Review #128: Resident Evil (2002)

This review was originally written in October 2021.

October 2021 Horror Movie Review #14- Resident Evil (2002)

I saw this movie back when it came out; I also saw the sequel, but I haven't seen any others, nor have I revisited the ones I have seen, until today. I remember being disappointed by this movie originally, as it didn't feel very close to the source material (I've always been a big fan of the video game series) but I'm trying to view the movies as a different beast entirely. We'll see if that continues as I go on with each entry.

I think this movie does a lot of good stuff- the beginning five minutes and the ending five minutes are incredibly evocative, incredibly interesting, and I really like where they were going. Give me an amnesiac who wakes up in a spooky mansion any day, or someone who wakes up on a hospital bed and the entire world around them is destroyed! I even liked the part where the employees in the facility at the beginning were all dealing with the catastrophe happening around them- it was set up well enough and it hit a lot of notes that I enjoy in horror films (The Belko Experiment came to mind as something similar).

However, the problem really comes from the big, soggy middle. The actual meat of the film, with some special ops people going into this underground facility, finding zombies, dealing with traps, etc., was kind of lackluster. Not bad- it delivered pretty much exactly what I think most people would have expected- but it felt like a watered-down version of a lot of the other games and movies I've experienced, and so it just felt like it could have been "more". Overall I really liked the characters- except for the Red Queen, that was dumb and I think the movie would have been better if it was gone entirely- but everyone else was fairly good at the one or two notes they were meant to hit. The CGI of this movie has aged very poorly, but it's an early-2000s action movie based on a game, so I can't have expected much more I guess.

As I said, I was kind of disappointed by this movie and its sequel originally, but it's been going strong for such a long time and with so many entries that I'm interested to see exactly where it goes and why it has so much appeal.

Overall Rating: 6/10 AIs Modeled After A Little British Girl

Coolest Worldbuilding Detail: This underground facility has fake windows projecting a view of the outside, making it look like it's actually a high-rise building in a city. That's a cool detail!