Resident Evil [DVD] [2002]

 

 

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I've never seen the computer game on which this film was based.All I can say is that this was a highly entertaining thriller/horror movie that moved quickly and stylishly from beginning to end.Packed with surprises,great special effects,well-placed humour and fine acting.

RESIDENT EVIL is a 2002 zombie film. It was brilliant! I loved it! The special effects were amazing. The gore looked horribly realistic! The action was intense, hilarious, scary and bloody, with some fantastic zombies! The acting was spectacular! Milla Jovovich was great as Alice, the main character. There were some very memorable one liners too! Everyone told me that the storyline was terrible but I disagree. It was actually a pretty good, exciting plot, with some character development too. So it wasn't all just action, action, action. Overall I thouroughly enjoyed RESIDENT EVIL and can't wait to see RESIDENT EVIL 2: APOCOLYPSE! An exciting, action-packed zombie classic! TRULY EPIC! 10/10!

There's just something about watching a hot babe laying the smack down on anyone and anything that gets in her way - and no one does it better than Milla Jovovich. She is, to put it mildly, a whole lot of woman. Resident Evil isn't all about Milla, though; nor is it all about the gore (actually, the movie wasn't nearly as gory as I expected). Above all, though, Resident Evil is not to be dismissed as just another video game adaptation thrown haphazardly together just to make money. This film has substance, subplots, and surprises to go along with the generally impressive special effects and, for my money, pretty good acting. In other words, while the unfortunate denizens of the Hive may be essentially brainless, Resident Evil is not.

I have only limited experience playing the original video game. I never got very far into it, mainly because I wasn't very adept in the gameplay department and didn't spend the time necessary to significantly improve my minimal skills. All I remember is exploring the house and trying to kill the occasional zombie that popped up along the way as the music did the principal work of creating a spooky atmosphere. The movie is much more intense than that - and far more suspenseful. It's not like some clumsy scientist just happened to drop a beaker, thereby exposing the deadly T-virus all of his geeky colleagues. On the contrary, this story generates a whole host of questions in the first few moments, questions such as who released the virus and why, but also why is the room housing such a deadly virus tied in to the ventilation system of the whole complex to begin with? (I can't say I got an answer to that last one.) I actually had to go back and watch the exposure moment a second time because I thought I had missed something the first time.

Don't expect Milla's character to supply you with any early answers, as Alice wakes up in a ritzy-looking house with no memory of who she is. Even the shocking jolt of a stranger claiming to be a cop grabbing her just before a team of commandoes suddenly crash through the windows fails to jog her memory, but she doesn't question the special ops commander when he tells her she is one of two security agents stationed in the house to protect that particular entrance to The Hive, the mega-powerful Umbrella corporation's top-secret, underground facility devoted to all kinds of dangerous and illegal research into bioweapons and the like - and that her amnesia is the temporary byproduct of exposure to a nerve gas. By the time she and the suspicious cop accompany the group to the entrance to The Hive, Alice has met her equally amnesiac "husband" and learned that the Red Queen, The Hive's central AI, locked the whole facility down and killed everyone inside in an effort to try and contain the super-deadly T-virus from spreading outside the complex. Their mission is to get to the Red Queen. It sounds pretty simple, what with everybody down there being dead and all. As they soon discover, however, those 500-odd dead bodies have arisen as blood-thirsty, flesh-eating zombies, and the Red Queen isn't going to let anyone into her inner chamber without putting up a fight.

The majority of the movie, to no one's surprise, consists of the team members trying to survive the onslaught of hordes of zombies, high-tech computer defenses of last resort, etc. As all of that exciting action is taking place, however, we see Alice trying to sort through the memories coming back to her in intermittent waves. She is a much more central figure in all of this than even she knows early on, and she isn't the only team member with secrets to be revealed. That leads to some surprisingly effective plot twists that not only advanced the story in important and plausible ways; they were also presented very much in the context of earlier scenes in the movie.

It doesn't matter if you've ever played the video game or not - Resident Evil is just an exciting, action-packed horror film. I don't consider it to be the least bit scary, but it is quite atmospheric. As a horror fan, I must say I've never counted zombies among my favorite monsters - let's face it, they're basically mindless, slow-footed creatures with no erotic potential whatsoever - so I'm not just whistling Dixie when I say that Resident Evil is a great movie. Of course, a lot of the credit has to go to Milla Jovovich, the finest of one-woman killing machines.

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2.0 out of 5 stars Anagram of Resident Evil: Dire Sent Live.
A virus has turned the workers at an Umbrella Corporation HQ in to the snarling undead. Enter a crack team of commandos to lay waste wherever possible. Read more

Published 6 months ago by Spike Owen

5.0 out of 5 stars Great film for a Friday night
This film (and more generally the series of films) does seem to attract its fair share of opprobrium and, looking at the spread of ratings it's got here on Amazon, it's not even... Read more

Published 6 months ago by Crookedmouth

4.0 out of 5 stars The start of better things to come
When I first saw this film, nearly ten years ago, I was quite surprised. In that I thought it was going to be worse. Read more

Published 8 months ago by David Walker

4.0 out of 5 stars Resident Evil. start of destruction
Resident Evil is a great classic zombie thrilling action packed film that aims to please, starring the fierce MillaJovovich and Michelle Rodriguez. Read more

Published 13 months ago by Geeohnny

4.0 out of 5 stars zombie slaying-action at its best!
millia jovoich is perfect for the role as alice , the umbrella corporation worker with memory loss trying to work out whats happened/happening. Read more

Published 19 months ago by J. Anderson

4.0 out of 5 stars This Movie is Just Plain Cool!
4.5 out of 5

When Alice (Milla Jovovich) wakes up on a shower floor inside a mansion with no memory, she has little time to try and get herself together. Read more

Published on 12 Jan 2010 by A.P. Fuchs / Canister X

5.0 out of 5 stars Surprisingly AWSOME!!
really cool, a perfect film for a boys night in, absoloutly brilliant graphics, the series does go down hill after the third resedent evil film, but i would strongly recomend this... Read more

Published on 20 Jun 2009 by william gough

5.0 out of 5 stars The importance of being Milla Jovovich
In a nutshell: after I watching this movie I thought 'well, that is one of the best and most entertaining movies I ever saw'. Read more

Published on 23 Feb 2009 by Martin Riediger

4.0 out of 5 stars Pretty decent film
Resident Evil is well known in gaming, one of the best series of games out there. Usually films made for big games don't usually work but it was actually pretty decent. Read more

Published on 4 Dec 2008 by Victoria Hill

3.0 out of 5 stars COULD HAVE BEEN A LOT BETTER
RESIDENT EVIL has a lot of missed oportunities - unfortunately. The atmosphere is about right, the acting quite decent, but the certain something's missing, and that is present... Read more

Published on 29 Nov 2008 by Sick-o

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