Living Dead rehash

Rating: Null/10 (2 August 2002)

Sort of a `Night of the Living Dead' for the cybernetic generation, `Resident Evil' features a group of people trapped in a futuristic subterranean biological weapons laboratory who are forced to do battle against a host of mutant, flesh-eating zombies. Based on a popular video game, the movie feels like virtually every other film in which characters are trapped in an enclosed setting where they find themselves being systematically knocked off one by one courtesy of some malevolent, super-human force. (Think `Alien,' think `Invisible Man,' think `Deep Blue Sea,' think `The Thing,' think several dozen other movies). But `Resident Evil' is not content to steal merely from those movies. We are also treated to the slow-motion, suspended-in-midair kickboxing moves from `The Matrix' as well as the slide-and-dice laser beam from `Cube,' which manages to leave body parts galore strewn all over a shiny hallway floor.
Perhaps because the characters all seem to look and sound so much alike, I kept getting the impression that the filmmakers were reusing the same actors in different parts. How else to account for the fact that characters seemed to die in one scene, only to be miraculously resurrected for the next? (And I'm not talking about the zombies here). Or perhaps it is simply because the screenplay allows so few of them to distinguish themselves as individuals that we end up getting that impression. Though the art direction and special effects are state-of-the-art, the script seems woefully undernourished. But then again, this has become far more the rule than the exception in this particular genre of late.
`Resident Evil' actually has a rather intriguing beginning and a very effective (and brave) ending. It's too bad that so much of what comes in between the beginning and the end reeks of second-rate horror movie theatrics. `Resident Evil' is nothing more than George Romero given a hollow, modern sheen.