Netflix's Resident Evil Review

[Netflix's] Resident Evil, Season 1

After the seven Resident Evil movies starring Milla Jovovich and a 2021 movie loosely based on Resident Evil 2, Netflix threw their hat into the ring by adapting everyone's favourite zombie franchise... and, well, while the games are most certainly going strong with the remakes of the classic games and the stories after the soft reboot of Resident Evil VII, this Netflix series... just isn't. 

This Netflix show feels like it's just spinning its wheels, creating the most cookie-cutter zombie apocalypse storyline ever with some Resident Evil IP names tossed in. Sure, the place where the plague breaks out is still called Raccoon City (except it's in South Africa now), the main evil organization is still Umbrella Corporation, the virus is called the T-Virus and the main guy is Albert Wesker. Also, Albert Wesker is race-lifted into being black, something that I don't think anyone should have trouble with since his ethnicity is never really a huge part of his character, and Lance Reddick (of John Wick fame) is a stellar actor. There are even mutated animals that turn into giant video game monsters, like the caterpillar in episode 1, the Lickers (probably the only well-executed 'monster' out of the bunch) and the evil zombie dogs and Lickers that show up here and there. It's just that... the whole story is just kind of... bland. The opening episode fails to be exciting, going back and forth from modern day 2022 in the sterile Raccoon City in South Africa to the post-apocalyptic 2037... and there's just... there's just really nothing interesting. We putter around Wesker's two children Jade and Billie, neither of whom are really all that interesting, while we cut back and forth to adult Jade being a post-apocalyptic survivor in the zombie wasteland. It's like they're trying to pay homage to the Jovovich movies but they don't really get which parts are things people appreciated from the video games and which are just, well, generic zombie tropes. 

...speaking of the Lickers, how do they get pasting the Lickers all over the billboards and advertisements in Times Square and stuff and use them in a very dark, very short 5-minute scene and then not have them show up again?

And... there's some neat case of 'ha ha, they're referring to the video games, I get that reference' as we go through the 2022 storyline. It's... it's sufficient, for what it is, being a rather generic zombie outbreak storyline in a contemporary modern world. It's not the best at what it is, but I would say that it's okay stuff for a binge-watch session. The dialogue is admittedly rather... what is it kids say these days? "Cringe"? Yeah, I don't know. I might be getting old, but Elon Musk and LuluLemon jokes really don't do it for me.

There are some decent moments, as we do get a bit of creepiness with how artificial Raccoon City is, and Lance Reddick is great playing the 'face' of Umbrella Corporation... except, again, it doesn't feel like Resident Evil. Albert Wesker juggling fatherhood and his Umbrella Corporation role would be an interesting reinvention if the rest of the show was done well, but it really just seems like they're just slapping the name onto a character they invented for the show. The rest of the cast -- Wesker's daughters, Wesker's Umbrella partner, her son, trying to uncover the conspiracies, the product launch... all of those would be nice window-dressing and side-plots, but they really don't provide too much interest as the main meat of the series, I feel. Episode 5 spent nearly its entire runtime with the two sisters discovering the 'old' Raccoon City and some little teensy-weensy bits about William Birkin and Lisa Trevor but... but the actual episode is so boring to watch. There's just no tension and the characters are so underwhelming that it's really hard to care. There is an admittedly not-entirely-poorly executed twist that comes to Albert Wesker in the last two episodes, but it feels so jarring compared to just how bland everything has been with the Wesker family and Evelyn that I find it hard to care about the clone plot.

The 2036 stuff, though... it's just boring. Nevermind the rather dull lighting and the post-apocalyptic characters that all just kind of die off while the flatly-written adult Jade runs around and navigates London while the show is also simultaneously coy yet obvious that adult Billie also survives... it's just really not at all that interesting. She gets hounded by well-mannered Umbrella minion Richard Baxter, who barely gets a slight bit of characterization before he gets killed off for shock value. And when adult Billie shows up as an Umbrella commando... well, they were already underwritten as teenagers, but they are even more boring as adults. 

Also, while I'm not the biggest stickler for 'sensible' plots in a Resident Evil show of all things... really? Of all things, part of the climax of the 2036 plot hinges on exposing Umbrella's crimes to... a post-apocalyptic dystopia? Really? 

There is the promise of something interesting with Lickers and giant spider zombies... but the actual monsters are barely visible before the show moves away, and secondary characters with no personalities from generic dystopian-trope factions are all rapid-fire introduced as if someone took a look at all the post-zombie-apocalypse movies and tried to just shoehorn in the most cliche-storm versions of what they can find. And when neither the characters nor the monsters nor the horror nor the suspense is handled well, what's left, really?

The season runs 8 episodes, and I can't tell you how much I groaned and just fast-forwarded through the 2036 stuff. Nothing is really interesting here, we've seen the Mad Max style scavengers and the creepily-civilized survivors of Umbrella done better in other post-apocalyptic dystopian worlds... and, hell, even the variable-quality Jovovich movies. At least those felt like they were putting an effort at adapting aspects of the games? This one felt like they had this independent storyline about a zombie apocalypse show, and last-minute just grafted names like 'Wesker' and 'Umbrella' onto them, and then randomly shoved in references to 'old' Raccoon City and the RE5 volcano last-minute. 

A lot of shows do use this 'flash-forward' stuff as a gimmick, and on this blog I've talked about Arrow using it, but... but there's really not too much thematic cohesion between the 2036 and 2022 storylines beyond Jade and zombies, and... and it feels like they had two ideas for a Resident Evil TV show adaptation (except not really, none of these really scream 'Resident Evil' any more than any other zombie show out there) and mushed them together. 

The plot is slow and predictable, and... and I don't know. The action scenes are serviceable and the horror is... also barely serviceable? I don't know. Resident Evil isn't necessarily a franchise that needs to be a certain way, and even the game franchise itself had reinvented itself several times over with 4, VII and the 2 remake. The movies and the one-off all differ from each other in interesting ways. But this project just feels like such a superficial take on the show that ends up feeling rather soulless and devoid of creativity. It really is something that if you ignore the mentions of Umbrella, Albert Wesker, T-Virus and Raccoon City, it would be easily handwaved as a high-budget Walking Dead spinoff or ripoff. Lance Reddick is amazing in this and it's such a shame that the rest of the show is kind of a disappointment. There's, after all, a reason why they ended up pulling the plug on this show. Perhaps for the best, lest it becomes a zombie of its own.