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| Images courtesy of Sony Pictures |
I was fifteen when the first Resident Evil game hit the PlayStation, and I got my mom to rent it for me one weekend. I invited my buddy over, ordered a pizza, cracked open some sodas, and popped the disc in. We were blown away by the live-action intro, and then the incredible graphics. So many polygons, hot damn! Games are never gonna look better than this. The beginning of the game is rather uneventful, allowing the player to wander around the mansion and get used to the tank controls (this version was before dual analog stick control was added to the PS1, so it was tank controls using a D-pad, the ultimate torture).
Eventually, I went down a long hallway, and it shifted to a cutscene. A lone zombie was hunched over a dead body, feeding on it with meaty, crunchy slurps. It slowly turned around to look right at me, a low moan escaping its lips. Immediately, the game returned control to me, and both my friend and I were screaming at the top of our lungs as the zombie shuffled slowly towards me. It's hard to turn around with tank controls (later they added a 180 quick-turn option), and my friend is screaming RUN at me, but I can't maneuver my character well because I'm panicking; the zombie chomps down on me, and I perish. YOU DIED slides onto the screen in giant, bloody red font. That was the moment I was hooked on the franchise (and survival horror) forever.
No video game movie adaptation will ever fully capture the feeling of playing the game yourself, and if you stray from the source material, fans will be pissed; so it's usually a lose/lose situation. Zach Cregger already got a taste of this during the press tour for his version of Resident Evil, as the fandom picked apart small details from the trailer and lambasted the film sight unseen. That said, while this movie isn't an airtight addition to the games' lore, it absolutely understands the heart of what makes the games compelling, and it adds small touches that pay homage to the franchise while doing its own thing.
The story follows Bryan (Austin Abrams), a medical courier who is tasked with delivering an important package to Raccoon City Hospital. Because of the snow and ice, the road to Raccoon City is treacherous, and on his way, Bryan accidentally hits a woman walking alone in the blizzard. However, he discovers something isn't quite right about her, and he soon realizes his experience isn't an isolated incident. All hell is breaking out in Raccoon City, and he has to survive and make his way to the hospital while avoiding all kinds of hazards and creatures.
Anyone who has played a Resident Evil game has come upon the little notes and voice recordings from NPCs who were also trapped in the zombie crisis. Have you ever wondered what exactly they went through, those people who were caught in an extraordinary situation with no combat training and no weapons? That is exactly what Cregger is exploring in this film. How does an ordinary person deal with a crisis? Bryan isn't Leon, doing backflips and headshots. He's not even as good as rookie Leon from Resident Evil 2, a cop fresh out of the academy, heading to his first day at the police station. Bryan is just some dude trying to make his way home to his fiancée and not die in the process. In its own way, it is just as intriguing to watch him go through the movie as it is to live out a power fantasy as Leon/Chris/Jill/Claire in the games.
Resident Evil follows the same structure as the games: a slow build-up, an arrival at an empty house, a sewer level, and a stark white lab in the third act. Bryan finds weapons, upgrades them to more powerful ones, scrounges for bullets because he always runs out, and is forced to backtrack and take convoluted routes. Cregger knows how these games work, but he also happily subverts it when it needs to be an actual film instead of a game cutscene or for humorous reasons. Like his previous films, this is a horror/comedy, and that might be the most divisive aspect. The games are a bit campy, especially the earlier ones, but the later ones and the remakes have a much more serious tone, other than Leon cracking a dad joke occasionally. The audience I saw it with was having a blast, alternating between laughing and screaming and generally having fun.
Those who go into this film with an open mind and who realize that it is spiritually a Resident Evil film and not canonically, will probably enjoy it more than those looking for a 1:1 adaptation. Cregger isn't really trying to revolutionize video game adaptations; he just wanted to make an entertaining, goopy creature feature within the confines of the Resident Evil universe. As a film critic and someone who has played all the mainline games, I found it satisfying on both fronts, which is rare for video game adaptations.
--Michelle Kisner