Resident Evil: Special Edition

-Columbia/Tristar (2002)

Summary:

A deadly virus turns a top secret research facility into an orgy of death. That's the worst kind of orgy.

 My Thoughts:

Resident Evil is inspired by the video game series of the same name.  I say inspired, because the film has very little to do with the game. I've never actually played Resident Evil for more than ten minutes, but my friends are big fans, so I'm more than a little familiar with the game, but not too close to it where it would taint my view of the film.

Resident Evil is a sort of prequel to the game. There’s a hidden research installation named the Hive under the city of Raccoon City run by the horribly evil Umbrella Corporation. You know, for once I'd like to see a film where a massive corporation is good. Anyway, Umbrella conducts some pretty horrific research and when one of their viruses escapes all hell breaks loose. It is at this point that we are introduced to the sexy character of Alice who wakes up with amnesia. I'm not big on the amnesia gimmick, but since no one said it was Citizen Kane I'll play along. Soon Alice is joined by a group of military types, a cop, and a another guy they find. Since this is a horror film, none of them do the sensible thing of going far far away from the facility. Instead, they all venture into the Hive and release zombie hell. The film becomes a 10 little Indian’s affair that compromises the majority of horror films these days. The end is pretty great and it leads right up to the inevitable sequel.

I’d like to interrupt things for a moment and go on a rant. First of all, how in the hell could Umbrella build a gigantic research facility underneath a city without everyone in the world knowing? The resources needed would be enormous, and you’d think some of the townspeople would question why the hundreds of thousands of tons of dirt were being removed from underneath their feet. Secondly, the one sticking point to the film is when one of the main characters just happens to remember that they are bad. If you are evil and you forget that you evil, when your memories return are you automatically evil again?  I’d think I’d have a bit of a moral dilemma at that point, but who knows?

Anyway, enough of my wandering brain. As a zombie film Resident Evil is rather ordinary. There's not as much blood and gore that one would expect or want from the genre, and there's surprisingly little zombie action overall. I’m actually surprised at how few zombies there were in total. Also, Resident Evil isn’t close to the plot of the game at all. I can leave that up to you if that’s a good thing or not. Still, as an action/horror flick it provides enough jumps to keep you satisfied and there are a few great zombie moments, such as when the characters are crawling on top of pipes just above the hordes of evil undead.

Despite the reservations I have with Resident Evil, I still find that it’s a decent action/horror flick with the standard style, weapons, and fancy moves that we all expect. The musical score is provided in part by a Mr. M. Manson helping to bring this film out of the standard heap of crap into a better level of heap of crap. Oh, one other thing that makes this film good is the actor Colin Salmon. This guy has the coolest voice ever.

The quality of the DVD is rather standard. The transfer seemed overly dark and grainy on my display, but that sort of adds to the atmosphere. The surround mix is more than adequate for the job.

 Extras:

The extras are rather ho-hum standard stuff. There’s an assortment of featurettes including the mediocre “Making of Resident Evil”, and the more interesting than I thought it would be “The Scoring of Resident Evil.” There’s couple of others covering costume and set design. The coolest feature by far is the zombie make up design that parades around a bunch of freaky zombies for your viewing pleasure.

The commentary track is entertaining, but not as informative as you would think. You have to wonder the decision to include the actresses in on the commentary when Milla Jovovich says, “So are we going to do the commentary now?” One thing that I find extremely disappointing is that a second ending is mentioned on the track, but it’s not on the disc! I’m sure that this will be on another future DVD edition.

Rounding out the extras is a Slipknot music video (whoop de do!), the Resident Evil trailer along with a couple of others, and everyone’s favorite disc waster some filmographies.

Score:

Film: 7.5

Extras:  6.0

Edition: 7.0

-Paul