Rating of
2/4
"Resident Evil" by Yojimbo
Yojimbo - wrote on 02/22/12
A special ops team infiltrates a top secret bio-weapons research facility after an outbreak of a virus that mutates living creatures into undead monsters. Paul Anderson treats us to another of his unimaginative and sterile creature features based on the successful videogame franchise. Any heterosexual man cannot fail to find Milla Jovovitch eminently watchable (her acting talents notwithstanding) and the special effects work quite well, particularly during the Red Queen section, but as with all of Anderson's films it is all so familiar and derivative that the pervading sense is of deja vu. That particular sequence is itself a straight rip off of Cube and although the zombies are of the "proper" type (ie. all slow moving, shambling figures) there's so little atmosphere or even gore that it just doesn't work as a horror film. As a slice of cheesy action sci-fi it passes the time inoffensively enough, but quite why it warranted a slew of sequels I have no idea.
