Resident Evil (Film Review)

2002 Screen Gems/Constantin Film/New Legacy Film
Written and Directed by: Paul W.S. Anderson
Starring: Milla Jovovich, Michelle Rodriguez, Eric Mabius, James Purefoy, Martin Crewes, and Colin Salmon MPAA Rating: R; Running Time: 100 Minutes
The Nicsperiment Score: 5/10

While it did give us the original Lord of the Rings trilogy and Casino Royale , the popcorn cinema of the 00's reputation is sketchy at best. Major properties were often treated with little regard for quality, as long as the producers thought they'd make a buck. Just take 2002 for example:

Had any hope that George Lucas would right the prequel ship with a second chapter on par with 1980's The Empire Strikes Back? "I don't like sand. It's coarse, and rough, and irritating, and it gets everywhere," says Star Wars: Episode II--Attack of the Clones. Ever wanted to see a badly green-screened Pierce Brosnan surf on a badly CGI'd tidal wave that crashes all over the once proud 40-year James Bond legacy? Die Another Day's your flick! Liked 1997's zippy smash-hit Men in Black? How about a cash-grab sequel that sucks? Remember those awesome Jack Ryan movies from the 90's with Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford? How about a new one with Ben Affleck!

2002 also brought the cinematic adaptation of one of the era's most beloved video game series, Resident Evil. Constantin Film, who owned the filmmaking rights, sought near and far to find the right person for the writing and directing job. For a while, they settled on horror legend, George Romero, but things didn't pan out. After a long search, they settled on...Paul W.S. Anderson.
In a decade known for taking the greatest cinematic villain of all time and turning him into a kneeling, "Nooooo!"-screaming meme, and also for making Spiderman an emo kid who proves his bad boy cred by dancing on chairs, Paul W.S. Anderson gained reputation as a hack. I bought into the anti-hype and avoided all of Anderson's 00's films. Admittedly, in the late 90's, my cousin and I rented Anderson's Event Horizon, believing it was going to be a science fiction adventure film. We slept with the lights on that night, but getting scared/grossed out by that flick wasn't enough to make me want to brave through the bad reviews Anderson's 00's films received.
Something weird happened, though. Despite the bad reviews, Resident Evil made a lot of money. Then they made another one, and it got even worse reviews, and it made even more money. Six Resident Evil films made it to theaters between 2002-2016, most directed by Anderson, all written and produced by Anderson, and all badly reviewed. Still, they not only made money, but accrued fans. Fans who argued over which of the six were best. With that many movies, and that many fans, with that many opinions, surely this first Resident Evil film must have some merit?
After all, the first Resident Evil games don't give too complex a plot to follow. They're about an outbreak caused by a Google-like company called the Umbrella Corporation. Umbrella's been messing around in the lab, and created something called the "T-Virus," which breaks free, and infects the public, turning them into a flesh-eating undead army. That's about it. The games generally feature survival horror gameplay, as players have to conserve resources and battle their way through terrifying environments and wandering undead to survive. Though he could have gone anywhere with that simple premise, Paul W.S. Anderson's Resident Evil asks the viewer one question:

Are you terrified of gunmetal gray?

Anderson sets the majority of Resident Evil in an Umbrella Corporation underground lab, in the moments during, and immediately after the T-Virus accident. The lab is infected, and its AI security system, the Red Queen, takes emergency measures to make sure the virus doesn't get out. The Umbrella Corporation sends in a commando team, who finds and captures an amnesiac woman named Alice in the mansion above the secret entrance to the laboratory. Red Queen? Amnesiac? Mansion above secret entrance? Hey, I told you this was based on a video game.
From this point on, all I really wanted or expected from this movie was good, dumb fun. Resident Evil does at least feature a few moments of dumb fun, like a scene where a security hallway first sends a few waves of single deadly laser beams at a group of soldiers before finishing off the sole survivor with a full pineapple laser grid (why not start with the pineapple grid?!), and another where Alice, suddenly remembering she knows kung fu, karate kicks a zombie dog in the face.
Unfortunately, though, Anderson's limitations at this point as a director begin to shine through pretty early into the film. Action scenes that should be thrilling feel more rote than the exposition scenes. When a small army of dead laboratory workers reanimate, the film somehow becomes more dull. Shots of the commandos facing off against endless lines of zombies are shot and cut together like a documentary on stapling. Worse still is the grayness. Everything in this movie is gray. The walls are gray. The floors are gray. The ceilings are gray. The guns are gray. The zombies and their wardrobes are gray. Every now and then the grayness is cut through by neon blue or green lighting. You'd think, with this kind of color palette, the bloodshed would register more, especially considering this film is rumored to have had to make edits just to get an initial NC-17 rating from the MPAA down to an R. Somehow, though, the violence in this film, outside of a few scattered moments I've mostly already mentioned, is boring and barely registers. For instance, that awesome dog-face-kick shot comes after a scene where a pistol-packing Alice faces off against an entire pack of zombie dogs. Instead of focusing on the action in that dog fight, Anderson just focuses on a close-up of Alice's finger pulling the trigger.
If Resident Evil has one saving grace, though, it's Milla Jovovich as Alice. She's an enigmatic force of nature in this film, and Anderson's camera absolutely loves her...not surprising considering the two began a relationship while filming that led to marriage and children, and continues to this day, 17 years later. I've seen Jovovich in plenty of films, but she brings an energy and magnetism to this one that's on another level, and Anderson puts her front and center of every seen she's a part of. Her presence alone makes this film watchable. She carries the entire movie on her back, and assuming the quality in the next five films doesn't improve, this entire franchise.
To this day, one video game-based film has received a fresh-rating on review conglomeration website, Rotten Tomatoes: this year's Detective Pikachu, with a whopping 68%. Truthfully, the only satisfyingly successful video game adaptation in history is Netflix's Castlevania series. That's it. Sadly, Resident Evil is only another sad footnote in video-game-to-film-adaptation history, and yet another argument that 00's Hollywood valued beloved properties only enough to make money off of them. Now, let's see what's on Disney +.