Whoa

Rating: Null/10 (15 August 2002)

I can't compare the game to the movie that well, since I've only played the game once or twice in the arcade and didn't last very long before I got eaten. (Check the trivia section on the IMDB if you want more info on that, though beware of many spoilers) I don't know if the game has any more of a backstory than the DVD box did: a virus is accidentally unleashed at an underground biological research facility that turns all the employees, lab animals, and experiments into flesh-eating undead. A rescue team discovers too late they are stuck in there with them; they have 3 hours to get out without getting eaten or, worse, infected before the Red Queen' master computer permanently shuts down all the exits.
On the negative side, it was a little longer than an action movie needs to be-- 10 minutes could have been trimmed, I caught myself wanting to hit forward and skip scenes in the first half hour of people wandering warily around deserted areas. I've never wanted to do that with a Romero movie. It does take a little too long to get going, but when the action kicks in, trust me, it doesn't let up, to the point where I felt kind of battered after the movie-- really unrelenting. I couldn't stand the industrial/techno soundtrack, but then I don't usually listen to bands with song titles like Fistf*ck' and `My Plague (New Abuse Mix)'. I guess it was appropriate for the movie, I didn't exactly expect, say, Oingo Boingo (though that would have been kind of cool, now that I think of it) but it was grating after a while. Several shots were extremely derivative of Romero, but since I haven't watched the featurettes or commentaries, I'm not sure if the filmmakers intended them as a tribute/in-joke (like the newspaper headline blowing around a deserted street proclaiming THE DEAD WALK, always great to see in any movie) or just ripped them off with the plan to say they were inspired by' the other movie if anyone pointed out the similarities.

The end seemed to be setting up for a sequel (according to the IMDB, one is planned but not even in pre-production), though at least not in an extremely cliched way, and it mainly irritated me because it was a cliffhanger. There's also several CGI shots where the monster looks about as realistic as the one in the actual game; I did not for a moment forget I was watching CGI, and it was VERY easy to tell where the animatronics ended and the CGI began in several key scenes.
OK, enough of what didn't work. On the plus side, Milla Jovovich has proven herself to be one of the few genuinely talented model-turned-actresses, and gives a great performance. I was kind of disappointed in Michelle Rodriguez's acting, mainly because she was so good in Girlfight, but she was acceptable and at least can really look like a badass. There's quite a few fun--and sick--shots. There were plot twists that I actually didn't see coming--sorry to say, I could see most of the jumps walking up 5th Avenue-- and the plot was a lot more brutal and downbeat than I expected (for a movie based on a video game, and for a modern zombie movie, anyway)--good for them. They did definitely outright steal some ideas from Dawn of the Dead (and, as everybody has already probably pointed out, Cube) but at least had some originality by putting a slightly new twist on them. There was a much higher body count than I thought (not counting all the zombie employees, of course, I mean among the heroes), most of which was pretty ballsy. Characters did not die in the order I expected them to. Things got pretty cold-blooded (so to speak).
I'd recommend it for a rental, if you want a mindless, scary action movie with some real suspense. You could do a lot worse (like rent the director's Mortal Kombat, for instance) Not bad for a mainstream studio movie based on a game.