Gore nor horror need not apply *SPOILERS*

Rating: 4/10 (8 August 2002)

This was one the most mediocre Zombie films ever made and one of the more mediocre and predictable so called horror films since the "Scream" era started. None of the heroes in the film had any connection or humanity whatsoever and I didn;t care that they died. Michelle Rodriguez' character for example is utterly hateful and her death was welcome. None of the characters showed any fear and thus disrespected the theme of horror. Milla Jovavich's character is a kung fu expert? Why? Did the movie tell us? No, and because it filmmakers are to politically correct and gutless to show a woman in peril for the sake of not offending sensitive women today, this film fails and so does Milla's character.
The zombie makeup was suprisingly well done, but what is a zombie movie without gore? Even George Romero's NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD had some gore that was extreme for its era. Speaking of which, Romero was originally slated to direct RE, but I guess producers felt he would have ended up making a better zombie film and thus canned him. Most of the gore was implied, but it fails. People would point out the TEXAS CHAINSAW technique where the gore was implied, but it works in TEXAS. For example, the girl hanging on the hook. We don't see the hook go into her back, but we do see her hanging painfully and struggling from the hook. A poor example of implied gore in RE is when the girl in the elevator in the begining has her head chopped off, we only see her point of view and then BAM- screen turns to black. Huh? Were the filmmakers too scared to do a zombie movie? It seems like it.
The ending is a perfect example of how failed the writers were in their attempt to present something interesting and epic and instead give us a bland conclusion, where Milla walks out into the world to see desolation, burning streets, and no humans. It would have been an excellent opportunity to show a horde of zombies surrounding Milla, from all angles, throughout the city, and end the movie right there, but these are filmmakers who know absolutely nothing about horror, just popcorn moments and ALIENS ripoff techniques. A truly overrated film.