When the first trailer for this reboot of the Resident Evil film series was revealed, the reception was kinda split, and i guess it was in part because over time people learned to enjoy the crappy Paul W.S . Anderson films for what they were, liked their brand of cinematic cheese and overall embraced their “so bad they’re charming” nature.
And i do agree that there’s something comforting, especially in retrospective, about them, for all the flaws and plots that had barely anything to do with the ones in the Resident Evil videogames themselves, they did manage to faithfully recapture the B-movie feel of the games (itself borrowed from many zombie B-movies) in their own way, while hindsight confirm they were products of their time indeed, in this case from an era where film adaptations of videogames had a bad reputation about them, quite different from today’s perception, with an Uncharted movie released and a Gran Turismo film that at the time of writing is just a month away from hitting theathers.
Times have indeed changed, so it’s not that much of a surprise to see Capcom (itself a different company from the confused and “appeal to the west” driven mess of back when the Milla Jovovich led film series was still going) opt for a reboot film instead of trying to follow up from a film that indeed was called Resident Evil: The Final Chapter and indeed served as closure. Kinda.
Sure, there’s the fact the Paul W.S. Anderson RE film series had been very profitable, like, VERY profitable, but the company opted to instead have the austrialian director adapt one of the biggest modern Capcom franchises, Monster Hunter, which released in 2020 and was/is clearly intended to spawn another film series of adaptations.
For Resident Evil things had to change, after all the series itself had changed many times and finally found a proper new identity with Resident Evil VII, and they wanted to leave behind the popular but heavily criticized (and kinda maligned to some) old film series, start anew, and this time actually adapts more faithfully the series instead of whatever the fuck W.S. Anderson did so he cold have his literal waifu kick zombie ass, do flips and eventually name drops characters from the games, etc.
Makes sense to me, especially when you hire Johannes Roberts, the director of 47 Meters Down and The Strangers: Prey At Night, which is already a good sign when this reboot wants to do a more serious take on the series, making the idea sound a lot more plausible to accomplish.
As one would assume from the trailer and synopsis that was thrown around, Resident Evil: Welcome To Raccoon City basically provides an abridged retelling that combines the plots of Resident Evil and Resident Evil 2 into a single one, not really random as both games’ plot take place in Raccon City, where in 1998 the farmaceutical megacorporation Umbrella Corporation had basically withdraw from operating, leaving the city to wither.
After an epidemic turns people and animals into undead monsters (by the Umbrella slowly contaminating the water supplies), a squad of local police officers is sent to investigate the Spencer Mansion in the nearby mountain area, while other survivors (including the sister of a local policeman, Chris Redfield) rally to survive the horrors left by Umbrella.
Obviously the movie “combo plot” offers some variation to the story, expecially in slightly reworking the character’s lore, with most differences being necessary to an extent in order to make the two plots merge and flow better, though as i feared it feels rushed (expecially the third act), not excessively so, but it’s a bit too fast moving and with the script here i don’t know if giving the movie 15 extra minutes to round up the runtime to 2 hours… would have really made things better.
Plus, the references to iconic scenes of the games are nice, but some are nicely “smuggled” into the narrative, and others are hamfisted, like the “itchy tasty” one, but its undeniable Roberts manages to capture the more serious and creepy side of the games, invent enough to stay loyal but not just reharsh the source material, while delivering a solid atmosphere and a solid effort to make zombies scary again, with the occasional jokes and moments of levity because it’s still a B-movie at heart, and Resident Evil had always a lot of goofs and cheese from its very first outing, so it fits.
I find hilarious though that initially people that liked the older Paul W.S. Anderson movie had the audacity to claim they had better effects… please actually go back to those and take a good look, instead of going by some hazy nostalgic memories, as production values here are quite good and kinda impressive if you consider that this reboot ‘s budget was not even a HALF of pretty much any Paul W.S. Anderson directed/written/produced RE movies (first one from 2002 aside).
Still, the effects here could have been a bit better, in some istances they ARE iffy and a bit too videogamey, but overall the CG is decent, there are more practical ones, and effects are just more believable compared to the cartoonish, over the top ones seen in the older series, because they gel with the more realistic direction.
If anything, the flaws here arguably stem because they did adapt the source material a little too well, i like the different characterization, but we still have characters like in the first 2 games, as in, very cliched and more designed to be/look/sound cool or menacing than complex, believable or realistic, heck, we even have a B-movie style police chief that shouts at his desk and berate the new guy sent there, so don’t expect deep or developed characters, but they’re generally likeable and there’s enough there for you to care about what happens to them.
Could have been better, but given the material and the games adapted, this is arguably about what one could expect, i’d say. Decent cast but there is some questionable acting here and there.
Honestly i don’t have much to add that i didn’t already expressed in my older EXPRESSO review of the movie, aside from finding absurd how hostile were a lot of Resident Evil fans toward a movie that actually wanted to capture the survival horror aspect of the original games and most of the series, instead of putting bombast over the top action at the forefront, to put it mildly, to the point if you put straight up fantasy monsters instead of zombies in those movies, not much would change.
So of course when they don’t make shlock out of it and actually hire a competent director that actually, genuinely likes the source material, with the final result being a decent movie mostly made for fans of the series, with some flaws but quite decent and enjoyable, the peanut gallery grumbles and mumbles, makes sense, it’s arguably the better made Resident Evil movie so far, god forbid there’s effort and care for the series put into it by a competent director, yuck.
Though i still wonder what possessed Capcom and the distributors to release it in November, heck extremely late November (i saw in theathers that Dicember in my country, WTF), in what happens to be the Thanksgiving holiday week in the US, almost like if they did set this up to fail in theathers.
It’s not even like the movie was a flop or anything, it made 42 millions theathrically with a 25 millions budget, and when it was released on VOD and home video it seemed to rack up even more, enough for the actors involved to receive confirmation Constantine Films was pleased with the performance, a good thing since at the end there’s a sequel tease and Roberts has plans to continue the story by adaptating first Code Veronica, then RE 4 (among others), and we known there’s something in production, tentatively referred to as Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles.
So thankfully there’s more to come from this, despite the absurd release window it had in theathers that could have sealed any chance of sequels, and i’m looking forward to it even more after the live action RE Netflix series was culled into oblivion due to… well, the kind of reception you should have seen coming a mile away well before production even started.
Here for now ends the Resident Evil film retrospective, hope you enjoyed it, see you later for this month’s Pinocchi-O-Rama’s entry!
Wise Cafe (International) 