Awesome horror flick that people twenty years from now should still remember.

Rating: 10/10 (17 March 2002)

Okay, so "RESIDENT EVIL" wasn't up there in the high ranks with films like "ALIENS" and "DAWN OF THE DEAD", but it still gave me a reasonable amount of scares that I haven't experienced since the late 1980's.
Primarily based on the successful video games, "RESIDENT EVIL" is a brooding piece of work that builds up suspense and horror in a claustrophobic-like atmosphere where a group of soldiers and two guards must infiltrate the headquarters known as 'the Hive' of a high-tech operation known as 'the Umbrella Organization' to shut down a mainframe computer that is known as 'the Queen Bee'. Little do they know that all 500 employees working in the Hive are now dead and have been re-animated as zombies while all other creatures inside have mutated into horrifying monsters.
It appears that someone broke into the laboratories to steal a heavily-guarded experiment known as "The T-Virus" which has the ability to re-animate the dead. When the virus is stolen, the culprit throws one of the test-tubes containing the virus onto the floor which shatters, resulting the Hive in shutting itself down and trapping everybody inside the underground complex.
Milla Jovovich is one of the guards who was supposed to protect the Hive. She is found in an outpost with severe memory loss of her identity and occupation. She along with the group of soldiers and one more guard are taken deep into the Hive. When all Hell breaks loose after the zombies and monsters are unleashed, you will be taken on an unforgettable thrill ride that will leave you riveted to your seat!
Most of the praise for this movie lies within the special effects. I enjoyed seeing the zombified dogs and the creatures inside the huge metal containers. The only thing I was a little disappointed with were the zombies themselves. I am very serious when it comes to my zombies, so I was very excited to see the ones featured in this movie. When one man is attacked by a swarm of zombies and is basically eaten alive, I expected to see some good shots of limbs being torn off or flesh being eaten. Instead you only get to see a few of the zombies 'pretending' to bite into him as he screams, and later when he himself has been re-animated as one of the undead, the only signs of his demise are a few bite marks and some trickles of blood running down his face. Other than that, it appears as if the zombies didn't even bite into him at all! A few other scenes also display the same issue - one including a moment where a man is killed after a mutant beast 'eats' him, yet when looking closer at his body in a later part of the film when he too becomes one of the 'undead', he also appears not to have been injured greatly either. One might think that they originally died from fright!
One small minor problem I had with the movie was the lack of characters left to 'survive' a sequel. The ending was fantastic - a deserted city scape left in ruin and pandemonium by something horrific, a door left open for a future sequel.
I hope they make a sequel. I remember when "STARSHIP TROOPERS" came out and all actors involved had signed on for a trilogy, yet it performed very poorly at the box office meaning no sequels would be made. I don't care if "RESIDENT EVIL" only makes $1.00 in its opening weekend, I want to see a sequel!
My Rating - 8 stars out of 10!