Could this movie have been better I wonder?

Rating: 6/10 (20 October 2005)

An average 5.7? Could this movie have been better I wonder? Well it is though. The challenge is that the movie is both a sequel and an adaptation of a video game. The latter actually goes with a note: I suspect RE to be an sort of adaptation of night/dawn/day of the living dead. This being said I laid bare one of main weak points: human flesh eating zombies. They are so run-of-the-mill you need a good twist to make the audience raise an eye lid. However, the movie hardly makes an effort to do so.
But how do those other guys do it? Romero uses gross shock effects with twisted humor in his (living) dead movies. Neither of these are abundance in this movie. Carpenter uses desperation and a feeling of weakness and insecurity(the thing). These are only vaguely used. Some stories rest on the sadness in losing people(Stephen king: Salem's lot). Well on rare occasion we see people being interested in the fate of others. (Who is that guy over there being eaten alive? Oh him, just one of my fellow troopers.) Some use a joyful almost childish humor (lost boys, fearless vampire killers). But this is not to be seen here. Some use the clean inhuman chilliness of advance science (Ash(the robot) and Mother(ship's computer) in Alien, HAL2000(ships computer again) in Space 2001). We are missing that here too. It looks to me that almost that the writer(s) and director shy away of going one step further. To make the movie stand out, to make it a little bit more interesting. The result is a fast paced action movie with though people and lot's of explosions and guns, zombies, some other monsters and evil scientists. And it's not strange to do so: this way you aim at the most people and it's the safest bet on a wide sale.
Could the movie have been better? I imagine it could have been, with more sick humor, and more chilliness and more feeling. A slight change of the script. It might have resulted in a 7 and from the IMDb audience that is quite lot.
Owen