Resident Evil

Genre: Horror

Director: Paul W.S. Anderson

Screenplay: Paul W.S. Anderson

Starring: Milla Jovovich, Michelle Rodriguez, and Eric Mabius

Alice wakes up in a mansion with no memories of who she is or why she is there. As she begins to figure it out, a group of operatives break into the mansion and take her hostage. What is stranger is that the operatives are more interested in what’s underneath the mansion than Alice's amnesia. An entire company is found beneath the mansion, but everyone is dead. All that is found deep in the company is more questions, and most importantly, the dead may not be so dead.

Most who were fans of the video game found this movie severely lacking. It is the typical zombie flick, they’re there and they’re hungry. A twist with the zombie problem is that it carried on to animals, which isn’t the situation in most zombie movies. Why the zombies are there in this story is that the company located underneath the mansion has been developing many serums for medical advancement, just one of the serums happens to make you a zombie. Apparently there is an antidote, but the time frame in which it remains effective is nearly impossible. The game is much more entertaining than the movie, so stick with that. Saying that this particular film is crap does not mean that the sequels are. In fact, they are much better. I have yet to see the last one, but if it follows along the same track as the last two, I doubt that I will be disappointed.

My final observation in this film is a source of embarrassment for myself. So embarrassing, it took the third movie and a song for the light bulb to come on. I should explain first that I am a literature nerd, and have been looking for meaning and symbols buried in the subtext of many novels over the last ten years. I have also used this skill with movies, which is what made Donnie Darko so much fun for me. Why it took a remake of Starship’s White Rabbit during the ending credits of the third film to understand the Alice In Wonderland undertones in the movie, I have no idea. There was nothing secretive about the connection either. Let’s see, the main character’s name is Alice, instead of a rabbit hole to a secret world, one simply takes an elevator, and who runs the secret world, why the red queen of course. I could probably go further as in drink this and you’ll grow small or eat this and you’ll grow big to one of these serums turns you into a flesh eating zombie and the other makes sure you don’t. There is also the popular theory for us literary geeks that Alice’s story in the book is her journey of change or to womanhood. I think we can all agree that Alice from the movie is definitely a changed woman at the end of the film. The fact that I was completely oblivious of all of these when I first saw the movie makes me think I should send back my degree.

I give this film 2 Buttery Kernals.

Coming Soon: Silent Hill