Resident Evil (**)
review by Jon Waterman

Plot:  Milla Jovovich and Michelle Rodriguez go around with a bunch of guys fighting zombies in this adaptation of the popular video game.  There’s some stuff in there about viruses and a computer controlling this underground lab, too, but who cares.  Zombies abound!

I have not played the video game, but I’ve watched some people play it.  From what I’ve seen, the movie was relatively faithful to the game.  There was a lot more mansion stuff in the game and fewer people around to help you kill all the living dead.  I think I can get several people to agree with me when I say that this is one of the best video game movies to come out.  I mean, yes, there was "Super Mario Brothers," but there was also the sarcasm I used just now.  Video games just don’t seem to translate well.  I think they stop caring about what game fans would like to see and put the character in a new situation and hope a franchise pops out.  “Tomb Raider?”  One of the worst movies ever, period.

So, how good is the movie?  Not very.  Despite my apparent raves, I still wasn’t too incredibly impressed.  I just kept thinking “’Night of the Living Dead’ without a message.”  It was a pretty typical horror/action movie.  You have the false scares at the beginning, then you have the somewhat real scares, then you have tons of gore, then you have the potential for a sequel.  Standard cookie-cutter issue.

I wonder what the movie would have been like had George Romero (director of “Night of the Living Dead”) stayed on to direct.  He didn’t do it because of arguments over the script.  Instead, we get Paul W. S. Anderson, who wrote and directed the film.  He’s showing improvement and he’s picking better scripts (he directed “Soldier” and another video game movie, “Mortal Kombat”).

Speaking of the music…it was “rokken,” so to speak.  It was also very annoying and obtrusive and overpowering.  I think they were relying too much on the music when they should have relied on all the gunfire and human flesh eating sound effects.

Despite all this, I was still entertained.  The movie kept my interest all the way through.  The ending kind of dragged, but it was still fun to watch, because video game people know what’s to come.  Seriously, how much can I expect out of this movie to begin with?  Sure it would be nice if the dialogue had more weight.  It would be nice to see some award-worthy performances.  But hey, I got to see zombies.

respond to jon@filmbrats.com