All Work & No PlayStation

Rating: 8/10 (16 March 2002)

Making movies out of video games is tough work. After all, video games typically feature shallow, simplistic plots, dialogue that is corny, head-scratchingly obtuse or unintentionally hilarious, and acting that is by turns monotonous and overwrought.
Actually, come to think of it, that pretty well describes the typical Hollywood early-spring release.
The "Resident Evil" series of survival-horror games is essentially a hodgepodge of various horror movies, and so the movie based on it is, if you can imagine, a hodgepodge of various horror movies. The plot concerns dark doings in "the Hive", a secret underground lab run by the sinister Umbrella Corporation, a bio-stuff manufacturer that is what Pfizer would be if Victor Frankenstein were on the board of directors. An experimental zombie-creating virus is released in the Hive, prompting a response by its overseer, a smarty-pants computer with a child's persona and a number of gleefully sadistic security systems (anyone with a fear of elevators should skip the first couple scenes). A team of corporate commandos moves in, with a number of comically elaborate weapons but few names (their medic's nametag reads, "Medic".) They are to secure the lab (under the circumstances, they might have better sent a crack squad of expert morticians) and shut down the computer. Along the way, they seize a couple living in the house that provides cover for the Hive entrance, as well as a cop who was sneaking around, and, for reasons that aren't quite clear, take them along into the Hive. The couple is suffering memory loss due to nerve-gas exposure, and no one is what they seem. But you knew that already. From there "Resident Evil" turns into a zombie-killing haunted house war movie, as the heroes have to battle not only the computer, but a hellish host of undead creatures. And it's pretty fun.
The director is Paul Anderson, who also made "Mortal Kombat", and like that movie, "Resident Evil" is better than it really has any right to be. Anderson has a sure hand for creepy technological spaces. He is economical with light, and manages to make the Hive both shadowy and harshly lit, with its flattening florescent lighting that make the heroes look half dead themselves. This sense of place is very important: among the hallmarks of the "Resident Evil" games are their effectively creepy atmospherics. Playing often finds you strolling through the eerily quiet scene of some past carnage, while unsettling ethereal music plays in the background. Anderson does not incorporate specific places from the games (as he has dispensed with the games' familiar characters), but there are echoes of them in the darkened hallways and flooded labs of the Hive. The movie also retains the games' problem-solving sensibilities, and there is a great deal of shutting off/restoring the power, opening coded locks, etc.
The acting is good, if a bit underdeveloped. This is a relief, since the "Resident Evil" video games seem to prize sub-competent voice acting. Milla Jovovich plays the main character, Alice (Get it? Alice goes down the rabbit hole? 'Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore'? Oh, never mind.), and her performance starts flat and inflates slowly over the course of the movie. I get that it's supposed to convey her memory loss, but it's still a bit uneven. Jovovich works better when she doesn't speak, displaying a quiet, cornered-animal defiance that works well in this type of setting. Plus her other, um, visual qualities. As commando Rain, Michelle Rodriguez seems to be channelling Jenette Goldstein's immortal Pvt. Vasquez from "Aliens", and setting herself up for a long line of sneering toughgirl roles. The weak link is Eric Mabius, unconvincing as the cop, whose resume supposedly boasts Quantico and the NSA, but is largely useless when the Bad Things come (though he does oddly resemble game hero Chris Redfield). A better performance comes from Martin Crewes as a high-strung commando, who gets to do a gratifying twist on the old "I'm surrounded, but at least I've got one bullet left" scene.
The visual style and fast pace of "Resident Evil" largely overcome its sometimes faulty internal logic: the transmission of the virus seems more rooted in script convenience than anything else, and the computer, while supposedly coldly logical, comes off nuttier than trail mix. There is also an unintentionally funny twist as the heroes are stressing over how to kill the bullet-sponge zombies. They need the computer to explain to them what anyone with even passing knowledge of horror-movie physiology already knows: the zombies' weakness is massive trauma to the cerebral cortex, i.e. shoot them in the head. Really, what's wrong with these people? Haven't they ever seen a George Romero movie?