SLIDER

Film Friday: Resident Evil (1)

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NOTE: 
In order to faithfully break down and review each of these movies, there are going to be spoilers as I discuss plot. If you are desperately in need of not having anything spoiled for you, you'll have to skip the Resident Evil Reviews series.

The first in the series, Resident Evil is easily the best of the group. That doesn't mean it's good. Totally popcorn worthy, the plot is straightforward: there is a viral outbreak in some sort of corporate lab, the AI computer monitoring the place says: "seal shit off and no one gets out, because we just can't risk it." So the building is sealed and everyone dies. 
Thank you for saving humanity from the T-Virus, AI computer. 

And then we a bunch of commandos lead Milla Jovovich (Alice), who is evidently the head of security for the Umbrella Corporation, (but suffering from memory loss), down into The Hive. They open it up because they want to know what happened. 
And this stupidity is why we have a movie. 
Rain, played by Michelle Rodriguez, even states it: 



So, the AI that watches over everything down here decided everyone needed to die and the whole thing should be shut up against possible intruders? Sounds like "containment" to me. 
But I get it. 
They had to know. They had to make sure The Red Queen wasn't just acting up. So they sent a team in. OK. We'll let this go. 
And so they keep exploring The Hive, in search of answers. 


Oh, her defenses are up, you say? She's making it difficult, you say? 
Maybe there's a reason for that. Maybe there was a whole containment plan in case of outbreak

The team forces their way through. Bad things with lasers happen.

But eventually they make heir way through the hallway of death into the main room, aka, "The Red Queen's Chamber."  They really want to turn her off and back on again, because it works with phones and laptops, right?
She tries to stop them.



OK, creepiest representation of AI ever, but sometimes you should listen to the horrifying blood red little girl hologram when she says "don't do that." 
{Spoiler alert: they don't listen.} 


And then things proceed to get worse. Whoops, probably shouldn't have shut down the power system that was keeping everything sealed, i.e., keeping all the killer monsters contained.

To be fair, that was the team's first objective.

They do suffer from being super low on the zombie-killing learning curve. The first zombie attacks at 38:59, and it's not until 58:17 - a full twenty minutes of screen time! - that they realize "oh, gee, you have to shoot them in the head." (Also? They didn't discover this themselves, they had to be straight up told.)

Welp. Now they know what to do. Our group of hero commandos spends the rest of film trying to get back out of The Hive before the big doors seal themselves forever and nothing can get out - ever.
(Personally, I am in favor of the nothing ever getting out plan, but I'm on Team Red Queen, not Team Dip Shits.)
Much running around ensues, there is some blood, some unrealistic Jovovich ass-kicking, and for sub plot we have the mystery of who the inside contacts were and also, can we trust that one guy?
It's not brain food. (LOL, Brain Food.)

PS: Michelle Rodriguez doesn't make it. :( 

So, shit happens and because there are six total movies featuring Milla Jovovich in the center, I don't feel like I'm spoiling anything by saying she and one other dude, Matt, make it out alive. Scientists and more commandos descend onto them and the lead guy is all: "Sedate that chick, I want to do science on her and she is being annoying. And for funsies, let's put that Matt guy into the The Nemesis Program. Also, open up The Hive, baby, 'cuz I want to know what the plot of this movie was."

And we end on Alice waking up 28 Days Later style in a hospital room wearing only a gown and with part of her head shaved. When she makes it to the street, she sees that opening The Hive was actually a bad idea, and surely enough, there has been a massive outbreak Raccoon City.
The End.

This movie isn't the smartest of films, and the beginning sequence of Alice walking around The Mansion is slow (I almost always fast forward that), but overall it's a decent enough, fun flick for fans of zombies and horror. It's not brilliant or deep, and nuance is nonexistent, but it does what it's meant to do, it doesn't pretend to be something it's not.

Ties to the game:
Almost none. The Mansion, we can imagine, is probably meant as the tiniest of shout-outs to The Mansion from the original Resident Evil Playstation game. And The Nemesis is a character from the 3rd in the game series, so having Matt "put into The Nemesis program" is another. Other than that, there really are none.

C

Heads Up: Blood, Gore, Language, Monsters, Violence
 
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