Resident Evil Movie Review – Biohazardish
“Listen to me. I want to know who you people are. And I want to know what’s going on here. Now.” Hello, worldwide web. I’m Decker Shado, the internet personality with the best hair. And welcome to week two of THE SUMMER OF MILLA JOVOVICH! And as most of you out there could have guessed, this is almost a way to get away with doing a summer of Resident Evil. As the Paul W.S. Anderson Resident Evil movie series has a whole lot of Milla Jovovich in it. The tales of how these movies came to be is almost a
movie in itself. As famously, George Romero penned the script for the first movie, but it was so much like the games that Capcom legit believed people would not buy the game if they could just watch the movie. So Paul, W.S. Anderson, a big fan of the Games, already had made a script on his own for a ‘Not Resident Evil’ film as a homage, which then got turned into a Resident Evil film when Romero was shown the door and Anderson got picked up for the project. With that came calls for an actress, which was a tougher
ask than you would think. With all the violence and blood and nudity, which narrowed down the prospects to Milla Jovovich. Also, Paul W.S. Anderson liked her performance, so much he married the
something? Having a hard time pinning it down, Amnesia and all. Keep in mind the latest Resident Evil game to have come out when this movie was made was Code Veronica. But nevertheless, let’s take a look at Resident Evil in name only and see if it’s at least an entertaining enough flick in its own right. Setting things up, a narrator explains. Hey, Heard of Umbrella? Yeah. Well, they’re like an evil version of Microsoft. Like more evil, like Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Google, Sony, Tencent, BP, evil. Also, they make biological weapons, viral agents crafted in secret in an
underground lab. And at least they know how to do it in style. If I got to live underground, mixing chemicals into doomsday juice, I want them to put on these tunes while I’m doing it. Boxing up the green and blue. This individual decides to toss a blue vial back into the room, easily snapping the incredibly fragile glass, releasing the contents into the air to escape into the clean room’s ventilation system. Wait, what the hell? Point is, while the tosser has a chance to escape, before long, the fumes are detected and everything begins locking down. The
employees all figure it’s just some silly fire drill. But the security system isn’t taking any chances. Locking people in their labs before flooding them with water and, of course, releasing a handy dandy nerve gas to kill the everloving fuck out of anyone and everyone in the facility. Spare those in the elevators. They get taken out with a bit more oomph. “Pull me back inside! PULL ME BACK INSIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII-!” And the body count rises. Quite literally, this time. This transitions over to the leading lady, a butt-ass naked Milla Jovovich. She’s even more confused about this situation than
we are. First, checking who she is. Alice, wondering where she got that scar and exploring her surroundings. Get this wardrobe figured out at least, and finds a note. Which she determines was written by someone else utilizing the Total Recall test. She’s also got a drawer full of guns. So at least all my dreams are coming true. Either way, putting on her supplied outfit, she discovers that she is married. But there is someone nearby. Except there is no one nearby until a sudden gust of wind terrifies her. Then there is someone nearby grabbing her. But not
so fast. For there are a whole bunch of more somebodies nearby, grabbing him, asking her for a report. She’s like, What the fuck? And they all figure she’s probably got amnesia. The other guy, though, a police officer. Matthew Addison, played by Eric Mabius, “Should I secure him here?” “No. We take him with us.” Just because they have no reason to let him live, that’s no reason not to let him live so just handcuff him up and take him down into an adventure, into the unknown. And then you can kill him. Because at that point he’ll
have seen way too much. Our trigger happy tactician is Rain, played by Michelle Rodriguez. The group’s leader would be ‘One,’ James Shade, played by Colin Salmon. They’re heading in to The Hive, so, pass a secret door down the dank tunnels and into the handy dandy railcar. Rain gets the power on and Kaplan, played by Martin Crewes, drives it down to the hive, but when checking around, one door seems stuck. So J.D., played by Pasquale Aleardi uses little elbow grease to reveal another character whom Alice recognizes as her husband, Spence, played by James Purefoy. Talk about
being married to your job. Spence can’t explain anything either because he too has amnesia. Now, that’s all dark and mysterious and what have you. But Alice would kind of like a little exposition at some point in this movie. Not to worry. While they work on cracking the door, James can lay it all out. They work for Umbrella. The mansion is an emergency entrance to their secret lab. The Hive. Alice and Spence are fake married as a cover for the mansion. But the AI controlled security all covers that and knocked them out with nerve gas, which
also just so happens to cause amnesia. “For how long?” “Subjective. An hour. A day. Week.” I’m guessing it’s going to last until somewhere around act three. As they head inside, they explain the AI, the Red Queen is effectively mother brain in charge of everything because giving Chat GPT authority over life and death couldn’t possibly be a ridiculously stupid idea. On a totally unrelated note, Red Queen just happened to decide to murder absolutely everyone in the hive. “Why did she do it?” “That, we don’t know.” It’s because the higher ups couldn’t be arsed to hire an
actual security team. So they said Fuck it, let the algorithm do it. Anyway, Spence hands Alice a leather jacket to help complete her ensemble, and then it’s down to dining hall B. But it seems the map’s labels may not be as accurate as they’ve been led to believe, considering the huge evil experiment capsule’s all over the place. Oh well, Rain and J.D. are tasked with keeping the cuffed cop contained close to the contraband, while the rest of them press on to the Red Queen’s Chamber. Almost there, just got to get through this unassuming hallway. “What
is that?” “That’s what’s going to shut the queen down. Delivers a massive electrical charge, scrambles the mainframe and forces it to reboot.” shuts it down. Good. Good. One more question. This AI that controls everything, does it happen to have any microphones kicking around? Because the doors suddenly seal shut again, trapping James as well as three miscellaneous characters within! Before they know it, suddenly lasers attack! Chopping off the fingers of one of them and the head of another. Round two cuts the two others in half. But James is too quick for it. Will his plot amor
hold out? “Shit.” Not once the damn thing turns into a laser woodchipper. Dicing him to bits where he stands. So that could have gone better. But on the plus side, Kaplan has managed to get the doors open again. Now just pick the chunks of commanding officer off the payload and deal with the Red Queen, played by Michaela Dicker. “You’re all going to die down here.” Super smart A.I., and it can’t even recognize Milla Jovovich? So they engage Operation turn it off and turn it back on again, which restores power to varying systems, unlocking doors and
what have you. Kaplan also swipes the Red Queen’s board so she can’t come back online. But back with the other group they hear shuffling about. Going to investigate, Rain discovers what she believes to be a survivor. “It’s okay. We’re here to help. Don’t worry. You seem to be in some serious AAGH!” But it turns out to be a zombie. Finally, we’re like 40 minutes in and these guys have been dead for 6 hours. In the scuffle, Rain loses the keys to the cuffs, but they don’t notice. As the mad woman continues to advance up until
Rain blows her away with an MP-5! But as soon as she’s out of frame, they lose track of her. In all the confusion, Matt manages a squat down and scoop up the keys unnoticed. There are more important things to worry about right now anyway, such as the absolute horde of zombies closing in on their position. So we get that classic Resident Evil horror style of well-armed badasses firing wildly in all directions, culminating in an explosion, but one that kicks a bit of sense into Alice, remembering that she was working with an outsider. Never mind that
for now, more action scene! The team kicks all the asses and takes all the names desperately trying to get a door open to escape. Matt also manages to free himself from the cuffs in the confusion, which nobody seems to notice going forward. And eventually J.D. punches the code in the door, “See how easy that was?” “SHIT!” “J.D. no!” Revealing an even denser horde of zombies on the other side. It’s like finally breaking that YouTube habit only to wind up on TikTok. So J.D. is taken and eaten alive, but even worse. Yeah, I know. Harping on
bad CGI from early 2000s movies is nothing new, but dear God. Thus Alice and Matt are separated from the group, but then Alice loses track of Matt as well. Kaplan, Rain and Spence, on the other hand, are trapped right outside the Red Queen’s lair, confused about their sudden zombie problem. “Why didn’t we see them on the way in?” “When you cut the power, you unlocked the doors. You let them out.” Yeah, he also diced up the rest of the team earlier, but fortunately someone else seems to have come and cleaned all that up in the
interim. So the current goal is.. uh.. something. But anyway, Alice is milling about, butt is suddenly attacked by a zombie dog! Escaping that, she is attacked by a zombie! Who failed to take into account that she is in fact. Milla Jovovich. Taking the zombie’s gun, she soon finds herself surrounded by half a dozen zombie dogs, which she deftly takes out one by one. before Jovovich powers, activate! She wall run kicks the last one into submission. Matt, on the other hand, has an actual investigation he’s trying to dig up information for. So as he checks through
the files, he is suddenly approached by another zombie whom he recognizes. So she gets the jump on him and Alice has to be the one to crack it’s skull open with a paperweight. “I can help you get the virus. I have access to security codes, surveillance plans, the works.” “But?” “But there’s going to be a price.” “Name it.” Like and subscirbe. It helps. And Alice recognizes her too. She was her contact on the outside. On the inside. They… They both worked for umbrella at the same facility. But she was also Matt’s Sister Lisa, played by
Heike Makatsch. They were going to expose just what research umbrella was up to. “What kind of research? “The illegal kind. Genetic. Viral.” Okay. Yeah, sure, Mr. Tinfoil hat. You know, the zombies were probably the result of 5G radiation coming out of your cell phone. You ever think about that? Lisa was going to smuggle out some t virus, which sounds like an even worse idea, but it’s not like things are going great, right this red hot minute. Oh, well, got to regroup. So they are suddenly running away from zombies, returning to the Red Queen’s hallway. They
realize they’re surrounded by zombies. And it just so happens that when they opened the blast doors, it had a time limit. So they got like an hour before they’re all trapped anyway. “Containing the incident is the only failsafe plan they had against possible contamination.” Well that, and fucking killing everybody and causing water damage. Like a lot of water damage. But Alice isn’t going to just sit here and die. So she takes charge, grabbing the red Queen’s board to power her back on to help them. But Kaplan keeps a literal kill switch on hand just in
case. The Red Queen boots back up to explain some more things. The zombies? Yeah, that’s the work of the T virus revives dead people, but mental facilities are less than optimal. “They are driven by the basest of impulses, the most basic needs.” “Which is?” “The need to feed.” Well, shit, you hit it enough anyone’s going to get like that sometimes. But I don’t go for my neighbor’s throat. I just order a pizza. But they aren’t fully immortal. You got to shoot him in the head. Also, she had to kill abso fucking lutely everybody because she
can’t let the t virus escape. On that note, they tell her that she’s going to help them escape or they fry her circuits. So the Red Queen provides a new path. not through the doors full of zombies, but down into the sewers, full of zombies. So they must run everyone except for Alice, of course, who can count on her Jovovich powers to keep her safe. As her hair gets wetter, she gets stronger. J.D. is also down here, meaning that Rain gets bitten again. But as they make their final push to escape the pipes collapse, leaving
Kaplan in the zombie horde, Rain can’t focus to make a shot. But don’t worry, Jovovich power to the rescue. But still he’s way out there with the zombies and they can’t really do much about it. So he tells them to leave him. “No.” “You can’t kill all of them.” Come on, have you seen this woman? Throw her down there and in 10 seconds she’s going to spinning bird kick the lot of them. Begrudgingly, they leave him behind and he slips out of frame For the time being. Thus the group is down to Alice, Spence, Rain
and Matt. Rain aint’ looking so hot, but that’s just the opportunity for Alice to remember the evil Umbrella Corp did animal testing as well! Oh, but the testing was for the antivirus. Blue is the T virus and green is the T minus! “There’s a cure.” Okay, So. So there is a cure. But the super smart A.I. in control of everything decided the best course of action was to just lock everybody inside and murder them. Is this some kind of Canadian health care cost effective bullshit? Alice remembers where they kept the cure. But when she goes
to grab some, it’s all gone. But this location also jogs Spence’s memory. While Alice secretly made an attempt to expose Umbrella, he was listening in with a shotgun mic we’re pretending is a telescopic mic, Then he wrote a note, which strangely enough, also doesn’t match the handwriting from that note earlier. And it was he who stole the virus and the antivirus before setting the virus free inside the hive, then moving to escape. Realizing he was the bad guy all along, he grabs the gun and it’s villain rant time. Spence intends to sell the virus, getting
asstons of money so he and Alice could live it up. Being super rich! “Is that how you thought all my dreams were gonna come true?” Oh wow. My fake husband is going to help me move into an even bigger mansion. Turns out Spence stashed the antivirus on the train before the gas knocked him out and made him suddenly forgetful. And we can just blame the gas for his lack of spatial awareness While we’re at it, a zombie takes a bite out of him, so he shoots it. But he’s not so sure about shooting Alice. Her
hair is soaking wet. The Jovovich powers would probably ricochet the bullets right back to him, so he just locks them in there and moves to escape. But not so fast for the Red Queen is still here and has helped guide one of those handy dandy lickers over to murder the fuck out of him. “What the fuck is that?” I know The Tyrant was such a big iconic monster of the original Resident Evil game. And in the movie, we get a licker. Yay! “Now that it has fed on fresh DNA, it will mutate.” Oh, never mind
a super licker. At one point or another, every movie monster turns into a Pokemon. Alice figures out that the Red Queen didn’t mention it because it was intended for the whole group. After all, Rain’s infected and so far along, it’s not even guaranteed that the antidote will even work right. They can’t get out of there without the access code. But the Red Queen refuses to give it unless they kill Rain! Faced with no other choice, Alice destroys the monitor and the door swings open just fine as Kaplan has come back into frame to let them
know he fried the AI bitch. So they must run back to the train where Spence reanimated just long enough for Alice to sign those divorce papers and grab the antidote, giving Rain her dose. Everything looks like it’s going to be okay, “What the hell’s going on back there?” except they forgot along the way to have that epic final confrontation. So it’s time for the showdown. First things first. Super licker kills the shit out of Kaplan. But remember this thing ate Spence and the guy’s DNA mutated it. Therefore, it made the rookie mistake of trying to
attack Milla Jovovich while her hair is completely wet. So she shoots its brains Then Matt whacks it with some pipes, but it snaps Alice with its tongue. So she impales the tongue with some pipes. But what’s this? Rain is now zombie Rain and Matt must kill her, which causes her to whack into the door button, dropping the super licker down on the tracks to fry in electrical fire. Thus they escape. But yeah, slight problem. Everybody fucking died. And that’s kind of depressing. Don’t worry. Matt knows just what Alice needs to cheer her up. Sequel Bait!
Collapsing in pain, the mansion is besieged by biohazard boys who drop the most obvious hint ever put to film. “He’s mutating. I want him in the Nemesis program.” Oh gee, I wonder if we’re going to see Nemesis in the next one. Alice is also captured and knocked out. When she awakens, she finds herself in some weird medical observation room, but it would appear there is no one there to do any observing. Oh, well, Alice is the master of unlocking using a needle to pick a card reader. I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works. But
indeed, no one around whatsoever as she walks the hallways. That’s because, hey, the T virus? Well, it got out. Very out. And like the video game, the second Resident Evil movie has the whole of Raccoon City completely compromised. Which is actually more positive than the original ending was planned to be as Alice in that version of events, didn’t have a shotgun or clothes, just death and desolation as far as the eye could see. But anyway, that was Resident Evil and that and that wasn’t Resident Evil. But it’s been over 20 years. I can’t stay mad
at it forever. The original Resident Evil movie is one of those examples of films that rather than giving us an adaptation of a video game story, just do whatever the hell and tack some of the game’s themes on top of it. Which was actually surprising even for the time, as Anderson had previously directed the original Mortal Kombat movie, which was a video game adaptation, praised for being one of the few that both stuck to the lore and was actually a good movie. still despite the fact that this Resident Evil is a vastly different interpretation, it
was still crafted with an appreciation of the source material at its heart, and that helps keep it from being just some forgettable slog like a lot of these projects can end up. You know what I mean? Adaptation from people who don’t play or respect the source material, fanfiction by people who aren’t fans. So what is Resident Evil? It’s a zombie flick with an evil pharmaceutical corporation that pits a small group of special forces against the undead and biological monstrosities. That kind of ticks the boxes even if, oh, so many of the details just go out
the window. But at the heart of it all is Milla Jovovich and her portrayal of Alice. Don’t ask me how she compares to her videogame counterpart. There isn’t one. Alice exists merely as a vessel for Milla to occupy and proceed to be bad ass. That’s mostly Milla’s fault, though, as allegedly Alice was originally supposed to be more dependent. But they hired Milla Jovovich for the role. At the end of the day, Resident Evil is at its heart a completely different action zombie flick. but still inspired by Resident Evil and fun enough for what it is.
Not fantastic cinema, but not the abhorrent, disrespectful abomination I remember it as, coming in at three psychotic A.I. constructs out of five, and for better or worse, this somehow got like five sequels. Now you realize why I needed an entire summer for this. Thank you all for watching. I have been Decker Shado. And remember, don’t put people’s lives in the hands of a AI that never works out. Not not just in movies in reality as well. “Your boyfriend’s a real asshole.” Okay. So another review I’ve done of a movie that’s based on a video game,
there’s well, no, that that wasn’t a real video game. That wasn’t real video game. Okay, fuck it. Skinned Deep. There’s a Super Nintendo in there somewhere. You can check that one out or the algorithmically selected recommended video. Let’s see if A.I.’s good at it’s job today.
