I recently watched the new Resident Evil film with tempered expectations. Now I can’t say that I’m the greatest RE fan like I used to, seeing as how I stopped playing them all mostly cold turkey after RE6, but anything up to that point, I knew pretty much everything about as far as lore to that point, and to even the most minor of characters to have appeared in the series.
The series kind of went off the rails for me at after that point, as well as just life in general steering me away from video games, but it’s still safe to say that I am generally a fan and supporter of the RE intellectual property as a whole.
As far as live adaptations are concerned, that’s a whole different story, because with the exception of the very first RE film back from like 2001, with Milla Jovovich and WS Anderson, all attempts at creating live-action Resident Evil have been as successful as the Buffalo Bills winning the Super Bowl in the 90s.
All successive RE sequels after the first one sailed down a tremendous downhill slope, as they systematically started shoe-horning canon characters into a world that wasn’t really meant for them, and the end of the series was a really sad and merciful book end that felt like the creators were just trying to get to the finish by any means necessary.
The Netflix series I had some hope for, seeing as how television allows stories to breathe and develop, and it had its moments where I thought things were going to become decent, but the poor character development aside from Lance Reddick’s* portrayal of Albert Wesker were all annoying, and it devolved into another edition of zombie media where you start to stop rooting for the survivors and start rooting for the zombies and monsters to put an end to a bunch of dumbasses who put themselves into the predicament in the first place and deserve their just desserts.
*I can’t help but feel bad for Reddick, seeing as how this was one of the last things he did before his unfortunate departure from the world all too soon, much like Raul Julia ended his career doing the Jean-Claude Van Damme Street Fighter film
Needless to say, when I heard that another Resident Evil film was on the way, my initial reaction was that of eye-rolling and skepticism, based on prior history. Even if it were being directed by Zach Cregger, the fact that the history of people trying to make video game movies is just a battle with a hill too steep to overcome, and I didn’t think that this was going to have much chance either.
Long-winded introduction out of the way now, I will say that Cregger’s Resident Evil actually wasn’t that bad. The pace of the film was kind of like Cregger’s Weapons, where there would be some funny moments to help break the levity of the grand picture of the story, and when it comes to creating tension and moments where you as the viewer catch yourself holding your breath at points, it’s clear what one of Cregger’s strengths is as a director.
The main character is well-written and is a believable portrayal of a guy with his own struggles in life with scraping by while dealing with the very real prospect of having children and feeling unprepared, having the moral compass to want to stop and help a person in a car accident despite how easy it would have been to run away without consequence, to where circumstances force him to act and decide quickly to where he’s utilizing firearms that he’s not even remotely close to qualified to using competently.
But the biggest problem I had with the entire film is the fact that it was called ‘Resident Evil,’ because after watching it, nobody could convince me that Cregger or anyone else involved in the writing and production of this film have ever played a single game in the series. Other than using the name ‘Raccoon City,’ a few choice designs of monsters and some really niche easter eggs for us old-head gamers, there’s absolutely nothing that really connects this film to its title or the RE IP, like at all.
The bread-and-butter bad guys of the series are zombies, and although there are some implied zombies throughout the film, they’re nothing like the RE zombies that are mostly slow, bite and eat humans, and use strength in numbers to swarm and overwhelm survivors. The main antagonists that are lurking around in Cregger’s RE are more like Silent Hill-type creepy monsters that are these amalgamations of limbs and combined body parts, rolling around and stalking survivors, and if I had to get all Comic Book Guy on specifics, it’s like they were dealing with Las Plagas-variants, given that all of the infected pulled the shit where limbs and appendages would split apart and facefuls of tentacles were how they attacked. Not much T-Virus or G-Virus or any of the traditional superviruses that is how more traditional interpretations of the RE IP typically begin.
Umbrella is mentioned like, once, by Paul Walter Hauser of all people, and as much as I love the roles he plays, he’s one of those dudes that immediately makes a situation funny, because he’s usually always some comic relief-type, and I know that’s Cregger’s style, but sometimes there’s not always a time for a chuckle, especially when trying to create tension and convey danger.
The point of all this is that the film is a decent monster/horror/thriller flick, but like the title of this post suggests, my biggest issue with it is that it’s called Resident Evil, because in the grand spectrum of things, it really couldn’t be further from feeling remotely like anything Resident Evil. The title of the film immediately places a couple of expectations of what should be seen in the film, and the film barely scratches the surface on most of them. Mentioning Raccoon City a few times, Umbrella once, and there’s a monster or two that kind of looks like they tried to stay true to their initial designs.
I’m not saying they needed to make a full-ass retelling of the story, complete with Chris, Jill, Barry, Rebecca and Wesker, and go from there, but at the same time, but like I said, nobody’s going to convince me that anyone involved in the creation of this film has actually played the game, much less even checked the fandom.wikia about Resident Evil.
The reason why I do hold the Jovovich/Anderson RE1 film in the regard I do, is because I felt that it did a good job of utilizing elements of the RE IP, while creating their own characters and scenarios, and it felt like Resident Evil, without having to be so hardcore literal about it.
It would be funny if this film goes overseas, and much like how America made Resident Evil out of Bio Hazard in Japan, other countries rename this film into something else, and then it goes gangbusters. Because, if you didn’t know that this film was named Resident Evil, it’s a pretty decent horror thriller film, and it could probably do well if viewers have no preconceived notions that come with a familiar title.
