Directed by:
Paul W.S. AndersonScreenplay:
Paul W.S. AndersonCinematography:
David JohnsonCast:
Milla Jovovich, Michelle Rodriguez, Eric Mabius, James Purefoy, Martin Crewes, Colin Salmon, Anna Bolt, Heike Makatsch, Jaymes Butler, Jason Isaacs (more)VOD (1)
Plots(1)
Something rotten is brewing beneath the industrial mecca known as Raccoon City. Unknown to its millions of residents, a huge underground bioengineering facility known as The Hive has accidentally unleashed the deadly and mutating T-virus, killing all of its employees. To contain the leak, the governing supercomputer, Red Queen, has sealed all entrances and exits. Now a team of highly-trained super commandos including Rain (Michelle Rodriguez), Alice (Milla Jovovich) and Matt (Eric Mabius) must race to penetrate The Hive in order to isolate the T-virus before it overwhelms humanity. To do so, they must get past the Red Queen's deadly defences, face the flesh-eating undead employees, fight killer mutant dogs and battle The Licker, a genetically mutated savage beast whose strength increases with each of its slain victims. (Universal Sony Pictures Home Entertainment)
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Reviews (7)
In its day, this was a relatively entertaining piece of trash that is rather laughable from today's perspective. Whether with some of the CGI segments or the at times fairly poor editing. But what works here are the fundamentals, which should work in any killer movie, i.e. I enjoyed wondering in what order the main characters would exit the screen. And Michelle Rodriguez has one of her coolest roles here.
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Confusing action, stupid clichés, irritating characters, and zero engagement. When all I'm rooting for is Michelle Rodriguez in her classic pose of "I'll kill anyone who argues with me" and only one scene entertains me, it's really bad. Paul W.S. Anderson's tangled directing foreshadowed a series where the first installments are ironically worse.
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Mesmerized by Event Horizon, I was looking forward to another good helping of Anderson’s perversion, the chosen material called for that, but alas! What I got instead was disappointment and utter boredom. The only scene that pulled me out of my lethargy was the one in the corridor with the elaborate security measures of the mainframe, where Anderson wasn’t afraid to push the envelope. Not even Mila Jovovich in a mini-skirt pulled it off, although I admit her karate against a mutated Doberman has something to it :)
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I may have been too absorbed by the atmosphere in Event Horizon, but Resident Evil somewhat annoyed me from the beginning. All of Anderson's contribution is limited to countless silly jump scares that mask the prosaic fact that the film lacks tension and real horror. True, Milla is very sexy, and Rodriguez is sympathetically debauched, but Resident Evil lacks truly distinctive action scenes and a little perspective. From this angle, the second film, Apocalypse, seems a little more fun and more "brain free"... Otherwise, it's still the same blood type, routine, decent, watchable. It’s worth mentioning that Anderson can do better, but after Resident Evil and AvP, I have some doubts.
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I admit that it's quite brisk and well shot, that it has a pretty thick atmosphere full of good scares at the beginning and the zombies are nasty as hell. But what's the point when the whole thing is such terrible crap that it made me laugh out loud at times. The undead, however well designed, were terribly clumsy, and their human victims had no trouble escaping from even the largest of crowds, while the intrepid Milla Jovovich puts everything in the same bag, whether it was mutated people, dogs or the funny monster at the end. I also expected a lot more rawness and some blood from Anderson, but in an hour and a half, the director only offered us a severed head and one interesting dismemberment, though the camera got scared of it. The 3 stars are the furthest I can go, it definitely doesn't deserve more.
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Gallery (105)
Photo © 2002 Screen Gems
![Resident Evil - Photos](http://image.pmgstatic.com/cache/resized/w663/files/images/film/photos/158/691/158691134_fc704c.png)
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