Resident Evil (Superbit Collection)

Rating:
Summary: I'd say it's overlooked...
Review: This may be coming from a person who actually enjoyed Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (there seem to be so few of us), but I enjoyed this movie a great deal. Personally, I think the games are fun, but a bit too intense for my wussy self - so maybe the movie is toned down a notch on the fear factor - but I thought the story was clever, the actors brilliant, and the environment to die for, pardon the pun. Milla Jovovich did a great job emulating main character Alice (NOT Jill Valentine, as Paul Anderson meant to branch a bit from the games, while purposely creating a very similar character). She has the badass qualities that we love about heroines. Michelle Rodriguez comes through as well as Rain, a seemingly fearless (as one may deduce from her actions) soldier working for the Umbrella Corporation (ring a bell?).

The main plot occurs shortly before the horrific events of the first game - a prequel if you will. A deadly virus has been unleashed in the Umbrella Corporation's underground facility. The Red Queen (a computerized lifeform that maintains the complex) sacrifices all the employees in the building (well, they won't have to worry about that raise) for safety procedures (ironic, ain't it?). Alice resides in a mansion connecting to the complex, but Umbrella has temporarily taken her memory. She is taken by Umbrella soldiers (I know this is confusing) to help them disable the Red Queen (I've only seen this movie once so bear with me...) - eventually, the soldiers are systematically eliminated (I love the laser scene) and our heroes confront...just guess...ZOMBIES! Now they must escape from Umbrella in a limited amount of time, find the cure for this virus, and restore peace to Raccoon City. But it's not that easy as you may have guessed...

So it wouldn't shock me if 'hardcore' fans of the games might find this Hollywood-ized translation a bit less-than-remarkable, or pure trash if that is the case - but for fans of genuinely good sci-fi movies (I said SCI-FI, not horror) look no further.

9.6/10

(By the way, the soundtrack was terrible)

Rating:
Summary: Paul W.S. Anderson is a horrible movie writer. Horrible.
Review: This movie doesn't even deserve one star. Firts off I love the Resident Evil video games. This movie did not have one character from the video game. Second off George A. Romero was going to write and direct this movie and was replaced by Paul Anderson(probably becasuse the mainstream movie audiences are flippin' idiots and don't know what a good horror film is). I read Romero's script and it had everything in the Resident Evil game. I hated that the zombies had CG faces. I hated the CG in this movie period. The plot was HORRIBLE. The acting was HORRIBLE. I left the theatre in disgust. Oh yeah, the last thing they had to kill in the movie was a "Licker". In Resident Evil 2 game you can kill a "Licker" with two shotguns blasts. In the movie they had the hardest time killing the "Licker". Horrible. Horrible. Horrible. I guess that's what you can expect with Paul Anderson. I refuse to watch Resident Evil 2. Long live Romero. Can't wait for Land of the Dead.

Rating:
Summary: A view from the non-gamer side
Review: I have to confess that I don't play video games - eye-hand coordination and lightning reflexes weren't included in my genetic package, so this review is based on the movie - and nothing but the movie.

Other than Milla Jovovich, no cast member did any real acting. Michelle Rodriguez had a fairly difficult role to play, but the snarling and eye rolling was just too much at times. She was necessarily tough, but the dialogue also really let her down. The rest of the cast was on par for a B Grade horror movie, and only slightly more animated than the zombies.

This movie is what happens when you mix too many good things in a haphazard way. Imagine trying to write a coherent script when your "must" list includes zombies, were-dogs, sloppy genetic mutations with long tongues, a controlling computer system, an impregnable "fortress", a knockout babe with amnesia, a SWAT team, biological warfare, viruses, spies and saboteurs, a battle on a train, and guns - lots of guns.

The zombie scenes failed to impress, no gore to be seen anywhere - they just looked like a typical crowd of people in the mosh pit at a rock concert. The mutating tissue-thing was straight out of a Dean Koontz book, and most of the suspense scenes weren't very suspenseful, because whatever you expected to happen - did.

On the cool side, you had the wicked lasers to do the slicing and dicing, Alice's (Milla) hot red zombie-kicking slit-way-up the side dress, and the fight scenes. Many parts may seem familiar, mainly because you've seen scenes just like them in other popular action movies.

Next time let Alice do some Mortal Kombat with Lara Croft and you can call it a Final Fantasy.

Amanda Richards, February 22, 2005


Rating:
Summary: Another crappy Paul W.S. Anderson film
Review: First of all the CG sucked. Second, Michelle Rodriguez can't act. She rolls her eyes to the back of her head with every line as if to make it more intense and stronger, it doesn't work. The movie doesn't really follow the game much. And although I never thought about this until I heard someone else say it, why would the computer send out all those little lasers and not just the "net laser" if it's job was to kill any and everything? The answer is, so they can include more unecessary action without incorporating it more smoothly and intelligently.

If you want to see a good zombie flick, rent the original Night of the Living Dead.

Rating:
Summary: THIS MOVIE IS FRICKEN INCREDIBLE!!!
Review: This movie was one of the most action packed movies ever. Throughout the whole movie I was on the edge of my seat. Milla (Alice) was an incredible actor and should've gotten an academy award for this movie.

Racoon City... A company called Umbrella (sound familiar?) is making substances that are lethal to the world. Alice, a worker of Umbrella, is against this. Alice, and her husband, decide to take the company down. They steel a virus that can bring the dead to life called the T-virus. They plan to expose Umbrella to this insane disease that can be spread easily.

An accident... The T-virus is let loose in Umbrella's head quaters "The Hive". The Hive is an underground facilty right under the unsuspecting inhabitors of Racoon City. In this facility, Umbrella conducts their evil experiments.

When the T-virus is released in the Hive, the "Red Queen" kills all the workers by setting off security, in an attempt to prevent the virus from spreading.

Now, Alice and her husband, having lost their memories, and some trained soldiers, must take down the Red Queen and close down the Hive and prevent this horrible virus from ruinung an unsuspecting city...



Rating:
Summary: Best Adaptation from a Video Game
Review:
Milla Jovovich, Michelle Rodriguez

Ok that's most of it.

But this film does have the best feel of a movie adapted from a video game. The framing of the story as it progresses using 3D computer animations to show where the various characters are in "The Hive", plus the point-of-view (a la "Preditor") shots that the central computer "Red Queen" sees, give a real gaming "techno" gloss to the proceedings.

The music score by Marylin Manson works great. I detest that guy's personna, but I am forced to give him credit here. He did make me laugh once when he said in an interview that at a multi-artist gig he felt he had succeeded if at least he made a few Alannis Morriset fans throw up.

Anyway, Resident Evil is a great techno-thriller-zombie combo.

Milla Jovovich, Michelle Rodriguez

Oh, I said that already. Ok, you get it.


Rating:
Summary: A Movie for the Masochist in Me
Review: It seems to me that the world is in perfect balance. For every good to great movie there seems to be a fair to bad movie. Resident Evil helps keep that balance by being on the low end of the teeter totter from a great movie like, let's say, "Lord of the Rings". Of course mentioning a schlock movie like Resident Evil in the same sentence as a great movie borders on impertinence but it makes my point nicely.

I'm sure you've noticed there are movies (books too) that start with a bang and then fade away.......... to obscurity and you wonder what the hell happened and then there are movies that start at a dawdling pace but build up slowly (like "The Others") to a strong surprise ending. Then again some movies are like a ping pong match, good, bad, up and down like an electrocardiogram.

Well, Resident Evil is a combination of the first and the last, an electrocardiogram for the first fifteen minutes and then it flatlines. I mean it's a Code Blue the rest of the way. Why did I keep watching it? I don't know, I suppose I was waiting for the resuscitation that never came. There was a blip, a tiny blip, in the middle, where some unexplained giant hairless cat looking creature cornered the surviving couple on a speeding train but that was it and then
/\_____________________________ .

The why and where of this creature I have no idea because the rest of the scary creatures were ultra slow moving zombies (real original huh?), which makes me wonder, why is is that zombies have to move so slow? I mean a guy on crutches could have ran circles around these snails. The zombies weren't slow in "28 Days Later", in fact it seemed like they sped up. Fact is "28 Days Later" is ten times the movie Resident Evil is. Make that a hundred times better.

Funny thing is they both have basically the same plot, somebody breaks into a lab and either accidently or purposely unleashes a plague on the world which turns everyone into Zombies. If "28 Days Later" hadn't come out a year after Resident Evil I'd think it Resident Evil was a crappy remake. Even the soundtrack was more interesting in "28 Days Later" featuring Godspeed you Black Emperor (my introduction to them, by the way) versus Marilyn Manson.

PLOT

Resident Evil features Alice (Milla Jovovich) and Rain (Michelle Rodriguez), corporate commandos fighting a virus that has wiped out the entire staff of the Umbrella Corporation, a ficticious bio-engineering conglomerate. The infected prowl around like slow moving, ravenous zombies, and Alice and her cadre have three hours to trap the virus before these "Undead" overrun the Earth.

Now, in case you weren't aware of it, Resident Evil is taken from and loosely based on what all good movies are taken from - a VIDEO GAME but even though it's taken from a video game it still resembles every other (except 28 Days Later) stupid zombie movie ever made with gazillions of plodding, blind (they must be, they usually walk with their arms outstreched), moronic, sometimes drooling, sometime bleeding "Walking Dead". Oh why didn't they make a movie about "Pac Man" instead? Hey I could get into that and talk about original. Even "Space Invaders" would have been better with slow plodding space ships instead of zombies.

And while we're at it, what's with Hollywood these days? Seems like every-other movie that comes out any more is based on a cartoon character, a video game, a classic story, a fairy tale or is a remake of an older movie. If Hollywood is stagnant and they're hurting that much for some fresh ideas, maybe we the public ought to come to their rescue with some novel new ideas. But I digress. Speaking of digressing, did you ever wonder why Zombies are slow but the other undead like Vampires are super fast? Another mystery of the Universe!

In case you haven't figured out what I thought of Resident Evil, read my conclusion below.

CONCLUSION

#@*$#%?]X~#@\O/\@3@$%^% )xxxx(*&##^%

Author's Note

You didn't think I was finished did you? Did you ever notice that when a studio makes a really bad movie, they seem to be ashamed so they try and make it up to the public by filming a sequel. Obviously this is an effort to make up for the monstrosity they foisted on the unsuspecting public by trying to get it right on the second try. Well the makers of Resident Evil apparently have realized the error of their ways and have released a sequel entitled Resident Evil - Apocalypse. Rather Apocalyptical don't you think?


Rating:
Summary: Not to horrific or very fun.
Review: This is the first movie in the supposed Resident Evil trilogy and so far, things aren't off to a great start.
For a horror movie, it borders on all-right to bad. For a movie based on a video game it's pretty bad. Not much from the original games is really intact in this movie. Mainly just the monsters and some of the lab type levels from the first two games are intact, but thats were the comparisons end. Although, to give the director credit, he did say this movie was more of a prequel to the games, rather then a movie version.
Horror movie wise, there isn't that many great moments in the movie. The zombies are mediocre, I'd take Romero or Jackson zombies over these ones any day. They're just not that frightning and they don't do a whole lot. The part with the dogs is fairly decent, but the licker at the end of the movie is just plain laughable and crappy. The budget wasn't very big for this movie, but I've seen TV movies with better special effects then this movies licker. Although I must admit, the part where they're trapped in the corridor with lazers that our out of control, is one of those "wow" moments of horror movies.
The characters are one dimensional and not very fun. Milla doesn't seem to comfortable in her role yet, but that changes in the second movie. Other characters in the movie could live or die without the audience caring much, unless you're like me and would rather just see them all die. The story is descent enough for what this movie is, but it's nothing to write home about.
Overall, it's all right, but I'd stick with the 2nd movie, Resident Evil: Apocalypse for a better time being entertained.

Rating:
Summary: Resident Evil
Review: While The Resident Evil video game series prides itself on its moody atmosphere the movie goes for a louder approach. Personally i prefer to consider the movie as a separate entity. Recap: after a dangerous virus escapes from an underground lab a team of specially trained agents are sent to investigate only to discover zombies and other nasty surprises. It's funny i'd never noticed how stunningly gorgeous Milla Jovovich is and she kicks A$$, Michelle Rodriguez does an ok job but she basically plays the same part in every movie (the tough girl). Personally i felt the characters bonded into a family, i felt towards the end the characters actually cared for each other. The final showdown on the train was very reminiscent of RE2 (Video Game) and very exciting. Overall an action packed adventure that provides nothing new but worth watching anyway. EP