Nothing new

Rating: Null/10 (14 June 2002)

You can almost hear the pitch for this one now; "It's Aliens, it's Dawn of the Dead, it's The Thing - but with better looking actors." Apologies to Sigourney aside, the studio execs recognise that the massively popular games console adventures which spawn these vehicles guarantee a return on the investment, even if the script is as tatty as a rotting burial suit. Did someone say Tomb Raider?
Fans of sci-fi horror must long for the day when a story comes along that doesn't take it's entire M.O. from the Alien series. If that's the case they're going to be disappointed again, right down to Michelle Rodriguez' (Rain) attempt to reprise the role of Hispanic, tough-talking Private Vasquez from the second of those outings. Sadly, Rodriguez interpretation of "How To Act Hard" involves sporting a constant, nostrils-flared grimace that merely leads you to wonder which of her co-stars is suffering with chronic flatulence. Don't fret though, that stench is probably just the dialogue. It is unfortunate that of all the positive elements which writer/director Paul Anderson might have retained from the Japanese produced game version of Resident Evil, he chose to include a bunch of suspect one-liners that fall as flat as if they had been directly translated from the programmers' native language.
Elsewhere, the film contains all the usual music video production values we have come to expect - slick editing, stylish slo-mo shots of spent bullet casings spinning balletically through the air and of course, jarring industrial sound effects crammed into every available space. Obviously no-one was on hand to suggest the virtues of a good, eerie silence. What few nice atmospheric touches there are are quickly dispensed with in favour of big action sequences featuring hordes of shuffling zombies. The undead look fearsome enough, but feature far too frequently to remain a scary prospect for long. They tend to appear well announced for dinner, in a fashion that suggests that the only thing they forgot was a bottle of wine and a polite ring of the doorbell. Any "shocks" generated without their assistance are apt to come devoid of all surprise. Just listen out for the musical crescendo preceding Milla Jovovich (Alice) wheeling around to discoverÂ…another member of the assault team standing nonchalantly behind her. What a relief. Resident Evil does have another big baddie up it's sleeve in the form of the mutant "Licker," which crawls up and down the walls looking like - guess what? - an Alien, and may just win the award for most effortlessly despatched movie monster of all time. Even the films' supposed twist, which stems from Alice's memory loss, is half-heartedly unravelled in the first half of the action.
So, what about the good bits? Well, Jovovich herself is the saving grace, smouldering successfully enough to have the movies' intended game-boy demographic fiddling overtime with their joysticks. We also get a satisfyingly apocalyptic ending which sets things up for the next inevitable installment, and there's a gruesome little scene in which Rain taunts the ravenous zombies from above with the blood dripping from her bite wound. Overall though, this movie lacks the moments of disturbing power which raised Andersons' previous sci-fi horror outing Event Horizon above the average.