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Title: Resident Evil (Special Edition) (2002) |
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Review of Resident Evil (Special Edition)
- Marilyn Manson worked on the soundtrack, so it's no surprise that Resident Evil is best enjoyed by headbangers, goth guys, and PlayStation junkies. Like the interactive game it's based on, this horror hybrid pits a small band of SWAT-like commandos (including Milla Jovovich and Girlfight's Michelle Rodriguez) against a ravenous hoard of zombies, resulting in a gorefest that only sociopaths could love. The tenacious heroes are trapped inside the Hive--an underground complex where an evil corporation conducts illegal research with a deadly virus--and the zombies (reanimated corpses of sacrificed employees) are fodder for endless rounds of gunfire. It's utter nonsense (not unlike director Paul W.S. Anderson's previous Event Horizon), so your best defense is to wallow in it or avoid this trash altogether. A few cool sequences are borrowed from better films (that slice-and-dice laser is cribbed from the 1998 Canadian shocker Cube), but if you're in the mood for heavy-metal carnage, this movie's for you. --Jeff Shannon
Amazon.com
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Comments for Resident Evil (Special Edition)
- Posted on 2008-06-08
Special effects look exactly like that of a computer game, not real. + Over the top action + No plot = Not woth watching.
The pecial effects look exactly like that of a computer game, not real. The action is the top. There's no plot. It's not woth watching.
Score: 1
- Posted on 2008-06-01
First of a great series.
I haven't played the game version, but I'm certainly hooked on this action/horror/sci-fiction story that moves along at a great pace. When experiments by the Umbrella Corporation result in an out of control, mutating T-virus, Raccoon City suffers the consequences. Alice is a highly trained super-chick who fights Zombies as she tries to get the secret to the surface of 'The Hive' to warn the innocent people. A mad scientist has more sinister plans for Alice and her fighting skills, not to mention the computer run 'Red Queen' who doesn't want to risk letting anyone out and taking a chance on spreading the virus. Of course, it's already too late for many of the living. Can't wait to view the next in this series!
Chrissy K. McVay - Author
Score: 5
- Posted on 2008-05-11
Milla Jovovich -- making zombie-fighting sexy since 2002
There's just something about watching a hot babe laying the smack down on anyone and anything that gets in her way - and no one does it better than Milla Jovovich. She is, to put it mildly, a whole lot of woman. Resident Evil isn't all about Milla, though; nor is it all about the gore (actually, the movie wasn't nearly as gory as I expected). Above all, though, Resident Evil is not to be dismissed as just another video game adaptation thrown haphazardly together just to make money. This film has substance, subplots, and surprises to go along with the generally impressive special effects and, for my money, pretty good acting. In other words, while the unfortunate denizens of the Hive may be essentially brainless, Resident Evil is not.
I have only limited experience playing the original video game. I never got very far into it, mainly because I wasn't very adept in the gameplay department and didn't spend the time necessary to significantly improve my minimal skills. All I remember is exploring the house and trying to kill the occasional zombie that popped up along the way as the music did the principal work of creating a spooky atmosphere. The movie is much more intense than that - and far more suspenseful. It's not like some clumsy scientist just happened to drop a beaker, thereby exposing the deadly T-virus all of his geeky colleagues. On the contrary, this story generates a whole host of questions in the first few moments, questions such as who released the virus and why, but also why is the room housing such a deadly virus tied in to the ventilation system of the whole complex to begin with? (I can't say I got an answer to that last one.) I actually had to go back and watch the exposure moment a second time because I thought I had missed something the first time.
Don't expect Milla's character to supply you with any early answers, as Alice wakes up in a ritzy-looking house with no memory of who she is. Even the shocking jolt of a stranger claiming to be a cop grabbing her just before a team of commandoes suddenly crash through the windows fails to jog her memory, but she doesn't question the special ops commander when he tells her she is one of two security agents stationed in the house to protect that particular entrance to The Hive, the mega-powerful Umbrella corporation's top-secret, underground facility devoted to all kinds of dangerous and illegal research into bioweapons and the like - and that her amnesia is the temporary byproduct of exposure to a nerve gas. By the time she and the suspicious cop accompany the group to the entrance to The Hive, Alice has met her equally amnesiac "husband" and learned that the Red Queen, The Hive's central AI, locked the whole facility down and killed everyone inside in an effort to try and contain the super-deadly T-virus from spreading outside the complex. Their mission is to get to the Red Queen. It sounds pretty simple, what with everybody down there being dead and all. As they soon discover, however, those 500-odd dead bodies have arisen as blood-thirsty, flesh-eating zombies, and the Red Queen isn't going to let anyone into her inner chamber without putting up a fight.
The majority of the movie, to no one's surprise, consists of the team members trying to survive the onslaught of hordes of zombies, high-tech computer defenses of last resort, etc. As all of that exciting action is taking place, however, we see Alice trying to sort through the memories coming back to her in intermittent waves. She is a much more central figure in all of this than even she knows early on, and she isn't the only team member with secrets to be revealed. That leads to some surprisingly effective plot twists that not only advanced the story in important and plausible ways; they were also presented very much in the context of earlier scenes in the movie.
It doesn't matter if you've ever played the video game or not - Resident Evil is just an exciting, action-packed horror film. I don't consider it to be the least bit scary, but it is quite atmospheric. As a horror fan, I must say I've never counted zombies among my favorite monsters - let's face it, they're basically mindless, slow-footed creatures with no erotic potential whatsoever - so I'm not just whistling Dixie when I say that Resident Evil is a great movie. Of course, a lot of the credit has to go to Milla Jovovich, the finest of one-woman killing machines.
Score: 5 - Posted on 2008-04-18
Way above average video game adaptation
In the never-ending effort to find new material for movies, the industry has gone to a whole host of new media over the past 2 or 3 decades to include graphic novels, video and computer games, and even theme park rides. Perhaps not surprisingly game adaptations have been perhaps the least success of all the films based on new sources. Almost without exception movies based on console or computer games have been unspeakably awful. RESIDENT EVIL, while not a great movie, nonetheless manages to be perhaps the best that the genre has produced. It has, moreover, provoked two sequels that are both arguably better than the film that started it off.
I have not played RESIDENT EVIL (apart from RPGs like Dungeon Siege and Elderscrolls and especially MMORPGs like Asheron's Call and World of Warcraft I generally avoid games), so I don't know how closely this film adheres to its storyline, but you constantly feel the restrictions of a highly predetermined story line. The entire film -- unlike the sequel -- feels as if it is progressing via a formula.
Milla Jovovich has managed to build a career playing strong, heroic women. The first film most people know her from is THE FIFTH ELEMENT, but she later went on to make THE MESSENGER (about Joan of Arc), also with Luc Besson at the helm (over the course of his career he has constantly made films featuring female action heroes). She does a creditable job in all three as someone who manages to be heroic despite attempts at the Umbrella Corporation to manipulate her for their own purposes.
This can be a fun movie if gone into with rather low expectations. There is a low of gore, some pretty tense moments, but not a lot of plot. As usual in these movies, greedy corporations are ultimately the enemy (something even truer in real life, yet why don't we remember that in real life?). If taken for what it is -- slick fluff -- it can be enjoyable. But if you start interrogating the plot and trying to make sense of it, you'll get frustrated quick.
I first saw this several years ago. At that time the only cast members I knew were Milla Jovovich and Michelle Rodriguez. On this rescreening I was pleasantly surprised to see Eric Mabius in one of the main roles. He is best known today as Daniel Meade on UGLY BETTY. And while he doesn't quite make it into the sequel, his character sorta, kinda does.
Score: 3
- Posted on 2008-04-12
Not an average video game adaptation
Although based on a video game, the movie has an original screenplay which explains the cause of the T-virus outbreak which is the focus of the video game series. You do not need to have played the video game to watch this film. In fact, the plot is not entirely congruent with the video games series.
The special effects are well done and the eerie score really adds to the atmosphere of the film. The picture quality on Blu-ray is excellent.
The movie is strong enough to stand on its own in the sci-fi/horror genre without any tie-in to its video game ancestry. The sequels; however, are both disappointing when compared to the potential shown in this film with the last film in the series being the better of the two sequels.
Score: 5