Resident
Evil
Plot:
There is no plot in this movie.
There are hurky-blurry jump shots of
commandos, computers, listless “zombies”, and the side of
Milla
Jovovich’s boob.
There are some people who go underground so that they can yell, act dense,
listen to industrial metal, and die. There is a mainframe who takes on the form
of a little British girl, because the director thought that it would be cool.
There is a setup for a sequel. Don’t see the
sequel.
Comments:
Let’s play a wee little game shall
we?
I love games, especially ones where people get hurt. Such a 'ting is
Resident Evil, a lovely little series of survival horror that always managed to
be worth playing (even if the did refuse to change those craptacular controls until well into the 7th incarnation!). I'm feeling
particularly evil me’self today, so let’s make this review special! I am going
to award the RE movie a gleaming 10 out of 10! All it has to do is avoid
sucking. For you see, for every point of blatant suckery I see, I shall carve
half a point off the score. Sharply. Bitterly. Slowly and painfully. Like a
zombie devouring it, bite by diseased bite.
10
Paul Anderson to the world: “I’ve written enough, it’s easy!
Let’s shoot!”
The medium of video games has long been devoid of compelling
themes, character growth, and genuine plot development. (Well, except for RPG’s,
but I find those things so tedious I consider them more a form of calculus than
recreation.) While RE suffered from horrible ‘engrish’ translations (“the master
of unlocking"?) and a pretty stock b-movie plot, it nevertheless managed to
create a genuine aura of suspense, and produce some very endearing characters.
In comparison,
the motion picture is perhaps rivaled only by the printed word in its capacity
to engage the audience and create ‘real’ fictional characters and settings. So
why is this film so glaringly shallow when compared with its digital source
material?
9.5
Will Hays is dead
I understand that getting a
horror film released with a n ‘R’ rating is getting harder and harder in this
country. That’s no excuse for releasing a zombie movie with almost no blood
whatsoever. I’ve seen public access films that were gorier than this tripe.
9.0
“We need more white walls and
glass partitions!”
RE took place in a gloomy labyrinthine
mansion. When your avatar finally reached the underground research facility, it
was disheveled and eerie. This flick is set in what looks like a cross between a
factory outlet and an optometrist’s office. These labs posses entirely the wrong
kind of sterility.
8.5
“Cut! Your performance wasn’t
monochromatic enough!”
Could these characters be any thinner?! I
swear, I still can’t place which one of the half a dozen identical looking
dark-haired guys was the villain!
8.0
The Pathetic
fallacy
Anthropomorphizing a computer always
strikes me as stupid. Aside from that, expecting me to believe that a group full
of employees, as well as their supervisors would place everyone’s lives in the
hands of AI is just foolish. (Yes, I know, Umbrella is supposed to be very
powerful as well as
<DonaldPleasence> eeevil!
<\DonaldPleasence> but Anderson has a penchant, displayed even more egregiously
in the sequel, for confusing ‘evil’ with ‘rock-stupid’. ) Have you ever had an
OS which didn’t experience a bug, glitch, software incompatibility issue
or outright crash at least once a month? (then again, I use Windows, so)
7.5
“Forget Jill Valentine, we’ve
got… …um… what’s her name again?”
Yeah, I could have put up with them
changing the story (though to nowhere near this extent) but would it have killed
the to keep some of the characters from RE in the film? Jill? Chris? Barry?
Clair? Hell, how bout’ Mr. Annoying- Leon S. Kennedy? I would have settled
for Chicken-heart Vickers! Who the flip is ‘Alice’, and why should I
care?
7.0
“George who?”
George Romero, the father of the modern
zombie, wrote a script for this movie. It was slightly flawed, and had some
continuity issues with the rest of the series, but nothing that a second draft
couldn’t fix. And, get this for novelty, it was based on the game, and had all
the characters in it! Anderson didn’t think it was good enough. He decided to
write his own script. The rest is history.
6.5
The mor
gue, the
merrier!
Are highly trained special opps groups in
the habit of taking half-dazed amnesiacs and civilians who might
quite possibly be
spies on highly deadly classified missions with them?
6.0
Rain, Rain, GO
AWAY!
For anyone who ever
though the sadistic lesbian guards in all
those ‘chicks in prison’ movies were too nice, and that Bette Davis was too
subtle in 'Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte', I give you Michelle Rodriguez as Rain, the most
irritating bitch in movie history. Pity she could only die twice.
5.5
No one watches horror movies
in Andersonworld
Our plucky dullards shoot the walking
corpses in the chest. It has no effect! Goshers! They proceed to shoot them in
the chest 8,107,132,402,057,13 just to make sure that it doesn’t do anything
productive ( I counted). Then, they make a startling discovery, if you shoot the
zombies… …in the head… …wait for it!… …they die! Amazing! Just like in every
other zombie movie ever made! And don’t give me that lazy little “but there are
no zombies in the real world, so how would they know?“ bullcrap! If you were
surrounded by a group of flesh eating corpses while holding an AK-47 (It could
happen!) would you say to yourself “Hmm, I know there’s no such thing as
zombies, so I’ll panic and shoot them in their already non-functioning organs!”,
or would you remember the Late, Late Show you saw that one night and cap them
all in the skull?
5.0
Three’s Company
So many hideous, gnarled monstrosities in the RE universe, which creatures
should we bring to unholy life? Well let’s see, we’ve got zombies, dogs,
lickers, eh… that’s enough. Let’s not go nuts either, we’ll kill the dogs off
after 30 seconds, and create the licker out of 3rd rate cgi. As for the zombies…
4.5
Ahhhh! An extra in a dirty lab
coat! Run!
RE zombies have putrid, decaying
flesh, gaping bloody flesh wounds, and emit a bone chilling moan. The specimens
on display here consist of very bad actors in frumpled clothes, sporting
bloodless unconvincing cgi generated injuries. They don’t even moan!
4.0
Homeless dead
The Spenser Mansion? The groans
of the damned echoing down long empty corridors? Fiendish booby-traps? Something
interesting to actually look at?! Hello?
3.5
Survial evening gown by Fabioso® of
Milan.
I can hear the hormone
soaked thoughts of
Milla fans as I watch this movie “Hey Bevis, check it out!
Damn! She is so friggen hot in that skimpy red dress! I could just eat her up! ” Yeah, you
and any zombie that grabs hold of that idiotic sashy-thing that hangs down from her waist.
Cut it off, or grab a tube top from one of the zombies to accent the trailer
trash short-shorts. (Or hell, just go topless, that would excite all the sexless little
proles with
Milla fixations.) Basically, anything short and clingy would be much more
appropriate, for, ya know, running around and not dying. Then again maybe
Alice’s motto is “Live dumb, die painfully, and leave a good-looking walking
corpse”.
3.0
CGI, it’s almost as convincing
as claymation!
To put it plainly, the licker looks like
snotty red licorice, and is always animated two or three shades lighter than the
rest of the scene he’s in. (Yes, it’s a boy, I checked) The grievous face wounds
on the zombies seem to shift oddly as said face moves. CGI can be done well, but
in this film, no way. I suppose I could post some pics to illustrate my point,
but I refuse to sully the Zen-like simplicity of my layout with ugly screen
shots from this stupid little turd of a film.
(Future Bog Man; Well ok, but only because you
asked so nicely!)
2.5
Dude, where’s my
scary?
Not to beat a dead horse, but let’s for the
moment say Anderson was competent, and this mess had actually turned out to be
decent entertainment. It would still not change the fact that this is a Sci-fi
action flick masquerading as horror.
2.0
“O
k kid, this is the big
sex scene with (dark-haired guy #2). What do you mean ‘no kissing on the mouth,
it costs extra’?”
Alright, this is the point where I offend you with my utter
frankness (read
"ad hominem attacks")
Milla Jovovich is not an actress. She is a
model; which is to say that her job is to take off her clothes and look pouty. She
cannot emote. She wears one facial expression throughout the film. She blows, hard.
Of course, I would never insinuate that that’s how she got this role. (Mostly
for legal reasons.) Oh, no! Nor would I point out that she and Anderson had
supposedly become briefly engaged at some point. (And I certainly would not mention that she
was in her late 20’s while he was pushing 40.) What bearing does that have
on the issue? I’m sure Anderson cast a piss-poor actress as the main character
in a trilogy of films based solely on her talent. I wish you people would stop
being so cynical!
1.5
Edit for your life!
The commandos are surrounded by zombies,
they open an elevator. More Zombies! They’re doomed! Then Rain kicks someone,
then something happens, then some jump cuts. I get very dizzy, and I’m sure it
has some effect
on my memory, because they get away somehow, and the zombies seem to forget
and leave them alone for a little while.
(Yeah, I’m
sure your fascinated by
my comments on poor editing and pacing, seeing as how they come one paragraph
after I just tip-toed around calling the lead actress a ho.)
1.0
The company of the Reaper is
preferable to that of Rain
Well, we’ve escaped the zombies due to our
magical editing power, now let’s split up in this incredibly dangerous death
maze so that Milla can jump around in bullet-time and kick dogs!
0.5
People, there are perfectly
good zombies down there going hungry!
Again I tie this in to
Anderson’s odd evil= stupid delusion. Umbrella has a computer which is
authorized to kill people and shut down the facility if the zombie virus is released.
The computer does just that. Umbrella doesn’t know why! It sends in a team to
assess the situation, the team is mostly killed, except for two people, one of
whom returns infected with T-virus and suffering from monster bites. To paraphrase
an Umbrella official "I want him for Nemesis project. And send another team
down there, I want to know what went on in that faci
lity".
Wasn't there any outside monitoring of the research operation by Umbrella? Are there no links
between this computer network and the outside world? Couldn’t the most powerful
corporation in the world afford freakin' networking software?! Then again, I’m
writing about people who can’t solve the equation 2+x= 4
0.0
"You Died"
Aw, Resident Evil movie, looks
like you have no more score left! But wait, we haven’t explored your good
points! And I’m nothing if not fair.
Doggie!
Nice slimy, gnarly zombie dogs,
mate!
0.5
The light at the end of the
tunnel
There was that cute little ‘Day of the
Dead’ reference at the end, and the abandoned Raccoon city was suitably
eerie.
1.0
Now see that! You can walk out of this
review RE movie, with a whole point to your name, oh wait, what’s
this?
Escape? Later, my feet
hurt.
The villain (dark haired guy… I wanna
say #1 or possibly #3?) Is infected by zombie-gunk, and being chased by the
licker (you know, the thing that looks like Gumby’s pal Pokey). But wait, not only
does he have the antidote, but he reaches the escape tram! So what does he do? He
sits down next to his ticket out of hell, and prepares a lengthy injection, just
in time for the licker to eat him. Did I miss something? Do anti-viruses not
work when administered on moving trains?
0.5
Oh well RE movie, you’ve only
got half a point left, and I guess you didn’t really earn it, seeing as how
quickly you killed off those dogs, and how the ending was just a setup for two
more pointless sequels (and the Romero reference comes off as more than a little
disingenuous, seeing as how his work was snubbed to make way for Anderson’s, um,
"vision").
But hey, I’m feeling generous
today.
0.5
|
Home |
Reviews |
Faqs |
BogBlog |
Links |
Misc. |