Glossy entertainment

Rating: Null/10 (18 October 2004)

Glossy horror based on the best-selling video games. A group of commandos have to infiltrate an underground base - unfortunately it's defended by a ruthless artificial intelligence and is full of hungry zombies
Five years after it was first mooted, the movie adaptation of Capcom's bestselling video game arrives, helmed by Paul Anderson, the Briton responsible for hit video game movie Mortal Kombat and costly flop Soldier.
Thankfully, Anderson and the producers were fans of the game (and its sequels), and were adamant that that its distinctive, chilling tone be transferred to film. Unfortunately, the filmmakers also managed to incorporate some rubbish of their own. Where the game was scary because of the player's depth of involvement, the film fails to fully engage due to poor characterisation and a pretty lame story.
Eschewing literally using the plot of the first 'Resident Evil' game, the film maintains the basic premise of an isolated mansion and a feisty heroine (Andseron calls the film "the explanatory prequel"). Alice (Jovovich) awakes in the shower with amnesia. While wandering around in the empty mansion she's joined by "cop" Matt (Mabius) before the sudden SAS-style arrival of a group of commandos, lead by One (Salmon), then later by Rain (Rodriguez) when he gets splatted. In some leaden exposition, One walks and talks Alice - and us - through the set-up. The mansion is a cover for a secret lab - the Hive - belonging to the ubiquitous Umbrella Corporation. A virus has been released in the Hive, killing all the staff. The lab has been sealed by the Red Queen, a "state of the art artificial intelligence" (who sounds like a schoolgirl reading out an essay in class). The commandos must enter the lab - taking Alice, Matt and a further amnesiac, Spence (Purefroy), with them - and retrieve the fruits of the research. These fruits turn out to be highly dubious bio-weapons, in the form of not just the zombie-creating 'T-virus', but also in the form of further monstrosities (such as 'the Licker').
Resident Evil just about works. The characterisation and scripting seem sadly cursory, and devices such as giving characters amnesia are tired, but the overall dynamic is effective. The few stabs at story depth are cackhanded - Umbrella is made the quintessence of pervasive, all-powerful corporations; Matt has an earnest little speech about its evils ("Companies like Umbrella think they're above the law, but they're not."). However, there's some good horror here - zombies are always fun, but Anderson puts some effort into making them a worrying presence rather than simply a justification for gore. The look of the film relates nicely to the games too. While it's frequently glossy, it also gets moodier in places, hinting at the grim, lonely atmospherics of the games.
The film's biggest coup comes at the end. It's giving nothing away to say the heroine makes it, but her fate superbly sets the story up for a sequel. George A Romero fans should also look out for a explicit nod to Day Of The Dead in the closing seconds.
Verdict As a piece of quality cinema, Resident Evil just doesn't qualify. But as a slickly-produced piece of trash - and, more importantly, as an adaptation of a video game - it holds its own.