Resident Evil: The Whole Fuckin' Epic…Maybe

Two years ago a movie did something that no movie had ever really done before: it did a video game justice. Director Paul W.S. Anderson was the main reason for this. He knew that there was no way to make a “good film” out of a video game, so he just went for broke. He made it gory, loud and scary. And he blew some shit up. We didn’t really care about very many of the characters (except for maybe Alice (Milla Jovavich)), but that’s ok. We don’t care much about the characters in video games, either, unless we’re playing that character. And, since Alice is the main character, we’re supposed to kind of identify with her. He had learned a little something the last time he directed a video game movie. Mortal Kombat was considered one of the best of this weird little genre. Between the two movies he directed Event Horizon (I hear it’s a pretty scary sci-fi horror flick…never seen it) and Soldier (we all know that one sucks). The, all of a sudden, he does the Resident Evil flick. Now, after Alien Vs. Predator, he’s pretty much got the market cornered on video game flicks. (Although I heard that AVP wasn’t worth the film it’s printed on.)

The first RE movie, on repeated viewings, is nowhere near a great movie. It’s just a lot of fun. There’s no message, just a lot of shooting and zombies getting splattered. (And the occasional military guy getting diced. That was fun.)

The one thing that I noticed this time (our wonderful Alamo Drafthouse showed both movies in a row. Gotta love those guys.) is that the music is, for the most part, right out of Italian horror flicks that obviously influenced Anderson. You would think that Goblin had come out of retirement (if they ever went into it…who knows?) to do the soundtrack. Even the more modern electronica sounds like their brand of metal/dance/horror music.

I’ve already reviewed the first movie, so check out that review if you want to know more.

The second movie was not directed by Anderson and it shows. His hands are still all over it (he wrote and produced it), but since he was too busy with AVP, he couldn’t get behind the camera.

That’s really too bad. This time out we REALLY don’t care about the characters. There’s not even really a familiar face to latch onto. Sure, Milla is back (and hotter than ever), but there’s no up and comer to recognize and think is squandering their talents. (Oded Fehr from the Mummy movies does not equal Michelle Rodriguez. I didn’t recognize him.)

But let’s start at the beginning.

The end of the first movie had Alice and Matt (Eric Mabius) make it back to the mansion from The Hive, the secret underground lair of the Umbrella Corp. They had found out that the Corporation (the most powerful in the world) was doing horrible experiments and now they’ve backfired. One of the chemicals that they were holding on to had been released and turned all of their employees into zombies.

As soon as they made it to the mansion they were split up by guards and scientists. Matt was taken to be put into the Nemesis Experiment and Alice was taken for further study. Alice escapes (but not before a nice twat shot) and finds out that Raccoon City has been either evacuated or turned into zombies. Either way, things are looking pretty grim for our heroine.

This one picks up right where the first one left off. But now we have a new heroine to follow. Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory—Jill, by the way, is the actual character from the games. Alice doesn’t exist.) is a STARS officer. From what I could gather, they were kind of like the elite police of Raccoon City. They aren’t very well explained. She finds a little ragtag band of folks to try to get them the hell out of the city before the Umbrella Corp. blows the shit out of it with a nuclear bomb. How does a corporation have that power, you ask? Ask Dubya.

Along the way Jill and Alice meet up and they join forces to get their crew out of town. They get phone calls from Dr. Ashford (Jared Harris) to help them find their way out, but only if they rescue his daughter, Angie (Sophie Vavasseur). You’ll recognize her as the model for the Red Queen hologram in the first movie.

That’s when Nemesis shows up. He’s the ultimate bad guy here. He’s some kind of zombie/monster thing that has big guns and is controlled by Umbrella. He is, of course, out to kill all of the STARS agents…and Alice. But he might just have some humanity left in him.

Not much of a plot, but what do you expect from a video game movie?

But still, this isn’t nearly as good or as fun as the last movie. There’s a pretty horrible stereotype walking around (Mike Epps plays a typical black guy who is at once wannabe gangsta and afraid of everything), the characters are all stupid (including Jill) and it’s just not as scary. And the Mortal Kombat scene didn’t help matters any.

One thing I did like was the political commentary about how corporate our country has gotten. The Umbrella Corp. pretty much runs the country and they can get away with anything all in the name of science. They kill people, destroy cities, and, of course, turn living things into walking dead. And it’s all allowed by the government.

There’s also a lot of Alien type stuff going on. Alice is very much like Ripley. She keeps getting turned more and more into one of the zombie creatures. And she kicks ass and becomes very attached to the little girl. (By the way, I’m surprised Angie didn’t say something about how they mostly come out at night…..Mostly.) There’s a company that profits from death and experiments on creatures that we have no understanding of. And those experiments create a kind of super creature.

I know this is all pretty much directly from the game, but it seems like such a rip-off on screen.

Oh well. Maybe next time Paul Anderson will be back in the director’s chair and things will get better. You do know that there will be a next time, right? Oh, ye of little faith.