Mainstream horror...

Rating: 5/10 (15 March 2002)

Just got back from seeing Resident Evil. Based on the fact that the theater was sold out for every showing today (including the 11:40pm I went to) I'd guess that it's definitely going to be a hit. It should be. It has everything someone expecting a movie based on the game should have. You have the house (albeit briefly), the dogs, Umbrella Corporation, the licker thing, the T-Virus and, oh yeah, the zombies. Add on some very nice gratuitous shots of Milla Jovovich completely naked and you've got the whole package.
What doesn't this film have? Let's see... a well written story, well done CGI, tension, scares and, oh yeah, GORE. Yes there's some blood in it but the camera is always cutting away when a scene that would require gore comes up. Maybe they cut all of the gore to get an R rating as I've read but there's so little that I think it would practically be PG if not for Milla's nudity and the work f**k used 1 or 2 times. How they could have turned down George Romero's script and fired him as director and then thought that Paul Anderson was making a better movie I have no idea.
So what we have here is an extremely mainstream version of what Hollywood thinks a horror movie should be. Horror fans will probably be very unimpressed with it. If you've nothing to do and need to kill 90 minutes then there are worse things you could occupy your time with but certainly don't go out of your way to see it.