Wow. Who would have guessed that someone would one day mix equal parts George Romero, a survival horror video game, and Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland together and actually come out with anything of note, no less a fairly entertaining feature-length film? This is exactly what director Paul W.S. Anderson did after issuing the world his vastly underrated Event Horizon seven years prior. However, though the director does attempt to posit a cautionary tale atop his already eclectic mix, itself to mixed ends, Resident Evil nonetheless meets its agenda: to be a complete and utter guilty-pleasure piece of throwaway zombie violence.
When a genetically-engineered virus contaminates the Umbrella Corporation’s central division of operations, Raccoon City, the company’s defense system seals every one of its 500 employees inside. The pathogen not only kills everyone it comes in contact with, but reanimates them into cannibalistic monsters. A task force is sent in to access the situation, quarantine the virus, and search for survivors.
Most genre critics have noted that Resident Evil feels like George Romero’s zombie films, which should be of no surprise in that the video game upon which the film is based is highly derivative of the director’s 1968 masterpiece, Night of the Living Dead. However, Anderson updates the allusion by including a handful of homages to the concluding chapter of the zombie master’s trilogy, Day of the Dead. We catch a glimpse of a newspaper headline which reads “The Dead Walk” as one of the task force members echoes Captain Rhodes’s sentiments in the face of impending undeath, “Choke on ’em.” Interestingly enough, Romero was contracted to initially direct the feature and produced an early draft of the script, all to no effect.
Intriguingly, Anderson manages to eschew the cumbersome lag of game play by mythologizing the narrative as the feature serves as a prequel to the video game itself. Furthermore, the film’s pace is aptly divided between the catastrophe at Raccoon City, our heroine’s (Milla Jovovich) ever-so-gradual recovery from amnesia, the hunt for survivors, the epiphany of what preceded the task force’s appearance, and the group’s subsequent attempt to–not only escape (in real-to-reel time no less)–but find a cure for the infected.
Indeed, Resident Evil is a voyage narrative in which much is discovered and, appropriately, a motif involving Lewis Carroll’s masterpiece, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, plays throughout. Aside from the central character’s name being Alice, our antagonist is a tyrannical computer referred to as the Red Queen, which demands that heads be cut off and, in one very visceral case, succeeds. After descending into a tunnel, a.k.a. a rabbit hole, the group enters the “Hive” via a mirrored door, or rather, through the looking glass (the title to the sequel to Carroll’s aforementioned novel). And, of course, we watch as a white rabbit serves as a test subject to the ominous T-virus.
Yet, for all the referential fun, Anderson’s film, first and foremost, fails to align its influences into any coherent pattern. Granted, we watch as the largest corporation in the world not only permits its employees to die without recourse in order to protect its reputation, but does so in order to further test its product. (You can’t well expect compassion from an entity which produces weapons for biological warfare.) But, of course, this is the feature’s rub. Whereas Romero posits his zombies as a metaphor and as cultural criticism, Anderson uses his cultural criticism as a catalyst to introduce his zombies before abruptly abandoning the former. Yes, we have reanimated businessmen and women, but to what ends?
Next in line is the complaint department is the plausibility factor of the film. The Red Queen informs us that “the slightest scratch” will induce infection. When an air duct collapses, sending two task members into a quagmire of undead, both escape without, apparently, the proverbial scratch. In pure Romerian style, Anderson’s necrosapians move slowly, yet the virus jarringly effects other species differently as reanimated Dobermans dart and dash as if they were . . . well . . . normal, albeit very bloodthirsty, canines. Lastly, when Spence (James Purefoy) hands the scantily-clad Alice his jacket, she begrudgingly puts it on. Surprisingly, even though the article of clothing in question fit its original owner as if it were custom-made and, in lieu of the fact that Spence is noticeably larger than Alice, the gift undergoes instantaneous shrinkage in that it fits its female wearer to a T.
Paul W.S. Anderson’s Resident Evil is nothing monumental, for film nor for the genre, or the subgenre of video game adaptations for that matter. In this respect, it is merely a competent example of the latter in a sea of poor efforts thus far. Even though the feature crawls with George Romero’s influence, atop its inclusion of Lewis Carroll’s subconscious unease, the feature fails to congeal thematically, presenting us with a would-be great criticism of corporate ethics and procedures, itself a would-have-been first within the genre. However, one must credit Anderson for his humble attempt at diversion with the placing Milla Jovovich’s vagina on the big screen. Sadly for Anderson, a poonanny doth not a movie make, even though it happens to be surrounded by the undead. Yet, you have to admit, the voyage by which we discover that the treasure chest is empty is nonetheless fun.
-Egregious Gurnow
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
