Not as bad as they say

Rating: Null/10 (14 April 2003)

I remember when the videogame Resident Evil came out, there was alot of hype and was proclaimed as the best thing ever. Did it live up to the hype? yes it did. Playing the game was unnerving, with some fantastic shocks. Strange then, that the film of the game appears some six years later...
Is it any good then? and how faithful an adaptation is it?
Well it depends on your definition of "good", It's alright if your in a veg out I wanna watch a trashy movie sort of mood. Milla Jovovich is very nice eye candy, she plays an amnaesiac caught up in a battle with killer dogs, zombies, some very nasty mutants and a murderous computer called the Hive. Luckily for her though, help is at hand from a special forces team headed up by Colin Salmon. Regardless to say they all meet quite gruesome deaths, pretty standard fare really.
The film itself isn't particularly faithful to the game, but I don't think it could be really. The game involved you exploring a mansion alone, fighting off beasties and solving puzzles. Good idea for a game, bad idea for a film.
Where I think the film loses points is from the awful music, Zombies about to appear? Cue thrash metal crap! I found it really jarring. For me it ruined what suspense there was. The biggest problem I had though was the film just wasn't scary, the zombies in Michael Jackson's Thriller were more menacing than the zombies on display here. The dogs were quite good though.
If your a fan of the game, check the film out. It's entertaining in a trashy kinda way, there a quite alot of references to the Resident Evil games in there and you can always just gawp at Milla.