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Review

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"Resident Evil" (2002) written and directed by Paul W.S. Anderson which stars Milla Jovovich (whom he marries in 2009 by the way) as a brand new character in this spin off of the iconic video game franchise. It's cheesy trash, but it's entertaining cheesy trash and is certainly better than the likes of "Doom" (2005), at least in my opinion.

Umbrella Corporation, the world's leading manufacturer of medicine and bio weaponry enlist a team of elite marines to stop a potential outbreak from one of their most important research labs called the Hive situated beneath a fictional United States city called Raccoon City. An amnesiac woman named Alice (Jovovich) wakes up naked, dazed, and confused in a mansion. This mansion is the secret entrance to the Hive, and she meets another amnesiac man named Spence (James Purefoy) who she vaguely recalls having an intimate relationship with before. The Hive has been commandeered by a now homicidal supercomputer A.I. named the Red Queen, which is harboring horrific experiments from basic zombies and Cerberus Hellhounds to mutating Lickers.

Resident Evil is a trash cheesy gimmick video game film, but doesn't offend or annoy me as much as some other terrible video game movies do and I think I ultimately liked it at least a little bit. I think this is due to the great set design, the location choice, the niche survival scenario they are in, and the relatively large budget which is well utilized. The cast are actually decent as well despite their inherently disposable characters which have no affiliation to the game series whatsoever. I did think the amnesiac stuff was unnecessary though, and it unraveled things very slowly in everyone's favorite story telling device: flashbacks!

Some things that bothered me were relatively basic and shouldn't have been an issue, but they were. The soldiers refuse to shoot at their target's heads for the first half of the film, and then we are given a full explanation on what a "zombie" is, despite 99.99% of the audience watching should already know what it is or at the very least how to kill one. The music was . . . Strange, didn't feel appropriate, and when it did feel appropriate, it would cut short. The lore of the series is strong but the unique story elements of this film are weak, and I wasn't very satisfied with the cliff hanger / sequel bait ending, and it was funny to me how she ended up naked, dazed, and confused, once again at the end of the film, showing us how purposeless the film was since she ends up in (nearly) the same place as she begun.

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