Resident Evil

Reviewed by:
Eric Alt

Usually when you can hear the pitch meeting in your head while you’re watching a movie, it’s an omen of bad things to come. Except when you’re dealing with horror flicks, in which case it doesn’t matter as long as it delivers: gore, sexy babes in peril, and enough jolts to keep your girlfriend locked on your arm. For the most part, Resident Evil—despite being “Aliens meets Night of the Living Dead”—covers everything on the cheap thrill checklist.

In the sexy babe role is Milla Jovovich, here playing an amnesiac psuedo-military ass-kicker who can usually be found doling out the hurt rather than cowering in peril. She wakes from a strange slumber only to be whisked down into an underground lab overrun with virus-infected zombies by a team of “security experts” (it’s never quite clear what they are), among them an even more ass-kicking Michelle Rodriguez (any female character who’s first line of dialogue is “Blow me” tends not to be a shrinking violet). Of course, all of this is familiar to those who’ve played the Resident Evil video games. In fact, Resident Evil does a decent job of translating the game—hell, it’s at least better than Tomb Raider. Sure, some of the performances might be more wooden than Pinocchio’s erection, and the action far-fetched, but that's part of the fun. It uses the same mixture of mystery puzzle-solving and shoot-em-up gore that made the games so popular, and also throws in a healthy dose of horror movie cheese. And, best of all, it doesn’t give you a happy ending as it (oh so obviously) sets up a sequel. This is a down-and-dirty cheap thrill ride that’s about as fun as could be expected.

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