Horrible, horrible, horrible movie

Rating: 2/10 (5 October 2008)

OK, so I'm incredibly bored and this movie is on TV now and I forgot how bad it is. So, I'm going to fill the next hour and a half with this pap and write as I watch. There is not one memorable character in it at all, apart from Milla Jovovich, who I would decline to actually refer to as a "character". She spends most of the runtime looking at things with a stupid, wide eyed glare, only taking a break to bullet time kick a dog in mid-air. Oh, and then there's Michelle Rodriguez looking angry, and sounding angry. Scary.
Everyone else is just a cardboard cutout, never fleshed out or even given a decent line. They jump through a window at the beginning - I guess that's what Paul WS Anderson considers "character development"... All the dialogue that follows after that is a bunch of useless, boring exposition. Who are these people and why the hell should I care? There's too many of them, all of them generic and never given anything to do.
The film simply looks ugly and drab - nondescript metal corridors and rooms full of boxes and hokey machinery. A talented DP could make this look good, but instead it comes across as overly sterile. And the insulting computer generated map of the facility is just... ridiculous. Could this movie be any more aimed at morons? The zombies are pathetic. The action is poorly filmed. Most of the time we get a shot of someone firing a gun, sometimes in slow motion. The gore level should have been much higher, at least there would have been something to look at, but instead there is barely a drop of blood. Zombies drop to the ground in a bloodless heap while dusty squibs explode sporadically and unspectacularly. Aside from a few shots, you'd think they were aiming for a PG-13. Maybe they were, knowing PWSA.
Why PWSA felt the need to stray so far away from the original atmosphere and story of the game is beyond me - surely, a talented writer could have structured a tense, claustrophobic zombie story set in the mansion, with the STARS team as characters? Instead, we got a derivative, half assed rip off of a bunch of different horror/sci-fi/action movies, and none of it works. There is no story here, just a bunch of crappy clichés and poorly orchestrated "scary jump" sequences where something crashes into a window. No tension at all.
You know, there's movies as silly as this one, but they succeed because they KNOW they're silly. They wink at the audience. Instead, PWSA treats his audience with contempt. This is completely soulless, franchise film-making. You just know he came into the suit's office and pitched how he could make a dumb movie on the cheap, and the fans of the game would come in and see it regardless of how bad it was. He didn't even ATTEMPT to make a good movie.
Back into another smoky corridor, suddenly filled with zombies. Horrid, obnoxious industrial metal music blares at the viewer while Milla "kicks ass" in slow motion again. Poorly edited, poorly filmed.
Random guy: "We're all gonna die down here." Milla: "No, we're gonna get out. All of us." Ergh, this is gonna go on for another half an hour isn't it? Oops... Time for some weird flashback. OK, there's an antivirus. Fantastic... Who cares at this point? Oh, and "Spence" was the guy who released the virus... Who the hell is Spence? I guess he's one of those random cardboard cutouts that have been walking through the movie for the past hour and a bit. He looked so much like 3 of the other background characters, and didn't have barely a line of dialogue, so I would have never suspected him. What a brilliant twist! So now we have a Licker... crappy CG but it's by far the best thing in the movie so far. Too bad every shot of it is so short that we never get to really see it in action. And now we have another classic cliché - the action/thriller countdown, conveniently displayed on screen in big, digital numbers. Oh, and followed up by the return of a character that we all thought was dead! How surprising. I can't wait for the next cliché. Hahah, there it is. "Spence" is a zombie and he jumped at Milla - shocking! She then uttered a one liner and hit him in the head. Just lucky we have the big green digital watchface counting down to the end of the movie! Can't wait for it to end.
So, now the Licker is jumping around inside the train. Sparks are flying everywhere... This must be the "climax". Milla just bullet-time shot it in the head. Didn't see that coming... Oh... and it's dead already. That wasn't very impressive. Michelle Rodriguez turned into a zombie and got shot in the head... How tragic. I was so very attached to her "angry" style of acting.
FINALLY! The movie is over - and the last shot was probably the most impressive thing in the movie. It looked kinda cool... But that was very unsatisfying. And now there's some awful, lame nu-metal blasting over the credits. Horrible. Absolutely horrible. PWSA should be ashamed. And if you liked this mess, you should be too.