Fantastic science fiction horror

Rating: 5/10 (22 February 2020)

I avoided Resident Evil for years because I rarely enjoy zombie movies and shows. There are far too many of them, and most of the modern ones feel like lousy drama pasted over a generic horror theme to me. I finally decided to watch it since I'm running out of movies to watch, and sci-fi horror is my favorite genre.
Resident Evil may have my favorite intro scene ever. I'm a Marilyn Manson fan, and the song "Umbrella Corp" worked so well with the ominous zoom in. Besides not seeing the movie until now, I had not heard this song either. A+.
The effects were a little dated but well done for the era. Even by today's standards, I still found them enjoyable. I would love to see this movie remastered with new effects.
The acting was on point for this type of movie. Milla Jovovich and Michelle Rodriguez were both great in roles they could have phoned in.
The action scenes were enjoyable, and it was nice to see a movie not plagued with excessive martial arts. Milla and Michelle sold the "spec ops" type characters very well.
The sound and music were also fantastic. My only real complaint here is the frequent and severe "soft to loud" sound switching. I had to run the audio through my phone so I could scale the sound stepping. This wouldn't be a problem in a theater, but I have upstairs neighbors.
Another thing I loved about this movie was the similarity to the Half-Life video games. I have never played a Resident Evil game, but many scenes looked and felt like Half-Life.
I plan to watch at least one more Resident Evil movie I liked this one so much. Science fiction horror, as a genre, is under-represented, and I'd love to see more like this.