Resident Evil (2002)

I read someone describing Resident Evil, the hit Playstation game franchise that basically involves shooting up lots of zombies, as the “b-movie you can play.” So, does the cinemazation of Resident Evil catch the spirit of the premise? Resident Evil lacks the camp and the fun of the typical good b-movie (and, from what I hear, the games themselves). Instead, it just has a whole lot of Hollywood pumped in it.

The first warning sign we get is a narrated prelude, voiced over some dynamically scrolling text and nifty computer graphics. It basically tells us that this movie’s events take place at the start of the twenty-first century, there’s an evil mega-corporation (is there any other kind?) called the Umbrella Corporation that’s working with the Government (capital ‘G’ intended), and has headquarters in the fictional Raccoon City. Even more ominous for the film-wary viewer is the fact that most of this information will be revealed about twenty minutes into the movie anyway.

The zombie-making ingredient here is something called the T-Virus, cooked to perfection in the massive underground complex called the Hive, which the Umbrella Corporation stuffed so subtly under Raccoon City. You’d think the people of Raccoon City would sort of notice that there’s a complex the size of Manhattan just underneath the city run by an evil mega-corporation working closely with the military on sinister schemes, but, then again, I guess if you’re dumb enough to want to live in a place called Raccoon City, you’d be oblivious to these kinds of things.

Inevitably, the canister containing the virus is shattered and it’s released via the air ducts and onto the various scientists and engineers working in the Hive. There’s a rather effective and suspenseful sequence that follows as the Hive’s inhabitants slowly go from annoyance to alarm to outright panic as the Hive’s AI security system, the Red Queen, takes brutal and fatal measures to contain the virus. There’s also a depiction (all the more effective because it leaves much to the audience’s imagination) of one of the more horrific deaths one can suffer with an elevator.

With all that out of the way, the movie then reminds us the real reason we’re supposed to be watching this. We cut to a bathtub with our heroine Alice, played with sexy results by Milla Javovich, covered only by a shower curtain. She finds herself in a mansion with only one other inhabitant, a guy who may or may not be her husband. Suddenly, a team of attractive people with guns bust in, acting as if Alice and her might-be husband should know who they are and what to do. As the troops force Alice and her fellah to accompany them to the Hive, which happens to have an entrance just below the mansion, matters are explained: Alice and the Guy Whose Name I Did Not Get Into My Notes are, like the other heavily armed sexy people, trained goons for the Umbrella Corporation. The mansion serves as the main secret gateway to the Hive and it was their job to pretend to be a rich married couple and guard it (not too bad a job, I think, especially since a good number of Alice’s flashbacks involve having wild, pounding Klingon sex). Unfortunately, the Red Queen has gone bonkers for no reason (or so they think) and, because no one in sci-fi movies ever thinks to give the nearly omnipotent A.I computer a convenient failsafe, they have to go in and manually plug a device into her CPU that would shut her down. Of course, none of them knows about the whole zombie thing, even though there’s no reason why the Umbrella Corporation wouldn’t be aware of these events (surely the Red Queen, evil or not, would have imparted the information that the big nasty virus that turns people into mindless undead killers has infected hundreds of people to her masters).

At any rate, there’s the premise. The idea of a synthetic virus turning people into zombies is a simple one, but more satisfactory and creepy than the usual ones, like radiation, a strange meteor, a sinister Etruscan urn, etc. Mucking things up, though, is the overused archetype of the Evil Mega-corporation and the really hard to swallow plot device of a gigantic catacomb of tunnels under a small city. Sure, zombies often work best when they’re in a limited space pursuing victims pressed for time through a hellish labyrinth, whether it be technological or gothic, but, a hospital or a Pentagon-esque military facility would have done nicely.

Now, enough about the locale, what about the damn zombies? They’re depicted well enough, each zombie holding a Night of the Living Dead amount of individuality. Plus they get a few nice scenes, most especially when the film’s protagonists crawl on pipes over a crowd of mumbling, outreaching zombies. Unfortunately, the protagonists themselves have about as much of a personality as the zombies. Even when faced with a fate worse than death, all the actors and actresses can manage is to look mildly concerned and sexy. Aside from the inherent badassness of Michelle Rodriguez’s character and the fact that one of the heroes is “good with computers,” we’re not even given traits to work with most of the time. The end result is that we just don’t care when the characters become zombie chow or get thrown into those nasty morally ambiguous situations.

This doesn’t mean Resident Evil is really a terrible movie. The script is decent enough and the direction is more than competent, but it has all the markings of an assembly line movie. The action scenes resemble those of the movie’s spiritual mentor Matrix in that they’re far more concerned with being “kewl” than being thrilling or engaging. The settings and even the actors are picked for looking sleek and pretty. There are a few inspired moments and even one rather nice small plot twist, but it’s easy to tell that no real loving effort went into Resident Evil. It’s a pretty good movie the first time through, but after that, Resident Evil has no “replay” value.

Cast Connections:

Writer/director Paul W.S Anderson also turned out Mortal Kombat and Event Horizon.

Eric Mabius (Matt) was in Todd Solondz's debut film, Welcome to the Doll House, as Steve Rodgers.

Milla Jovovich has been in two favorite old TV shows of mine, "Married With Children" and "Parker Lewis Can't Lose."