Resident Evil is a fun, energetic and entertaining film.

Rating: 10/10 (21 September 2002)

After all the years of watching horror films and seeing how lousy and contrived and cliche they have become, I went into RE assuming it was going to suck because I knew the movie wasn't based on the first few games. I was actually stunned at how much I enjoyed RE. Yeah, it took a lot of liberties from the games, but it was very close to the story line and actually leads into the story lines from the games. Anderson did a good job of translating the main game elements (a secluded mansion, an underground lab, a viral outbreak, a mysterious pharmaceutical company and an employee that reports to somebody on the outside) and managed to wrap it all into one fresh, suspenseful entity with some nice editing and an energetic score. There's been a lot of complaints that the movie has ripped off a lot of films, but what horror/action movie hasn't ripped off other movies? And why start attacking here? Besides, horror films weren't made to to win Oscars and shouldn't be critiqued in this manner. Resident Evil is a fun, entertaining film. And that's all that really matters.