Page 1 of Resident Evil - Welcome to Raccoon city

Remember when everyone said the Milla Jovovich/Anderson movie from the 90's was a rubbish adaptation and they should have stuck closer to the source material? (sucks teeth) Yeah, about that....

The best thing that can be said about this film really is that it's faithful to the first 2 games, but in 'Oh look, it's...' moments only. It's also got a script on a par with the original game's voice acting as well. Ok, maybe it's delivered better, but by golly it's pandering. The first time we're introduced to the man chatacters we get to hear their full name, apart from Wesker, but Leon gets his full title.

Right, for the 1% of us who aren't familiar with Umbrella Lore, the movie takes place in Raccoon city, a town built and funded by the Umbrella Corporation, who provide everything. But as all huge corporations go, they're up to no good in the form of genetically modified viruses which they use on kids and it gets into the water supply and things go bitey and explodey oh god I lost all interest halfway through writing that because they started the genre and everyone's copied it since and going back to the original without changing anything isn't going to shatter any expectations or box office numbers.

And there's the problem. Time and effort went into accurately recreating aspects and elements from the first two games. The mansion, the police station. Arklay mountains and the Ashford Twins. Even that infamous first zombie shot where it slowly turns to face the camera is in. Clare & Chris Redfield. Jill Valentine, Leon S Kennedy. Wesker (Oh no! maybe he won't betray everyone this ti... oh, there he goes, the scallywag). But no effort went into changing it up a bit so the audience doesn't know what's coming next. If you knew nothing about the games or previous movies you might get something out of this, but the characters aren't fleshed out enough for newbies to find them interesting enough to care about their fates.

And the amount of times that Kaya Scodalero jumps in at the last minute to blow away a zombie when all seems lost is laughably repetitive. I resolved never to walk out of a movie after I did it during Atomic Blonde & regretted it after a second viewing, but gosh-dangit I was really tempted during this insulting heap of garbage.

There's also the soundtrack. It's a genuinely bizarre mix up of songs that tell you the time period the film is set in, but it honestly feels like they've picked out the 'Now that's what i call...' album from that particular year, chosen 6 song at random, and played them at high volume in certain scenes, ignoring any kind of context the song may have and how well it would fit with the scene. It's weirdly bizarre trying to get into any kind of mood the film is trying to set when Crush by Jennifer Paige suddenly comes on a radio somewhere.

2/10 for set design, and nothing else.

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Writer`s Release

This item was edited on Thursday, 9th December 2021, 00:31

I do not understand the logic of combining both RE1 and 2 into the same story. Surely if they were going to combine anything, it should have been 2 and 3, since they happen concurrently (sort of).

I was somewhat hopeful when they said this film would be closer to the games, but as soon as I saw the promotional photos of the cast in-character I lost all hope. They looked like a bunch of cheapo cosplayers.

It's such a shame. With a bit of love, the RE games (specifically the first three) could make for a solid series of horror movies.

On being faithful to the games, do the actors take a few seconds to clumsily turn around to face a monster?

Ste

Quote:
sj says...
"do the actors take a few seconds to clumsily turn around.."
Their careers? Might take a while.

In fairness, they tried, and the faithfullness to the looks of the original games really deserves recognition (apparently Capcom gave the producers the original blueprints to the mansion & police station), but it really falls apart in every single other aspect.



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Writer`s Release