I would have liked to review this movie on the start of Horror Month, but Sony had other plans, I guess.
You could say I’m a longtime Resident Evil game fan, going all the way back to when the first game was released on the PlayStation 1.
It was the first game to ever scare the living shit out of me, courtesy of that damn zombie dog jumping through the window.
Zach Cregger was asked what his favorite RE game was, listing the RE4 remake and the later games 7 and 8 as his top picks.
For me, it was always Resident Evil 2 and 3. I never played the remakes though. The only Resident Evil game I never played was Code: Veronica, I think because it was a Sega Dreamcast original. Funny thing about Dreamcast, there was no copyright protection, so you could just copy the disks or download the ROMs, which back in the day were hidden on porn sites.
It’s funny, because once at my mom’s office I was trying to print out the links for them, but it also printed out the porn, try explaining that you only wanted to download games and not look at boobies.
Thankfully, we are getting a remake of Code: Veronica soon and I can download as much porn as I want!
The Resident Evil movies, as there are many…
I saw the original in theaters, and I admit I was a bit disappointed it didn’t feature any of the RE characters. And then the films started introducing RE characters in the sequels and I regret ever feeling that way.
Months before this new movie came out, gatekeeping fake fanboys have been railing again this movie, hating it before there was even a trailer.
And of course when they found out it was set in the modern day, not the 90’s and there’s snow, they lost their minds. Snow?!! There can’t be snow!!!
And maybe I’d feel the same if 1, we hadn’t already gotten so many terrible Resident Evil movies and 2, if I was still 12 years old.
After watching this new Resident Evil film, I watched the last one we got, Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City. I don’t think I ever finished it since it was so bad, so I wanted to go back and see how unwatchable it really was.
And yeah, it’s pretty terrible. I was seeing a lot of fanboys defending it over the new film, stating how much more faithful it was towards the games.
For one, they crammed two games together 1 and 2, none of the actors playing the characters are right at all. It was also a COVID movie, so instead of a city, it was more like a small town with like 5 people in it.
They introduce this deformed character who pops up from time to time to help, but just vanishes from the movie, never explaining her at all.
The dialogue was also dreadful, the award for worst line delivery goes to the truck driver at the start of the film.
Anyway, it’s a terrible movie, let the fanboys have it if they want, I’m sticking with an actual good movie. Which leads us finally into the review for Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil.
If you’re worried about spoilers, I’ll let you know right off the bat this film is incredible. And you should go out to see it. If you watch at least one horror movie in October, make this it.
I will be going into spoilers because mainly what folks have an issue with is that ending.
But first let’s talk about my vintage Resident Evil 2 t-shirt!
I got this back in 1998, and wanted to wear it for when I go see the new movie. However, with age, this thing is very old smelling and washing it would probably be a bad idea.
Plus all the cool artwork is on the back. But I went on eBay, just out of curiosity, and wow this thing is selling for absurd prices. The lowest being $400 and the highest being over $900.
Maybe it’s inflated because of the new movie coming out, but still.
Okay, enough about my musty old shirt. Let’s get into why this is the best Resident Evil film.
What Zach Cregger did was create a deconstructed videogame movie adaptation, choosing not to adapt any one story from the games, but rather give the movie the experience of what it feels like to play one.
But it isn’t a Resident Evil game because Leon or any of the other established characters isn’t in it! Why does that matter? Why do we feel like we need characters from previous games to make it a Resident Evil game? Resident Evil 9 would honestly be better if Leon wasn’t in it in my opinion.
Hell, RE7 doesn’t reveal how it’s even connected to the other games until the last half of it. And again, this is considered one of the best in the franchise.
Why can a game that does something new not get the same respect or leeway as the movie? Complaining that it’s in name only with only small references to the games, bitch, are the other Resident Evil games in name only as well because they all feature the same typewriter, the health plant, the green shotgun shells… and would you prefer it if those things weren’t in the movie at all? Like what are you complaining about?
Yeah, let’s make the same movie 4 times in a row!
But none of the monsters from the games are in this! What do you want, another film adaptation with yet another Licker in it? Zombies are in this, zombie dogs are in this… Christ, RE7 didn’t have any of that shit, just mold people.
Let’s go down the checklist for what we usually find in a RE game and how the movie fares.
New main character, check.
An unkillable monster hounding our lead? Check.
A linear path we/our character has to follow? Check.
Annoying locks blocking our way? Check.
Zombies? Check.
Mutated creatures that aren’t explained. Check!
New weapons found in gun cases? Check.
Shooting with terrible accuracy because controls suck? Big check.
The list goes on. This isn’t about retelling the same damn story with the same damn characters. Think of it more like the notes we pick up along the way about some survivor who got infected and becomes the boss we have to fight in the end.
Not to get too into spoilers so early, but that is essentially what this story is, it’s the backstory of the Tyrant or Nemesis or Mr. X. Actually, based off the design at the end, he is William Birkin, a character introduced in the Resident Evil 2 game. The character isn’t the same, but what he turns into is.
Before we get into any of that, let us first talk about the humor, with people comparing this to Evil Dead 2. The Resident Evil games never had much humor to them, just moments that come off as silly or those cornball awkward lines with the occasional quip by Leon, but I wouldn’t say humor is something anyone would associate with the franchise. The line, “you almost became a Jill Sandwich”, will live on in infamy.
The Paul W.S. Anderson films were all unintentionally hilarious. This time the humor is very intentional and is genuinely funny. It does it in a way that it doesn’t take away from the scary situations our character is constantly finding himself in.
This film at several points had me jumping out of my damn seat, having me look around to see if anyone in the theater noticed.
The film is funny, yes, but it is still filled with tension, not knowing what will happen next.
For example, when our main character Bryan has to take a shortcut into the infant ward at the hospital that’s now infected with the T virus.
It’s a pretty horrific scene, with babies mutated in their cribs, nurse sucked up into the gross mass on the walls and ceiling. This is a scene that comes a bit later into the film, so by now we’ve already witnessed a ton of really messed up things. But there’s always more sights to show you as Pinhead from Hellraiser would say.
Another complaint I see is they think the characters all do dumb things. Yeah, that’s the point. And there are consequences for those dumb things.
Drive in the snow without chains on your tires, you lose control of your car and hit a woman, resulting in him being hounded by her all night.
Reach out to help an infected little girl, get bitten, honk your horn, get eaten, get out of the car to save a civilian, get ripped in half.
There were consequences for our lead and everyone around him for every dumb thing they do.
Is Army of Darkness a bad movie because of how dumb Ash is? He didn’t read the incantation right, terrible movie, 0/10.
Bryan, our main character, is established first thing to be not necessarily dumb, just a, “not my problem” type of guy, a not my circus, not my monkeys deal.
He does courier work delivering medical packages. He’s also dealing with the fact his girlfriend might be pregnant. During his late shift, he gets one more package, top priority headed to Raccoon City.
On the way there, his car loses control and hits a woman who walks out into the road. He helps her to the car and speeds off to go to the hospital he was headed to anyway.
But he gets pulled over by a cop, with him taking the injured woman, leading his car to crash.
All of this is fantastic by the way, the pacing is relentless, never letting up.
Bryan checks on the cop, he’s dead but the woman is missing. She reappears wanting to either kiss Bryan or rip his face off, I’m not sure which. Honestly, it kind of comes across as both.
Being someone who has never fired a gun before, not only does he shoot the zombie woman, but his car as well.
Needing to find help, he makes his way towards the farm off in the distance.
I love this scene, as we just get this quiet calm of this eeriness of the farm, then a dog darts after him. This eventually leads to one of the biggest jump scares that got me. I won’t spoil it, but it was a twofer.
Once inside, Bryan finds a shotgun and ammo upstairs. This is when he notices the zombie woman still pursuing him. And that introduces the biggest scare in the whole movie.
This scare got me so good, that if I was holding popcorn, it would be on the floor.
After Bryan takes out two zombies, a super gross WTF moment happens, the bodies start to connect to one another.
Armed with a shotgun and keys to the truck out front, Bryan is once again faced with yet another issue, a locked gate. If you’ve played the games, you know this is a standard trope in those games, where you then have to search around to find the right key.
After ramming the fence and damaging the truck, Bryan is left having to go on foot, but then runs into another obstacle, this time a dark tunnel that you just know something terrible is waiting for him.
The only way through however is by entering this RV, where he finds a young girl infected as her foot has wrapped around the toilet.
This leads to Bryan getting bit and having to blow the head off a kid. What I like about these zombies, or the infection and how it works is it seems to take over the body, but leaves some parts of you mentally, almost trapped inside yourself as you lose control. That’s very creepy.
After making his way through the tunnel, Bryan gets rescued by the head scientist in charge of the lab experimenting with the T virus, a biological weapon that turns people into weapons.
Bryan is actually carrying half of the serum they need to make the antidote. The mission now is still the same, get this package to the hospital so the group of scientists there at the top of it can concoct this antidote.
As they make their way into a city in the middle of an outbreak, they get sidetracked, with the security officer stopping to help a civilian being chased after by a horde of zombies.
As she ventures further away from the car and walks out of sight, Bryan and the head scientist Paul, played wonderfully by Paul Walter Hauser debate whether to leave her. But seeing as she has the keys with her, they now have to choose who goes out there.
Bryan agrees to go, but not before finding an MP5, a classic RE gun found in every game. He ventures out, finding what is left of her torso, instead of attempting to get the keys, he just says fuck it and goes back to the car, which Paul has been honking at him to hurry up, only to find that zombie woman, who has mutated, has returned and drags him off down an alley.
Now on foot, being pursued once again, Bryan hops down into the sewers, another staple for Resident Evil games with zombie rats, another element from the games. Though it also features a very grotesque obese man just sitting there, burping like me after I eat too much pizza.
After blasting a bunch of zombie rats, Bryan makes it to the hospital, only to face yet another lock, but this time he manages to shoot it, showcasing the terrible aim players usually have with this type of thing.
After breaking into the underground garage, all hope seems lost when the elevators don’t work, breaking down in a phone message to his girlfriend.
Watching him is one of the scientists, talking to him through an intercom.
They beg for him to trek up the stairs to the 24th floor, as someone injured and slowly becoming more and more infected, this is an impossible task.
So instead of using the stairs which would be slower but safer, he switches to the elevators where he is instantly met with a zombie puking acid on him.
And of course the mutated zombie woman is not far behind, darting up the elevator shaft.
With some quick thinking, Bryan just uses the vomit zombie as a weapon to puke all over the zombie woman, buying him enough time to make a shortcut through the infant ward.
When Bryan finally makes it to the top with the scientists, they immediately start working on the cure, only to have Bryan transform in front of them, ripping through them one after the other, trying to get the cure.
As for the ending, I for one really enjoyed it as it reveals that we’ve been following the origins of a boss from the games, which I spoiled earlier. That’s a fun reveal that I didn’t see coming, but I can see why some might be upset about it, as it does just end, seemingly unceremoniously.
But it works better when you look at it like this wasn’t an ending, but the start of something.
And that’s Resident Evil, a super fun, thrilling, goretastic, funny movie. It might not be what the fanboys wanted, with a plotline from one of the games, instead giving us the fundamental core game formula that every Resident Evil game follows.
The fact of the matter is, fandom, especially videogame fandom has started to rot. This adaptation was always going to be met with hate, because fanboys, especially gatekeeping fanboys are horrible, ruining nearly everything they think they are entitled to.
Resident Evil gets a big SEE IT!
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