Resident Evil shambles its way back to the screen. The franchise itself is a zombie at this point. It was born in 2002 when Paul W. S. Anderson and Milla Jovovich teamed up to give audiences a Matrix-inspired take on the video game.
The movie proved moderately popular and spawned six sequels. Someone who has watched them all can probably pinpoint the exact moment the franchise died yet staggered on as a reanimated corpse in search of brains to numb.
I quit after Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004). I enjoyed most of the games (Resident Evil IV is one of my all-time favorite video games). Milla is likeable. She knows her lane and Jean-Claude-Van-Dammes it up in her own B-movie kind of way.
The movies, however, lost me as they became wackier. I am not the only one. The last entry, Resident Evil: Welcome to Racoon City (2021), came and went like Jai Courtney’s time as a leading man.
Yet, hope springs eternal that life can be injected into the franchise once more with Zach Cregger hopping on board to give us his interpretation of Resident Evil. Cregger built up a sizeable amount of goodwill with Barbarian and Weapons.
Cregger’s foray into Resident Evil was initially met with consternation from the fanboys. They were not happy his take was not a direct adaption and worried about a departure from lore and timelines (as if the Milla films are so amazing in this regard). They became vocal enough that Cregger had to go on an apology tour to soothe the angst.
Now the film is here. Is it worth the hubbub? I will brush up against some minor spoilers…
Resident Evil
The latest Resident Evil takes a unique approach. Instead of trotting out familiar characters like Chris and Claire Redfield, Jill Valentine, Leon Kennedy and Albert Wesker, the movie asks, “What if a regular joe stumbled into a Resident Evil scenario?”
Said regular joe is portrayed by Austin Abrams. Abrams also appeared in Cregger’s Weapons (and will soon be swallowed by a whale in Whalefall).
Does that make him Cregger’s muse? Maybe. Abrams is fun as a character in way over his head in Resident Evil. He is a medical courier who must deliver an important package to a laboratory in the middle of a zombie/mutant outbreak. The best way to describe the performance is Abrams channels a cursing Marty McFly, who battles monsters with guns and ineptitude.
For all practical purposes, Abrams is the only character of consequence. Everyone else comes and goes like Jai Courtney’s time as a leading man.
Permanent Resident Evil
Despite not featuring any Resident Evil characters, Cregger finds time to throw in lot of references to Resident Evil gameplay. Abrams faces locks, blocked pathways, solves a mini puzzle of sorts and even passes some ferns.
The creatures encountered also harken back to various enemies that populate the games. Abrams must even manage ammo and scrounge for upgrades while dealing with them.
All of this is delivered with a surprising amount of amusement on Cregger’s part. I did not expect the film to contain so much comedy. No laugh-out-loud moments happen, but an occasional sensible chuckle may occur.
Does the humor undermine the horror? Yeah, probably. No moment stands out as scary. Resident Evil takes more of a thriller approach to things. Throw a man into a situation that is all wrong-place/wrong-time and watch him navigate it.
Along with a sense of horror being lost, the plot is misplaced, as well. Not much story exists. Man attempts to get from point A to point B. A halfhearted attempt at grounding Abrams in humanity is made with phone calls to a pregnant girlfriend, but they are hard to take seriously. One is clearly cribbed from Die Hard.
The pregnant girlfriend feels like an element Cregger threw in to combine with a brief section in a nightmarish maternity ward. Then he can point to those things and say the film means something on some sort of subtext level. But not really.
Tenant Evil
Checking out Boba’s review, I mostly agree with him up to the climax of Resident Evil. I was having fun, but then the ending happened. I genuinely disliked the end to the point where it knocked the movie down a full star (maybe even a little more).
Resident Evil is already anorexic on plot and runtime, moving at a brisk 90 minutes. At one point, I checked my watch and was surprised to see an hour had passed. On one hand, that is good. The proceedings kept my attention. On the other hand, no real progress had been made in that hour from a plot standpoint.
The viewer’s entire investment in the film is based on watching Abram’s character have his little journey to Mordor, so to speak. Once he gets there, it’s not satisfying.
From what I’ve read of Cregger’s writing process, he likes to surprise himself. Maybe his ending pleasantly surprised him, and maybe some people will consider it a subversion of expectations, but it sent me out of the theater disappointed. This is especially frustrating because Cregger nailed the end of Weapons.
Seeing Resident Evil release this weekend filled me with a singular thought: why isn’t this coming out at Halloween?
After seeing it, my guess is the accountants didn’t believe people would exit the theater and give it a word-of-mouth boost due to the ending. Plus, they’d have another horror flick to deal with at Halloween: Clayface. So, they’re shooting their shot now.
Does Resident Evil hit the target? It’s like Abrams’s marksmanship in the movie. He misses most of his shots, but he fires enough rounds to eventually hit something.
Resident Evil will end up divisive like He-Man. Some will enjoy it. Some won’t. Like Jai Courtney’s career as a leading man…
