Resident Evil

Hey all, Time to get back to what I really like to do. Write the movie reviews. The new paper got me all worked up yesterday. Anyway, today's review is Resident Evil. Now I've been a huge fan of the video game series. That series alone was enough to make buy a play station. I remember losing a whole weekend in a very dark dorm room playing the second one. So when I heard that they were making a movie of it, I knew right away it was going to be one I was going to add to my collection.

Well I picked it up the other day and lets just say I was rather surprised at how well it turned out. Video game movies have a notoriously bad reputation of being big ol' bombs. Look at Super Mario Brothers or Street Fighter. The movie stars Mila Jovavich, she's been in a lot of movies you probably haven't seen and only a few that you have (The Fifth Element & The Messenger are the only ones I've seen or heard of). It's also got the girl (her name escapes me at the moment, that and I don't think she's really all that great) from Fast and The Furious and Girlfight. Couple other faces that I recognize but none that have had any significant roles.

The movie starts off in a lab. You see someone loading up vials into a container. As this person is departing they throw one of the vials and it breaks open. Well, as everyone knows who played the video game. This is the dreaded virus that starts off this whole mess. The computer known as the Red Queen sees the virus and goes on a homicidal rampage killing everyone in the facility. Cut to a half naked Mila (seems like every time I see her in a movie she's always half naked) laying on a shower floor. She has no memory at all. Well we meet up with a commando team and we are wondering what the hell is going on just like Mila.

Well the commandos are very well briefed and explain to her that her big extravagant house is merely an emergency exit for this enormous underground facility called The Hive. They are operating under the impression that the Red Queen has gone Homicidal. Now your wondering how a machine can do this, well this computer is basically Hal 9000, a self aware computer that has the ability to kill. Long story short, they spend the whole time trying to find out why the computer went crazy and why there are flesh eating zombies running around after them.

This had a lot of elements of a high end remake of Night Of the Living Dead. But it does have a lot of the things in it that made the video game so great. Like walking into a room with a fixed camera and you can't quite see the entire room. No telling what's lurking in those corners. Also a lot of the creatures are identical to they way they act and look in the video game. Everything from the fleshless Doberman's to the genetic things that crawl along the ceiling and use their tongues. They even hinted at a possible sequel with the mentioning of the Nemesis program. Which is the basis of the 3rd game.

Overall, this was a better than average Zombie movie, and an A plus video game. It's a definite watch.