Well, what'd you expect?

Rating: 7/10 (21 August 2004)

I'm baffled at why people have high expectations for movies based on video games. No matter how good the source material is, you can't expect a video game to do good as a movie. I imagine that's where a lot of heat towards this movie is coming from; hordes of Resident Evil game fans who hate the film because it has got very little to do with the games. I agree, it doesn't have a lot to do with the games; there are a few references to various of the video game titles, and there are the zombies, and it does try to build the atmosphere of the games. But it just doesn't work too good in the end. The film is billed as an action/thriller/science fiction/horror film; unfortunately, not too many of those aspects of the film work very good. The action is pretty good, but action sequences are few and far between. The thriller parts are decent enough; I really enjoyed the very last scene. The science fiction portions of the film are not very well thought out or particularly professionally executed; I kind of liked the basic idea of the film, but it just didn't seem to work too well. The horror consists of director Paul W.S. Anderson's personal brand of loud noise, sudden scares/shocks(or attempts at such) and intense rock music. It does have some good scares, and some of the zombie scenes are quite intense. But a big problem with the zombies is the fact that they don't even turn up in the movie for a solid 45 minutes. That's almost half of the film. And there passes many scenes that don't involve any zombies at all. I suppose the film was supposed to be tense during those scenes, as in, the tension of knowing that the zombies are out there, but I was never really afraid of them. The plot is nonsensical and pretty badly put together. The acting is decent, but not at all great. The character development is nearly non-existent. The special effects are great; well, mostly great. There are a few times where the CGI is obvious, and quite a few where it's badly used. Worth noting is the amount of details that are taken from various of the games. Something that annoyed me was the lack of realism in the film; these zombies/walking corpses are supposed to be a few hours old, right? Then how come their teeth are so decayed, half of their faces rotten, and various of their body parts so screwed up? I know it was done for effect, but it was fairly ridiculous. Also, the action and stunts that Milla Jovovich's character pull off is not the least bit realistic, and mainly looks like a direct rip-off of The Matrix. All in all, I suppose it's decent enough. For such a just-above-average-film, I'm surprised at how many times I've managed to sit through it. Maybe that explains my rating. Who knows. I recommend it to fans of the various aforementioned genres. Just watch it with low expectations, and don't try too hard to make sense of the plot. 7/10