The Living Dead rises again, and stink at it!

Rating: Null/10 (2 August 2002)

What makes a good movie?
You can say whatever you want, but there is not one movie that everybody will like. There will never be that kind of movie and it would be almost impossible, just like there would be a perfect person or maybe a zombie?
But I can tell you this: I DIDN'T LIKE Resident Evil.
You know, if you want to make a movie which involves a story where allot of SFX is needed, to me one of the important things of that movie is that the SFX are great and make you believe them. I hated Godzilla but I must say, they threw allot of money away for the effects, and it was necessary or you would get a movie like Gargantua.
It started to get bad when the red monster gets out of some kind of iron cage. From that point I saw that the effects were going to be very very very bad! Just the way the monster kicked the door out was pathetic. And the monster? What was that? A cartoon edited or stop motioned monster? Especially at the ending in the train..
I love the original King Kong movie The effects are for this time maybe bad, but they are great for that time, and to me are still great because it works but Resident Evil bothered me. It was like Ray Harryhausen was back in the game and said that stop-motion is cool again in this kind of movies. The same with the dogs. When Mila Jovovich was shooting, you didn't feel any tension and when the dogs jumped, again it was done cheap and bad.
At one point I really laughed because of one little scene that wasn't really noticable. When one of the guys of the team is shooting at some zombies. One guy falls down, he stops shooting and turns his head towards the camera. The first guy falls down, and then another guy falls down while he never got hit. This was very funny in a `Ed Wood' kind of way.
Also the scene where they activate a laser-beam was maybe for some people original but to me, it just reminded me of the great low-budget movie `Cube', where they use their money in a great way and realize that they have a good story to build on. This is something Resident Evil doesn't have, just like great effects.
Off course in this kind of movies there has to be some sort of twist in the plot, which no one really cares about but still being used. The acting was ok, I like Michelle Rodriguez, ever since I saw here in `Girlfight', she has a great promise as actress but I hope she doesn't throw it away. Good luck Michelle.
So overall, I consider Resident Evil to be bad, because of a lousy plot, which copied of allot of movies (and I don't mean Night of the Living Dead) and has incredible bad effects.
Advise: if you want to make a movie, spend money on either a good plot and build your effects around it or spend your money on effects like `Eight Legged Freaks' and no plot. People will have allot more fun!