to be a place to store monsters. "Maybe Umbrella kept secret from you." Ok. So why they send the special forces down which they can just look and see for themselves? The supercomputer A.I. for the defense apparent enjoy playing pranks and watch people feeling they have a chance before kill them. The laser scene was always mentioned, but in the opening of the movie, when the women stuck halfway at the door of the lift, the computer could kill her moving the lift to the ground. But no. She stops right before the women hit the floor, then move up the lift so the ceiling could kill the women.

Why stop there? You were gonna kill her anyways. Why stop there and go up again?

And the most incomprehensible plot point is that, why does Spence break the T-virus in the lab? He wanted to steal the virus samples for himself. Just take it and leave and everything would be just fine. But he had to throw it to the table and broke it intentionally, just to activiate the security. Brilliant.

So this movie has nothing to do with the game. The game relies on solving mysteries and discovery, but this movie tells us right in the beginning that Umbrella is behind all this. So much for the mystery. When I first saw it I thought Millia Jovovich is Jill or Claire, but no, she is Alice. Who the hell is Alice!? None of the characters were from the game. One character dies and the Michelle Rodriguez character, who fond of him apparently, feels very sad and could not let go. The sorrow music sets in and I could not feel anything. Hell I cant even remember his name.

Day of the Dead reference at the end of the movie.

Also another bad horror movie omen: rock music during action scenes. It is not cool. It's just loud noises and means nothing. Stop putting rock music over anything. I have seen a video on Youtube which put rock music over Pokemon videos. It is stupid and not cool. It's just not.

Resident Evil movie also spawned many sequels, and like any other movies series it shunk deeper and deeper in stupidity. Comparing it to Silent Hill, the Silent Hill movie is superior in so many levels that it does resemble the game in some way. This one? It is just not Resident Evil.