Back again for my last post of 2021, and oh boy, did I bring you good boys and girls a special treat this time. I recently just watched the newest Resident Evil movie, one that I had hopes for up until it dropped in theaters. During production, I saw some things that made me excited, and others that made me raise an eyebrow, perhaps things that even made me pinch my own nipple to make sure I was awake. But, I still had some hope because this was a fresh director who seemed to be passionate about what he was making from everything that I saw. And, I have to say going in optimistic at all was a mistake. Thankfully, I curbed some of that from seeing poor critical reviews and some audience reviews that sounded like ass. But, fuck, man. I'm still feeling so disappointed.
I really don't know where I should start with this review, it's so hard to just not go on a manic rant about it. This review will have spoilers, I can't really skate around them to talk about what I want to. I guess before I get into anything negative, let me say some positive things about the movie. For starters, the first 45-50 minutes of the movie has some pretty nice eerie atmosphere that I enjoyed. Not the best I've ever seen by any means, but, I was vibing with the desolate/creepy feeling in the background of the movie on and off for the first half. I thought the setting did a decent job of portraying a small Midwest town, though I'm not really sure I loved the change up there.
The set design was pretty cool for the R.P.D. station exterior, though I wish they'd done more stuff with the interior. The mansion sections of the movie looked pretty cool once they were inside and you could see the interior, but, the exterior was actually very bland. Hey, at least there was a cool fucking lobby though, that's, uh, something, I guess. Speaking of the mansion, there's definitely some cool sequences that happen in those parts. I really enjoyed the initial introduction to the first zombie there, it was actually pretty creepy with the sound design and matched the original game pretty well. I also absolutely fucking loved the scene with Chris Redfield's firearm being the only thing lighting up the shot while he fights off a hoard of zombies desperately. It's one of the few moments of the movie that actually has a desperate, survival tone to it that matches with the games. If the movie had had a shit ton more of that, it would have been great.
Some of the zombies had pretty good practical effects to them, though not all of them which I'll talk about later. The Licker has a really cool introduction that I loved, I thought it was a really fun way to show its approach and the reveal itself has fairly decent CGI at first, the same can be said for the William Burkin G-monster transformation. The start of it looks really fucking good and is super fun. I really, really wish the CGI would have stayed at that level of quality for the entirety of the movie, but, instead, we just get little flakes scratched off the ass of the budget. I'll talk more about the CGI in the negative section. But, at least there's a bit of decent CGI in the movie, I guess. There's also some easter egg/references to the games that are pretty damn faithful to the games, which can be a nice nod from time to time. Though, there's issues with this as well.
The acting was pretty serviceable throughout the movie, minus a few smaller roles. I think the guy playing Leon probably had the most charisma to him, and the actor probably would have been the best if not for the writing. Chris Redfields actor does a decent job with the role, though, it's basically just being generic macho guy as he is in the first game. So, it's not exactly asking very much. Claire's actor did a pretty good job as well, and the rest were all serviceable for what they had to work with. I have some big issues with the characters that I'll go into here in a second. One last thing that I did like was the spin they added to the story/setting of Umbrella slowly poisoning the town over the years, and having a shadowy/corrupt control of the industrial town in secret. Then, up and leaving the town once they've drained the life from it.
And, that's literally all the good I could take away from the movie. So, now, let's get into the greasy ass of this fucker.
One big issue with the movie is the characters, probably even the biggest issue. They have been absolutely butchered in how they behave, their backstory, just everything. We're also missing big key characters from the games, such as Barry Burton, Rebecca Chambers and some others. Leon is the biggest causality of this movie, to the point where I feel like the director had some fat hate boner for the character. He is literally 0 percent identical to his game counterpart. He's been made into a sleepy, goofball fuck up that is used for a joke basically. I understand twisting the character a bit and adding some new elements to his character/backstory. But, making him a spoiled brat who accidently shot another cop in the ass, and is only a cop still due to his dad being a big wig cop is bizarre and stupid. It's some sad shit to watch. This has nothing to do with the actor and his performance, it is just terrible writing. I'm really confused on how the director wanted to adapt Resident Evil 4 using this universes Leon (The director was open on wanting to adapt Resident Evil 4 and Code Veronica). Every single person shits on him, he is literally useless the entire movie and he's just a tool used to keep things feeling lighthearted at times. His big moment in the film is miraculously finding a rocket launcher sitting in the train randomly and firing it at a giant monster one time. (Mind you, he vaporizes a giant monster with the other characters 3-10 feet away. And, they all just walk away fine.) Just, what the fuck, man?
The other characters are just really off as well. Sherry Burkin never interacts with Claire at all, Wesker is a good guy now which in and of itself isn't a deal breaker for the character, but, he also acts like what Chris should be acting like. Jill Valentine is an empty shell of a character with the only trait she possesses being she's in love with Wesker. Chief Irons has gone from being a psychopath in the game to being a clown in this movie that just has tons of wisecracks anytime he opens his mouth. I could go on more, but, everything is just badly written or just weird/awkward with the characters behaviors for the most part. If things were just tweaked a little bit and there was more character development, I think the characters would have been much better off.
The writing as a whole though is very messy for this movie. The story has a few decent beats, but, most of it is just a sloppy pile of goop it feels like. The dialogue is pretty much the same, there's lots of awkward talk between characters. There are references to the games that feel super painful to hear, such as what they do with the Jill Sandwich line, and the way they do "Itchy Tasty" is fucking awkward. And, for some reason an obscene amount of references to the 90s, I dunno why they chose to do this but it feels like they're beating you over the head with the fact that it's 1998. I dunno, it just comes off as a weird thing to keep doing. There's also references that feel like they're being set up for something later on, but, then they never pay off. There's a part early on where they're describing a dream Sherry has involving a Hunter. So, you kind of expect once they get into the secret labs that there's going to be one. But, nope. They also show HUNK for a very small section, again making me think he'd be involved somewhere at the end. But, again, nope. This happens a few other times, and it's just annoying.
The story feels pretty underdeveloped overall, I think this is from trying to combine two games into one movie under 2 hours long. If they had just made this movie based on the first game alone, I think it would have probably come out as a better product. Things feel very rushed and empty in what we got though. But, trying to establish and fit in heaps of lore and backstory for two games in such a short film seems impossible. There's definitely some poor writing here, though. In the first 30 minutes there's not really much that happens beyond setting up a few things here and there for later, and a 10 minute flashback to start the movie off. You would think for an almost 2 hour movie, there's be a lot of events that unfold. But, it's just hollow. If this script had been reworked a few times, I feel like there could have been some good shit here.
There are characters in the movie that are solely there to be exposition dumps for the other characters. And, even then it feels pointless to have any info dumps, because it never seems to make any difference to the story or how the characters react. Leon literally gets a huge info dump, and seems like he's not listening the entire time. And, never brings it up or talks about it again. It feels like it is there just for the audience alone, and it's just kind of fucking stupid when it has no real impact on anything else happening in the movie. There's other stuff that doesn't really make any sense, like Lisa Trevors role in the movie. I don't get how Umbrella is controlling the town and making everything shrouded in secret to protect themselves, then just lets a bioweapon out and about running around an orphanage interacting with people at night. It's weird and just goofy. She was a pitiful, tragic character in the games but still had a big threatening presence. And, none of that is here. I didn't hate that they tried to make her into an ally for the cast, but, it just sucked with how it was done. There's also some plotholes in the movie like Chief Irons lack of knowledge of very basic things, while also seemingly knowing all about the zombies and viruses and all this other shit he's helped to cover up. It's honestly just kind of laughably stupid.
For some reason as well, there are barely any zombies in the town for pretty much the entire movie. For the climax of the parts set in the town, I legit think we see maybe, like, 2-3 dozen zombies in total. Hardly the start of the zombie apocalypse or even really that tragic of an event in comparison to the games, where Raccoon City had 100k people in it and everyone died. I think that was a big part of the reason why it feels so barren for things happening in the movie while in town, there's just not really much of a looming threat. The mansion is the opposite for some reason. It's stated there is only a skeleton crew running things for Umbrella at the start of the movie. Yet, the mansion seems to be teeming with zombies once the character enter the building. Also, it's laughable that there's dozens and dozens and dozens of zombies in the mansion. There's carnage via a destroyed cop car with claw marks outside of the mansion. Yet, the STARS team has no issue walking through a forest into the mansion without any urgency. It feels like a massive waste of the setting for Raccoon City, while also a mess for the mansion. But, I'm guessing this was in part probably an issue due to the budget being pretty low.
Speaking of the zombies, I do have to say I'm kind of confused about them. All the first generation zombies for some reason look like cancer patients. I thought this was due to them being slowly poisoned over the years before being infected with the t-virus. But, even the workers in the mansion look like cancer patients, and I don't really get why. It's not exactly the most horrifying or spooky looking, and I can't say I was a huge fan of the design/special fx. It seemed like some people were also just "infected" and not nearly fully zombified as well, while others were. And, the timing of infection didn't really make sense on why some people were able to talk and yell and have thoughts, while others were literally killing machines unless you shot them in the head. Some zombies did look pretty great, like the first mansion zombie and a few other random ones here and there like the jail cell one. The CGI is fucking bad as well for the monsters, which I have to believe is a budget issue. The Licker looks fine at first, then starts looking really bad shortly after. The zombie dog shown in the movie is absolutely god awful, shit looks like some fan made effects from 2012. While Burkin G-monster looks good at the start of his transformation, the final form looks like a PS2 cutscene. I realize this movie didn't have a huge budget by any means, but, Christ. It's painful seeing how terrible the effects get sometimes.
The last things I want to touch on is just the ending of the movie, and how confusing it is to me. So, the city and mansion is getting destroyed at a set time and our characters have to escape, which makes sense. However, the way the city is destroyed is so fucking confusing I'm not entirely sure what happened to kill everything. On one hand, it seems like an earthquake machine has triggered and everything sinks down into the ground. Which is very goofy and cartoony, but whatever. Then after that happens though, there's an effect like everything is being turned to ash from a bomb going off with a sound wave, yet, there's no explosion or bomb. It's really fucking weird, though, probably a minor gripe to bring up compared to everything else. After the movie, there's an end credits cut scene that tried to set up sequel bait using Wesker and Ada Wong, and holy fuck was it bad. I literally was laughing at how goofy it was, and just had a fuuuuuuuuuuuck youuuuuuu in the back of my mind the whole time.
Overall, I would probably recommend you not watch this movie unless you can watch it for free, and are a die hard resident evil fan just so you can experience the small amount of things that this movie does good. It's a huge mess, but, underneath all this messy garbage I truly think that something good could have been made out of it. Alas, I guess we'll just have to enjoy feeling like we're being forced to eat some thicc zombie ass instead. I apologize for this being more of a rant than a normal review. But, I can't help but jam my fingers up my ass out of sheer confusion and annoyance after watching this movie. But, uh, yeah. I hope you enjoyed reading about this dumpster fire. If you've seen it, let me know what you thought about it.
Until next time though, doods.
Later!
