Does exactly what it says on the tin

Rating: 10/10 (7 June 2002)

Resident Evil is pretty much a montage of scene from previous films in the zombie / trapped with a monster genre, with dashes of Tomb Raider and Cube thrown in when they run out of ideas.
This is filmmaking by the numbers. Everything you'd expect to see is there, and nothing that you wouldn't. There are no outstanding scenes, either good or bad, no surprises, no moments of unexpected creativity. The script, dialog, cinematography, audio, score, pacing and FX are all absolutely adequate. How much you will enjoy this film is entirely predictable based on your response to the premise "Hot chick wasting zombies". If you think "Cool!" you'll enjoy this film. If you think "Lame" then you won't. It's as simple as that.
The one scene worthy of mention is the ending, which might as well be captioned "To be continued...". I strongly suspect that it was written (perhaps filmed) before the rest of the movie, because it is such a disjoint from the preceeding scenes.
On balance, I'd rate this on the low end of the cinematic pecking order, but still above such recent adaptations as the tedious Fellowship of the Ring, or the irritating Spider-Man, both of which are annoyingly pretentious and self important. Resident Evil sets its sights lower, gets all of its budget on screen, and doesn't promise more than it can deliver. It won't win any new converts to the genre, but it will please just about all of the existing faithful.