Movie Review: Resident Evil

Resident Evil (2002)

So... this is a bit of a different sort of review for me. I'm going to do Resident Evil movies this month of October! And... and it's really kind of interesting. I've watched the Resident Evil live-action movies on-and-off in the past, and definitely out of order. And I definitely watched this series way before I was properly introduced to the video game series. 

And it's really interesting how attitudes towards movie adaptations of franchises back then were. 2002's Resident Evil borrows a lot from the games, or at least what I can tell -- it's set in Raccoon City, it's in a mysterious mansion (like the first RE game); it's tied to a virus created by the evil Umbrella Corporation; convenient amnesia; there are some names like 'Project Nemesis' thrown around... oh, and there's zombies. Lots of zombies. In spirit, I think, the movie does its best to capture the somewhat over-the-top ridiculously-expensive-and-impractical giant sci-fi bases, as well as, y'know, zombies. Hell, there's even a fun video-game-y vibe into parts of the movie, like the bit with the laser hallway and the briefing segment playing out like a video game narrator explaining the minimap.

The actual story, though, and especially the characters, are all original to the movie franchise. The movie tries to capture the spirit of the games while going in completely different directions with the characters... and considering how literally all everyone talks about many of the sequels is 'oh no, they ruined [X] from the games', looking back I can actually see why the original Resident Evil movie was actually liked so much. 

The plot itself is... pretty simple. It's certainly inspired by the first game, but not a straight-up adaptation of it. A mysterious corporation set up against the backdrop of not one, but two sci-fi villains. There are the brainless zombies going around, but there is also the Red Queen, the enigmatic, creepy artificial intelligence controlling the super-high-tech underground base and also speaks with the voice of a little girl, which just adds to the creepy factor of it all. The cold open shows a virus canister (hilariously, the canister's fluid is shaped like a double helix, which is just kind of funny and clearly not there for any practical reason) being released and the systems in what seems to be a regular office going haywire, but the cuts to points of view from what seemed to be a computer says otherwise.  

And then we cut to a mysterious mansion, where our main character, Alice (Milla Jovovich) wakes up naked, walks out and immediately gets accosted by a bunch of soldier boys in commando outfits. There's also some random cop dude called Matt Addison who gets caught and dragged down into the underground facility known as the Hive. Our main character Alice is utterly amnesiac, which is apparently the side-effect of a nerve gas released by the automated defenses. The commando leader, James Shade, gives us some exposition about the Red Queen, the Hive, and the fact that Alice and her partner Spence (who they find later on, also amnesiac) are actually elite guards under Umbrella's employ. 

And the base seems empty and deserted, so all they have to do is to shut down a haywire computer, right? Not really, because Shade and half the team gets butchered by a glowing corridor with laser beams, which end up slicing Shade's buddies to death and in one of the cooler scenes in the movie, turns into a laser net and turns Shade into many meat cubes. The hacker, Kaplan, manages to disable the Red Queen. Mission complete, right? But by disabling the Red Queen... they release all of the zombies trapped with the quarantine doors. The zombie effect is honestly what you'd expect, but it's all honestly pretty well done. We get Rain (Michelle Rodriguez!) bitten by a zombie that she thinks is a confused civilian, before the huge zombie swarms arrive amidst a soundtrack of fun rock. One of the commandos, Rain's buddy JD, gets sucked into an elevator filled with zombies in a pretty cool imagery. 

And, well, throughout all this Alice keeps getting flashbacks to her memory as it starts to return, and the effect is interestingly haunting. As the civilian cops, Matt, keeps talking shit about Umbrella Corporation, Alice keeps wondering that if the mysterious deal she made with a mysterious woman isn't actually an indication that she might be the cause of this.... but then she has to fight zombie dogs. Oops! The zombie dog scene, while certainly cool because of the presence of zombie dogs, is kind of underwhelming to me. I'm not entirely sure why. Still, Alice shows off some badass Black Widow super kung-fu spy skills, as, well, her muscle memory starts to return. 

Around the midway point, Matt turns out to have been working with his now-late sister to blow the whistle on Umbrella Corporation, and they are like activists or something. And Alice remembers that she's, well, Matt's sister's contact in the Hive, but again is still confused on what her role in the fall of the Hive really is. Again, all this corporation stuff is fun and gives a nice little story and backdrop to the universe instead of just 'oh no zombos'. 

With the clock ticking down from a complete locking-down of the base, our heroes decide to reactivate the Red Queen and grill her for answers, and she's... well, she's not very helpful. I thought the Red Queen was bizarrely out of place the first time I watched this movie, but I've come to appreciate her so much more. She is an antagonist whose methods are... actually relatable. She's a manipulative bitch that's clearly not telling our heroes everything and is manipulating them to die, sure, but in the context of this movie it's actually not hard to argue that the Red Queen is simply doing her best to keep the zombie plague contained. It's just that keeping the T-Virus contained also means killing all the humans, our protagonists included. Our heroes blackmail the Red Queen with a rigged remote shutdown, forcing her to help out. 

We then get a pretty long sewer/maintenance tunnel sequence, where I'm surprised no one died! There were a few close calls, but the only one who gets bitten is just Rain (who was already bitten before). And hey, RE-movie zombies will infect you with their virus if they bite you! Kaplan gets separated from the group and there's this pretty huge moment of him about to shoot himself... but then shoots a zombie instead and slinks away into a corridor that the zombies can't follow? This bit could've been choreographed a bit better, I feel.

Then we get a sequence where Alice's memories start to return, and she remembers that the Hive also manufactured an anti-virus, and they can cure Rain. But just as this is going on, Spence, Alice's partner, also gets his memory back and we get the whole revelation -- Alice and Lisa were trying to blow the whistle, while Spence wanted to sell the virus to the highest bidder and is the one who tossed the virus into the room and initiated lockdown, in a nice callback to the cold open of the movie. Spence traps the rest of the survivors (Alice, Rain, Matt) in the lab before going off to the monorail train to go off with the virus... only to get his ass killed by a mutated super-zombie we've glimpsed a couple of times throughout the movie, a Licker. The Red Queen straight-up gloats about how awesome this is, how this Licker monster will evolve into a bigger beast after eating live DNA, and the Red Queen insists that she'll only let Alice and Matt escape if they kill Rain -- because Rain is infected, and cure or no cure, the Red Queen will not let anyone infected escape the facility. Again, sadistic and cruel, but you can kind of understand the Red Queen's intentions. 

Unfortunately for the Red Queen, she gets fried and shut down by the surviving Kaplan, who opens the door to the lab and our four main characters are home-free! They kill zombie Spence, get into the train with the virus and antivirus in tow... and then the goddamn Licker attacks, killing Kaplan and giving us a huge boss fight. Rain's zombification is complete (and we got a pretty long angsty 'kill me if I turn' sequence, too) just right in this moment and we get a pretty cool bit of Alice managing to trap the Licker and dropping him through the floor's opening doors (why do those exist on a train) and turn the Licker into a burning flesh-stain. 

The movie's over, the two unambiguously good guys survive... but Matt is wounded by the Licker and his wound is pulsating... and then the two of them get abducted by people in white Hazmat suits! Matt's just gone, taken for something called the Nemesis Project (dun dunn dunn) while Alice gets wrestled and wakes up naked in yet another abandoned facility. It's actually a pretty effective downer ending, actually. Even though Alice and Matt succeeded in everything, Umbrella Corporation recovering the virus ends up with a gigantic fuck-up as Alice walks the abandoned Raccoon City to find that the entire city has fallen to a zombie plague. And she gets a shotgun and prepares to fight zombies some more... in the sequel!

Honestly, a very solid movie. I did remember being a bit baffled that the movie takes itself so slowly -- it took around 35 minutes before our heroes actually start fighting zombies and the bit with the laser corridor, while undoubtedly cool, also felt weirdly placed in a zombie movie. But I really do like how the Umbrella/Red Queen/Alice-Spencer thief storyline ended up being played out. Sure, the amnesia plot device has never been my favourite, but this is one that I felt like it played well since it's limited to the first two acts of the movie. The characters are perhaps not the most well-developed, and some of the Licker CGI is a bit dodgy by modern standards. And the adaptation's perhaps not the most ideal to the original vibe of the movie. But it's overall still a pretty solid sci-fi zombie flick. 

Random Notes:

• I feel like this movie is particularly bad with names, other than Alice, Matt, Spence, Rain and Kaplan, I don't think anyone's names is really said out loud and I don't even know what Spence and Kaplan are called until their respective big moments.
  
• The Licker's CGI alternates between being actually cool to 'yeah, this is a 2002 movie for sure'. I think the parts where it kind of sort of felt off for me was its initial released-from-its-cage scene, as well as when it 'evolves' after consuming Spencer. Apparently the Licker is created when the T-Virus was injected into a live organism. Okay. It's a cool ghoulish creature with a long tongue and giant claws, I like it. 
• I do like that they picked the Licker as the first 'weird' zombie variant instead of something like Nemesis, the Tyrant or the Hunter. The Licker has such a uniquely distinct design and also feels so much like this gross body-horror creature. 
• The Red Queen's pretty interesting, isn't she? She goes from pleading like a little child to "you're all going to die down here" and doesn't really say anything to warn them that, oh, there are god damn zombies around. Sure, you could say that she's just doing what's utterly necessary to stop the T-virus from getting out, but she's also clearly a sadistic bitch about it. 
• Also, does she just... somehow not know who stole the T-Virus and released it? She seems to be pretty much aware of everything going on in the Hive, but I guess she just doesn't know it was Spence who unleashed the virus? Honestly, giving the Red Queen the revelation that she is trying to prevent the virus-unleasher from escaping would go a fair bit of way in making her feel like a more justified extremist. 
• The movie universe's T-Virus is noted to basically stimulate things that remain alive after a body is dead, like the nails and hair that grow and the remains of electrical impulses in the brain. Scientifically hogwash, but this is a zombie movie and I'll buy that explanation. 
• That random office lady who got guillotined while trying to escape an elevator is needlessly brutal, but par the course for this franchise. 
• Speaking of needlessly brutal... Kaplan was too slow to save four of his friends, during the zombie horde he nearly killed himself, somehow survived that giant zombie horde by sneaking away, and even got injected by a cure only to die via surprise Licker arrival. Poor Kaplan. 
• I'm not sure why there's a bit of drama with Alice flashing back and forth to photographs of her and Spence being married. This isn't really explored at all, and Shade quickly tells her it's just a cover story. 
• Sure, bringing Alice along is kind of understandable since she's just suffering from short-term amnesia, but dragging Matt Addison along? The commandos have no reason to believe he's anything but a cop, wouldn't it be easier to cuff him somewhere in the mansion and leave him there?
• Colin Salmon plays James Shade! Superhero-TV viewers know him as Walter Steele and General Zod, and you might recognize him from James Bond movies as well. He's cool! 
• It's so strange to see Alice just be a mundane super-athletic commando considering she basically becomes a straight-up metahuman superhero in later installations. 
• Alice's red-dress-and-shorts combo... it's frankly impressive what Milla Jokovich can pull off in that dress.