Today's film is...the first Resident Evil. Video game based movies are typically...laughably bad, and we shall see how this stacks up.
I, being a fan of the series, am and have been curious to see what this film does for this series since apparently this has spawned three sequels, with a fourth in the works.
It starts off...well, not shitty, everything seems pretty intense and textbook "someone broke into a lad doing biochemical research and let loose a virus" plot scenario. The added twist? Erm.....the facility is ran by some artificial intelligence that has gone haywire and is killing....everyone as a result of the virus getting out. So a squad has been sent to the facility to shut down the computer, retake control of it and contain the virus/zombie infestation. Standard procedure.
I'll start by saying...this is incredibly...not really Resident Evil. In none of the games was there any sort of computer system hell-bent on killing off humans in any way, shape, or form. And NO, the Wii game does not count (they made that game with the computer in it as a homage to this movie.)
Anywho, the movie takes its sweet time getting to the good stuff...(See Zombie raping, pillaging and destruction) starting out with the main character waking up naked in a bathtub with a stunning case of amnesia. (Ok, this actually happened in one of the games, except it was in a hospital bed.) It then goes on to play up the fact that the computer system is omnipresent in this facility and that these people are so baffled by how to even truly take down this thing....completely letting the audience forget that "oh yeah, this is a zombie film..." Fuck you misdirection. Essentially, not counting the obligatory death at the beginning of every movie that wants to call itself scary, it takes somewhere near 30 minutes for anyone else to even die, in which they die not from zombies...but from a modernized sequence from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade where they went into the first section of the cave in which the Holy Grail was...instead of ancient saws cutting you in half...instead we have lasers... needless to say, 4 out of 8 of the squad is dead at this point.
FINALLY, one single zombie appears nearly 40 minutes into the film, where it bites one person in the hand before they pop caps in it. Anti-Climatic. They didn't even shoot them in the head, which is practically rule #1 in zombie slaying 101. This comes back to bite them (haha pun) in the ass as they just won't die.
FINALLY....another person dies from what basically is a zombie orgy. Bad time to decide to eat my BBQ Cheddar Steak sub from Charley's. Anywho, took fucking long enough, 50 minutes? This is about a 90 minute movie, so over half of it went by without any zombie death. FAIL.
Oh, and I have to put this is here...pinnacle of the movie's awful: Some guy sees his sister who is a zombie, naturally doesn't know what to do and is frozen with misery. Zombie sister does what she knows best: Tries to eat his brains. Alice (main character by the way) domes her with a large paperweight. End zombie.
....Bullets won't kill them, but a large paperweight will. Welp.
Eventually you learn more about the corporation and the virus itself. Basically the computer isn't super crazy, it actually had a purpose in killing EVERYONE.
Now the movie becomes what it should have been, oh say, 30 MINUTES AGO. Zombie escape. One of the characters gets bit like...90 times and its quite funny cause she's a bitch. One guy sacrifices himself for the team which really...is the better thing to do.
Alice eventually remembers damn near everything including the fact that there's a cure! BITCH why couldn't you remember that at the beginning of the movie? Oh and that the one who caused all of this is the guy who has been with them the whole time. BRILLIANT. Well no matter, the computer system figured that out too.
In which is probably the best part and greatest homage to the series, one of the best creatures from the series, a licker comes and kills that fucker. YAY.
Turns out that guy who tried to martyr himself, is actually alive, and ends up frying the computer who tried to kill them all....again. Alice grabs the antivirus and decapitates douche man who became a zombie after the licker fucked him up. They hot foot it on a train and another familiar creature from the series, a chimera eats the guy who should've died forever ago, and they take out the licker that has been stalking them forever. Oh, the chick who got bit 90 times? now a zombie. She gets headshotted by the remaining guy and happens to fall upon a door release switch which drops that licker onto the train which bursts into hellfire, proving that the virus is the spawn of satan. (yeah, i don't get it either.)
Well, they escape. Simple as that. No bigger battle, that's it. Med people bust in on them, and take them to do experiments on them. She then wakes up to an abandoned med facility....outside...to a world in chaos. Grabs a shotgun.
END MOVIE.
Yep thats it...Made obviously with a sequel in mind.
This movie wasn't AWFUL, but it was incredibly mediocre. It had its moments, but hardly enough death and was sparse on the zombies. It also took to long to get good. If I wasn't reviewing this movie with the intent of watching it the whole way through, I would've turned it off after 20 minutes. simply put. If i wanted to watch computers killing people, I'd watch The Cube. And i'm sad that there was very little in terms of video game relation...all of the references were very subtle.
Rating: (1-5, 5 being hilariously awful, 1 being borderline decent or even watchable...scale goes in reverse)
1.5/5
