A Huge Disappointment

Rating: 1/10 (31 March 2002)

Mild non-specific spoilers ahead.
I had high hopes, but Resident Evil wants to be a zombie movie and an action movie, and it fails utterly on both counts.
You can't have a good zombie movie without gore. Or without some decent zombies. The zombies in this movie are feeble, except for the dogs, who have hardly any screen time. The movie also has a rather hastily concocted monster, which serves as padding. The gore that does get onto the screen doesn't have any continuity with the action, as if the victims of violence in the film wandered in from an alternate universe where they died of different causes.
And you can't have a good action movie without action. Milla has about one-and-a-half good action moments in this film, and the rest of the cast manages another two. Those are supplemented by a lot of inaction and a lot of loud nonsense where they try to confuse you into thinking something interesting is happening. Dull, dull, dull.
Shaking the camera a lot during a close-up of someone waving their arms and screaming is not an action scene. It's passe and pathetic and wasn't a decent substitute for action back when it was relatively new, in the mid-80's.
The movie has a few moments of genuine atmosphere, but those have all come and gone by the twenty-minute mark. There are some nice props, but they generally don't get much use, and some nice sets, although the gross overuse of the close-up generally obscures them. The cast shows some promise, but they don't have much to do, and the dialogue is all too often wincingly bad.
The movie relentlessly copies better films, and does it poorly, a long and annoying reminder of what you could be watching instead.
Most mysteriously of all, the film contains nudity, but none of it serves any purpose. The movie already had an 'R' rating for violence. The nudity isn't necessary or flattering. I admit, rarely have I seen a movie in which an attractive woman appears without her clothes and thought the movie would be better without the nudity, but it happened here.
All in all, it's not as interesting or exciting as watching someone play the game. Or hearing them talk about having played the game. It's not even as good as the director Paul Anderson's earlier videogame movie, Mortal Kombat. As the final credits rolled, I was easily able to think of almost a dozen zombie movies that are far, far superior -- and only two of them are Japanese.
Weak, dull, derivative, amateurish, under-written, under-directed, and generally disappointing. I feel bad for Milla Jovovich and Michelle Rodriguez, who I know can do so much better.