Wow, I wonder what the video game's like.

Rating: 5/10 (6 February 2004)

So obviously I make no secret of the fact that I've never played the video game on which this movie is based, although I can't say it's that easy to come up with what the objective of a game would be that would inspire a movie like this. Not that I hated the movie or anything, but I think the story here would work better as a game than it does as a movie. First of all, the foundation of the story as a whole is based on a gigantic fallacy, or a series of gigantic fallacies. Specifically, the poisonous gas in the movie that basically reanimates dead people, turning them into flesh-eating zombies, supposedly works because, as it's explained in the movie, the body is still active even after death (`for months,' one character explains).

The problem here is that, while it's true that it is a widely accepted myth that hair and fingernails continue to grow after death (also mentioned in the movie), it is not true at all that hair and fingernails continue to grow after death, it just doesn't happen. There is, in fact, a recognized postmortem lengthening of hair and fingernails, but it's not because they're growing, it's because the dead skin is receding, revealing the hair and fingernail material that was previously underneath the skin. So in a sense, hair and fingernails do, in fact, grow after death, but it is a result of the decay of the body, not in any way a product of still-functioning hair follicles and whatever the glands are that produce fingernails. Another reason that the movie gives for the ability of the gas to bring dead people back to life is that cells continue to reproduce after death. This may be true, but it would certainly never happen at the level required for a cadaver to be operational enough to be a zombie. Cells that have no incoming source of oxygen have a remarkably short shelf-life.
So now that I've unnecessarily pointed out that logic has no place in this movie, I might as well point out that, for a horror film, the chronology of the plot is remarkably well thought out. I like that it starts with a couple elite agents who have lost their memories of what they have been doing and why they find themselves at the places where they wake up. Milla Jovovich plays one of these officers, and the other is supposedly her tactical boyfriend/husband is a life that she can't remember. As the film goes on and the cast find themselves deeper and deeper within this underground lab called The hive (and more and more surrounded by the living dead), their memories gradually come back and they realize their old jobs, motives, etc.

As far as plot, that is very original for a horror film, especially one involving zombies. You think of a movie that is centered around a gas that turns dead people into cannibalistic zombies and you immediately pretty much know how the whole movie is going to go. In Resident Evil, however, the majority of the tension comes not necessarily from the walking dead that are trying to eat the cast, but ultimately more from the awakening memories of certain characters who find themselves to be enemies, turning guns on each other even while the dead pound on the doors trying to sink their teeth into their flesh.
Oh, by the way, that's another thing. Not only does this gas reanimate the dead by utilizing the fictional continuation of bodily function after death, but once turned into zombies, they have the ability to turn others into zombies with the slightest scratch or bite. So not only does this gas turn dead people into cannibal zombies, but cannibal VAMPIRE zombies. If they bite you you turn into one of them. No wonder they came up with the idea of internal strife as a way to create more tension, because the original premise of the effects of this gas are pretty ridiculous. It was created for military use, although I can't imagine a military use for a gas that, when used, would turn entire populations into walking dead, turning entire cities into the disaster that we see in the final shot of the film. Entire continents and, ultimately, the human race would be wiped out with a single use of such a weapon.
Michelle Rodriguez takes on exactly the same role that she played in the ridiculous movie The Fast and the Furious as well as the somewhat less ridiculous S.W.A.T. She always plays a very impressive, very tough role, but her half-lidded tough-girl routine gets real old real quick. Milla Jovovich is just as staggeringly beautiful as ever, yet taking on another role that is fathoms below her ability, and really the rest of the cast kind of blends together, with no one standing out as important or with much of an impressive performance.
Getting back to the story, like I said above, it's actually pretty impressive conceptually, but then again you have to overlook such forehead-slappers as the machine coming to life (embodied, for some reason, in the voice of a little British girl), becoming self-aware, and trying to terminate the people there to shut her down. She apparently has managed to create a gigantic monster out of some sort of organic material the source of which escaped me, as well as whole herds of dogs that seem to have no skin and no other purpose for existing than to attack anything that moves. Cleverly animated, but certainly one of the things that raised a few eyebrows as to where they came from or what was the point.

Recently I've been seeing previews at the movies for a Resident Evil 2, which is most of the reason that I went back and watched this one. Based on the fact that this movie ends with a shot that is also seen in the trailer for part 2, the shot with Alice (Jovovich) emerging from a manhole to find the entire city in a state of complete destruction, the gas having infected the population above ground, I assume that part 2 takes place in an above-ground setting. I also like that the preview starts off looking like an advertisement for some sort of beauty product, which leads me to believe that maybe that will be something that the dead use to cover up their deformities and the fact that they are dead, thus allowing them to sneak up on the living. Although if that happens, it would refute the claim made in this movie that they have no cognitive function other than the primal instinct to feed.
At any rate, a fresh new setting, above-ground, would provide a whole array of new possibilities for a sequel to this movie. In fact, in order to save money, sort of kill two birds with one stone, they might even be able to double their profits by calling the next movie something like `Resident Evil: 28 Days Later.'