O.K. at Best...

Rating: 6/10 (22 October 2005)

I am going to keep this short and sweet, and without spoilers.
The video game, Resident Evil, changed my life. It was the first video game that I had ever played that brought the experience of "living a horror movie" home on my Playstation. The game is exciting, dark, unnerving, original, and generates incredible atmosphere with it's blend of sound effects, eerie music, engaging storyline and characters, and innovative game play. The game succeeds in every way, and this movie fails in every attempt it makes to recreate the experience.
The movie retains about 30% of the original premise of the video game, and fills the void with a bunch of characters, events and locations that have nothing to do with, and never appeared in, any of the games. This is pretty much "Resident Evil" in name only: there are a few monsters that appeared in the game, and the film merges some of the aspects of the Resident Evil and Resident Evil 2 games.
The sequels in the Resident Evil video game series that followed, and continue to follow, range from fantastic to mediocre, but ALL of them are better than this movie.
First of all, I agree with my brother when he says that "Anderson is a hack". If you need proof of that fact that Anderson is NOT a good director, just observe how can take wonderful, engaging stories and turn them into lifeless, generic, Hollywood-friendly steaming piles of crap that he can peddle to the masses who need only a an action-packed, brainless film to lure them, salivating, to the box office.
If you are a huge fan of the games, and have followed their story lines closely, you will most likely HATE what Anderson has done to this series. As it stands by itself, this movie is OK at best. As a part of the Resident Evil phenomenon, it's pretty much just crap.