Resident Evil arrives with the name of a famous survival-horror game, but its strongest qualities belong to a straightforward zombie action film rather than a faithful adaptation.
Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson, the film stars Milla Jovovich as an amnesiac drawn into a crisis at The Hive, a sealed Umbrella Corporation bioweapons facility. Michelle Rodriguez co-stars as a tough, determined member of the team sent inside to investigate what happened.
The facility’s rogue artificial intelligence has locked everyone in, while the research complex has been overrun by the undead. The survivors must find a way out before the building becomes their tomb. Most of the supporting men are thinly drawn, but Jovovich and Rodriguez provide the film’s energy and personality.
A Resident Evil film in name more than spirit
As a translation of the games, the movie is frustrating. Its opening glimpse of an opulent mansion suggests the puzzle-driven horror of the first game, only for the story to move into a polished medical research facility. The familiar heroes from the first four games are absent, as is Resident Evil Survivor, the first-person, arcade-style spin-off.
Instead, the film introduces an entirely new group of characters. The connections to Capcom’s series are mostly visual and situational: Umbrella logos, zombie dogs, and CGI Lickers that appear during the third act. A sequence built around opening a door and dogs bursting through glass also offer recognisable nods to the games.
That distance from the source material does not make the film ineffective. Judged as a zombie movie, it is an entertaining exercise in watching an expendable group get isolated and eliminated through a series of inventive, often gruesome kills. Anderson’s affection for the movie Cube is easy to spot in the film’s trapped-facility structure.
Jovovich and Rodriguez carry the action
Following Tomb Raider, this is another major video-game adaptation led by women. Jovovich’s character is desperate to recover her memories and understand her connection to Umbrella, while Rodriguez’s character simply wants to survive, return home and resume her life. Her blunt attitude recalls Private Vasquez from Aliens.
The two women are given motivations and emotional stakes that do not revolve around male characters. That helps the film pass the Bechdel Test: it features multiple named women who speak to one another about something other than men. For a testosterone-heavy action franchise, that is a welcome surprise.
A missed opportunity for game and film
The film’s loose connection to the games is understandable in the context of the time. Video games were still far from mainstream, and a studio might have feared that a heavily game-specific adaptation would limit its theatrical audience.
Even so, the first film could have opened the door to a stronger relationship between the movies and games. Instead, fans receive a capable zombie thriller with scattered Resident Evil details, rather than the mansion-based survival horror experience the title promises.
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