Let me begin by saying this. I’ve always enjoyed these movies. I played through the first 5 games and Code Veronica. I am not just another horror fan who enjoyed this science fiction, action attempt at a Resident Evil movie. I’ve been looking back at films from the late 1990s and early 2000s to see how well they hold up. This is thanks to watching Freddy vs Jason (2003) recently. It is extremely dated. So, I asked myself, what about the Resident Evil series? So, I am off to watch and review all Resident Evil films from 2002 to 2021. I have yet to see the 2021 film, but I’m looking forward to giving it a chance.
Seven reviews and one ranking. This will take some time, so be patient, I’m sure everyone is totally excited for my reviews of the Resident Evil series.
Synopsis:
Based on the popular video game, Milla Jovovich and Michelle Rodriguez star as the leaders of a commando team who must break into “the hive,” a vast underground genetics laboratory operated by the powerful Umbrella Corporation. There, a deadly virus has been unleashed, killing the lab’s personnel and resurrecting them as the evil Un-dead. The team has just three hours to shut down the lab’s supercomputer and close the facility before the virus threatens to overrun the Earth.
Really it should read, “loosely” based on the popular video game. There are elements of the game, but this is really its own story with little to do with the video game. The first game takes place in a mansion outside of Racoon City, this takes place in the “Hive” under the mansion, outside of Racoon City.
I get why they didn’t go for a direct adaptation with the first movie. It seems with early video game movies the studios just didn’t know what to do and there wasn’t too much of a sounding board like today for angry fans. Horror films generally get bad reviews unless we’re talking some A24 film. Even Friday the 13th and Halloween films reviewed poorly. I’m not saying the Resident Evil movies are on the same level as Halloween or Friday the 13th.
I will say they this movie is a really decent action first horror film. It has all of the elements of a horror film, blended with so many elements of a early 2000s action movie. And that is ok. The biggest problem in watching Resident Evil in 2022…not much holds up. The dialog is rough and the special effects are awful. I will say, the CGI effects were bad even for 2002 standards. But it was still pretty early in the heavy CG days.
Overall, I still had fun with Resident Evil. It isn’t good, but the action was fun, I like Milla Jovovich alot. But we do so a few familiar faces from the low budget films of the early 2000s. I say low budget and what I really mean are guys who are barging bin actors, like Eric Mabius and James Purefoy. Also, the budget was not spent on cast, $33 million budget was kind of big for a production like this and likely went to the lackluster effects.
IMDB.com has a rating of 6.6 which seems kind of high, but the people, not critics get to review these movies and Rotton Tomatoes has Resident Evil at 35% with a 67% audience score which lines up with the IMDB score.
I have this rating system that I’m trying out for the first time with this series. In eleven different categories it came out to a 56%. So, I don’t know, not terrible, but not great. We will see how this works moving forward.
Thanks for checking this out, remember I plan to review each movie and when I’m finished, based off the score I gave, we will have a ranking of this…series.
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