Diabolical. In a, you know, bad way.

Rating: Null/10 (7 February 2003)

During the primary literary phase of its development as an entertainment form, the gothic genre tended to involve a set of familiar ingredients - ruined buildings, virtuous heroines in distress, supernatural manifestations, heroic rescuers and loathsome villains, perhaps with a gang of bandits thrown in. Even though we call 'Gothic' simply 'Horror' these days, and even though most of us now visit this genre in its new home of the cinema more than on the pages of books, these ingredients have hardly changed over the years. Resident Evil is fascinating proof of this on two levels.
On the most obvious level, for Ruined Building read The Hive - the abandoned but not-so abandoned biowarfare lab which is the principal location of this film. For virtuous heroine read Milla Jovovich wearing a dress as short as her legs are long; for supernatural manifestations. well, it's a zombie film. You get the point.
On the second level, this film is a bit of an abandoned ruin itself, haunted by the wailing spirit of the film it might have been. You can see how the crumbling architecture might have formed a magnificent structure at one time - however, what separates this from every other romantic ruin you will ever visit, is simply that most ruins come to their tragic state of disrepair thanks to the gnawing of time's teeth, or violent misuse, and not simply because the owner got some cowboy in to build it in the first place.
More of a folly than a ruin, then. Sometimes this film looks beautiful - the cameraman certainly knows how to present the lead actress in a favourable manner - I'm not sure Jovovich has looked quite so luminous on screen before. A pity, then, that the film is so awful taken as a whole.
This is a film without sense, restraint, inspiration, or even excitement. It's not a good zombie film, not a good action film, and not a good science fiction film. It has an extraordinary trompe l'oeil quality that does, at times, deceive the viewer into thinking the film has some genuine quality - but it is deception only.
What's more, it strikes me as rather bizarre that a film about zombies, with such obvious possible influences and precedents, should come across as being more interested in aping James Cameron than George Romero. Indeed, it is somewhat pointless since it is neither the first Aliens-wannabe, nor anything like the best-equipped to carry out such imitation; and this supposes that imitating another (perfectly good) film is even a good idea in the first place.
The utterly pointless directorial allusion to Psycho which opens the film is entirely typical of the direction; so, like a jackdaw's nest, this film may contain many shiny and interesting things but it is simply a mess. Unlike a jackdaw's nest it isn't constructed of old twigs or covered in guano, nor has it fallen down a chimney into a fire yet - but we can always hope.

I suppose utlimately what I find most objectionable about this exercise, and what makes me dislike it more than many other more obviously terrible films is that watching it you can actually see what a good film this could have been. This film earns contempt not so much for its mediocrity as for its wasted potential.