Synopsis: From the mind of visionary filmmaker Zach Cregger (Weapons, Barbarian) comes a thrilling — and terrifying — reinvention of the Resident Evil franchise. In an all-new story, Resident Evil follows Bryan (Austin Abrams), a medical courier who unwittingly finds himself in an action-packed, non-stop race for survival as one fateful, horrifying night collapses around him in chaos.
What We Thought:
I first knew of Zach Cregger’s work with the comedy group The Whitest Kids U’ Know which I thoroughly enjoyed. I now have seen all three of his “horror” flicks, Barbarian, Weapons and Resident Evil. Unfortunately I have to say, I only like half of one of them (the first half of Barbarian). I was one of the few honest people to say Weapons wasn’t good and unfortunately again I’m probably going to be one of the few who will say Resident Evil isn’t good either.
I mentioned the first half of Barbarian because Cregger films being cut up into pieces with drastically different tones has become his calling card. In that movie the entire tone takes a drastic shift once it becomes about Justin Long and not the two leads in the house at the beginning. With Weapons, that film is told through the perspective of multiple characters each with drastically different tones. Can you see where I’m going with this?
That brings us to this movie, Resident Evil. The first 45 minutes or so is about a delivery driver trying to get to Raccoon City to deliver what he thinks is a kidney or heart or some organ to save someone’s life. He ends up in a storm struggling to drive there. He hits a woman and when he gets out to look to see if she’s ok, the body is gone and he goes looking for it (not gonna happen in real life). He finds the body, tries to help her, gets her into the car and a cop pulls up. He explains the situation, the cop helps and you think we’re finally on to Raccoon City. Nope the proverbial sh*t hits the fan and the delivery driver is on his own struggling to survive. Ok that’s fine, it’s a very different take than the previous Resident Evil movies with Milla Jovovich, but I can give it credit for trying something new.
Then I realized there’s about 45 minutes left and it’s time for Cregger’s drastic change in tone! Now that the delivery guy is finally in Raccoon City, the movie has to remember it’s a Resident Evil film. It introduces us to two immediately useless characters who ultimately serve zero purpose to the film. It has all kinds of violence and zombies and what not that I would normally appreciate, but at this point I’ve pretty much checked out of the flick. He finally gets to the hospital where there’s even more adventure for him to participate in! The first half is pretty much a survival movie and the second half is video game violence which the movie repeatedly tells you feels like a video game. Sony, I get it, the movie is based on the Resident Evil video games, you don’t need characters saying video games.
The worst part of seeing Resident Evil last night was hearing the crowd laughing at repeated jokes about locks and the delivery guy dropping F-Bombs like he’s reading from a Quentin Tarantino script. Hearing the crowd respond to jump-scares you can see coming a mile away also makes me feel sad that people aren’t smart enough to figure out what’s about to happen because they foreshadowed it 20 minutes ago. I sat there bored and wished I was dumb enough to enjoy it like I had never seen a movie before in my life. That same crowd enjoyed Barbarian and Weapons and will most likely make Resident Evil a hit. With little else playing right now it’ll probably open #1 at the box office and with the ending it has kick off a full franchise reboot. It’s not for me and I most likely won’t continue watching the franchise if Cregger returns for the sequel.
The Nerds Templar 