In March 1996, Capcom unleashed the first Resident Evil game upon the world. Its release reanimated interest in the stagnating zombie genre as well as popularising, and arguably defining, the survival horror video game genre. It is unsurprising therefore that less than a year later in January of 1997, the film rights to what would become the Resident Evil franchise were bought by German film production company, Constatin Film. But was the resulting film a smash hit, or did its rotten entrails stink out cinemas across the globe? The answer is a bit of both.
However, in this article our main concern is not critical success, nor is it commercial success (although we will get onto that later). What we are looking at is simply, in retrospect, does it hold up?
The Established Facts:
As we’ve already established, Constatin Film bought the rights to Resident Evil in early 1997, but the finished film would not see the light of day until 2002. After rejecting an early draft of the script which roughly followed the original game’s narrative but dropped specifics such as referencing Umbrella or STARS, in 1998 Constatin Films signed on legendary Of the Dead director George A Romero to both write and direct the film following a well received advert Romero had directed for the second Resident Evil game. However, it has been reported that Romero’s script for the film would have seen it get a minimum of an NC-17 rating in the United States, thus making the finished product too risky a proposition for Constatin Films as it would have been seen as excluding the ‘intended audience’ for this videogame based film, and films with this rating typically did not perform as well commercially. As a result, Romero severed ties with the project, and it would effectively remain in limbo until late 2000, when Paul W. S. Anderson took the directing and writing duties on himself.
Anderson had already established himself as capable of making videogame tie ins not just work as a film but, more importantly for the studio, commercially viable with his work on 1995s Mortal Kombat adaptation, the first videogame tie in movie to ever be considered commercially successful. So with Anderson on board production of the film began in earnest, and it was finally released on March 15th 2002 to US audiences, just a week prior to the release of Capcom’s remake of the first Resident Evil game for the Gamecube.
The film was undoubtedly a commercial success seeing returns of just short of $103 million world wide on a budget of just $33 million. Whilst there was some critical praise for the film, it’s Rotten Tomatoes score sits at a low 34% based on 127 critical reviews. Interestingly however, it’s audience score is almost double that at 67% based on reviews by close to 450,000 users. With most of these reviews coming long after the film’s initial release, does that indicate that it has held up well over time?
Plot Summary:
The plot sees amnesiac Alice (Milla Jovovich) and a band of survivors infiltrate a secret underground laboratory known as ‘The Hive’, run by the Umbrella Corporation, the world’s leading pharmaceuticals company. The lab has been sealed off by the resident AI and the crew’s job is to discover why before the entrance to the lab is sealed forever. However, all is not as it seems as the deadly T-Virus has been released transforming the employees of the lab into flesh hungry monsters. Alice must regain her memories as she fights to survive long enough to escape this underground nightmare and unravel the dark goings on of the Umbrella Corporation.
The Good, the Bad and the In-Between:
It will come as a shock to no one that Resident Evil isn’t exactly the Citizen Kane of it’s time. There are however several things that it does surprisingly well, and certainly when it comes to things like shot composition and understanding of the basics of filmmaking, Anderson does an admirable job of presenting the story. If we take the opening sequence for instance, notice that for as long as the T-Virus canister is in the scene, it is always the focus of the shot. As an audience this makes us understand that this is important and draws attention away from less important things like the identity of the figure collecting the sample. We know that this vial will be integral to the plot in some way. Notice also the colour palette used: everything is bright white and clinical until the virus is released at which point things start to turn blue matching the chosen colour of the vial and indicating the spread of the infection. This is basic visual storytelling and something that Anderson clearly understands early in the film.
The life and death of any horror film, however, is whether or not it is scary. Fear is one of our most primal emotions, inducing an adrenaline rush that informs our fight or flight instincts, and it is this that draws us to horror as a genre more than any other. Resident Evil is unlikely to make you want to hide behind the sofa, but it does a decent enough job of delivering the scares it does have. Anderson employs a lot of fake-out jump scares as the film is being established, arguably one too many as it gets to a point where you are not as invested when the real scares do come. Jump scare fake outs are supposed to be used to break tension and give your audience a chance to breathe whilst keeping them invested. If you keep breaking the tension however, it dissipates and ends up taking away from moments you are trying to build to, and unfortunately that tends to happen here.
What is used to great effect however is implied violence. There is a sound argument for the imagination of the audience being a more effective tool for conveying the impact of a violent moment than actually showing it, because it means that when you do show moments of actual violence and gore, they seem far more effective. The example I will use here is that of the elevator scene in the opening 10 minutes of the film. Whilst we never actually see it happen, we know that a character is decapitated in this scene because of the implied effect, and because we never see this happen when another character is again decapitated and we see all the gory detail, it is far more effective.
One of the things most of the original critics seem to agree on is the effective use of set design and the general quality of the sets used. The appearance of the Hive certainly does sell it as being a top secret lab mixed with an executive office you might find in any US city highrise, but it’s a detail in the mansion atop the entrance to the lab that I think is the most intriguing. When Alice wakes up in the shower, as the camera pans backwards we see the tiled floor in a checkerboard design, implying Alice is about to begin a game of chess with the ‘Red Queen’ the seemingly malevolent AI in control of The Hive. The AI being named ‘The Red Queen’ and Alice herself are clearly references to Lewis Carroll’s ‘Alice in Wonderland’ where the titular Alice plays a game of human sized chess against The Red Queen. The Hive being located underground could also be an allusion to falling down the rabbit hole as are the white rabbits shown being injected with the T-Virus and the Antivirus. It’s an additional level of detail that owing to the rest of the film’s content would not normally be considered.
Most of the film’s failings do come down to the quality of the script and how it is acted however. Here we have a very early example of Michelle Rodriguez playing Michelle Rodriguez. Any of her dialogue in the film could have been copied and pasted from any number of the films she has been in since, and whilst she plays moody badass female well, it’s difficult to see much differentiation. Milla Jovovich still seems to be finding her feet as Alice and whilst her credentials as a security operative hired by Umbrella make some of her actions at least feasible, the film does slip into the realm of absurd when she is running up walls to perform flying kicks to zombie dogs or practicing MMA takedowns on Zombies. Thankfully this is expanded upon in the later films and we are given more of a reason to accept that she possesses these abilities, but here it seems mildly ridiculous.
Much of the rest of the cast are here to serve as exposition dumps and set dressing. One character, James ‘One’ Shade (which I had to look up because I could find next to no mention of his name in the film itself), may as well be called Captain Exposition, as barely any of his lines serve to do anything more than explain the plot of the film. The fact that he dies in quite spectacular fashion as soon as he’s finished all of his expositing is quite humorous in hindsight. The film’s actual antagonist, Spence, also seems to have no other character traits than being self centred and sarcastic, and it is a genuine shame that Anderson chose to have the character legitimately suffer the same amnesia as Alice does as it would have potentially been a smarter reveal that he had been faking his memory loss the whole time in order to facilitate his escape with the T-Virus. The dialogue he’s given and glances towards Alice as the film goes on suggest he is probing for information as to how much everyone knew about what he had done, but this potential little nuance goes unfounded when he just suddenly remembers everything at a convenient point in the film. There’s even a great moment in the film where as The Red Queen states the virus could have ‘highly profitable military applications’ the camera is focused on Spence. Furthermore, the missed opportunity to explore the relationship between Alice and Spence and maybe have him motivated by something other than greed, like betrayal at Alice’s actions against Umbrella for instance, is seemingly just thrown out in favour of him being a jerk.
Another of the film’s failings, especially when looked at through a modern lens, is its frankly awful CGI. To be fair there are moments when the CGI effects are used well, such as when exploring the map of the Hive itself and when viewing the perspective of The Red Queen, providing us with an almost video game style visual. Where it really falls apart is when the CGI is used to create monsters or gore effects instead of using practical effects. The Licker is the main culprit here, as for the scenes where it is required to be more mobile it looks little better than the Licker we see for the first time in Resident Evil 2. What’s frustrating about this is that the creature also has scenes where entirely practical effects are used to create it and these still look amazing. Given budget constraints it is understandable why a mix of CGI and practical effects would be used, but a less is more approach would have been better here, where we don’t actually see as much of the Licker thus allowing the film makers to utilise more practical effects.
The Verdict:
All in all I feel that time may have not been as kind to some of the aspects of Resident Evil, particularly its CGI effects. That being said, there is definitely more to this film than meets the eye and despite all the missed opportunities, hokey dialogue and acting and lack of character development, I still find this to be an enjoyable film to watch, even if only the once.
Final Verdict: Watch It!
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