Much like other attempts at video game film adaptations, Resident Evil as a brand has never truly succeed despite being quite frequent in the film space. With a film franchise directed by Paul W.S. Anderson that lasted up to six movies over the course of 15 years, those films moreso inspired around the popular Capcom games never really drew in fans of the series due to being incredibly unfaithful and unrecognizable to their original games. However, while the last film in this franchise was still in theatres, plans were already being made to reboot the brand and start fresh with a heavier focus on portraying them as they were in the games. With people behind the cameras that seemed to be passionate about the project, it felt like it could be taken in the right direction, but a quick glimpse of the trailer for this new film titled Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, along with specific casting choices got people feeling a little sceptical. Considering the stigma already surrounding video game movies, it didn’t look like it had a lot of chances when it was released, and the eventual reaction didn’t help things out much either. Arriving in the outskirts of the run-down and filthy Raccoon City, Claire Redfield (played by Kaya Scodelario) tries to talk her brother, Chris (played by Robbie Amell) into leaving the city and the major company he works for, Umbrella, as she feels they are linked to the city’s corruption. This realization will come too late as Chris is put on an assignment with fellow operatives Richard Aiken (played by Chad Rook), Brad Vickers (played by Nathan Dales), Jill Valentine (played by Hannah John-Kamen) and Albert Wesker (played by Tom Hooper) to investigate an abandoned mansion which hold secrets that Umbrella wants to keep hidden, mainly the creation of a virus that has the potential to turn people into zombies. While he and his team try to survive in the mouth of a literal death-house, Claire stumbles across a locked-down police station with rookie cop, Leon Kennedy (played by Avan Jogia) where she is confronted with her past involving Umbrella and what is being planned for the future. So, the two have to reach the mansion, save Chris and what’s left of his team, and stop Wesker (who is revealed to be a double agent) from getting the secrets. Like as expected, the film wasn’t very successful with critics or audience and only barely managed to break even with its box office, but what did it specifically do to agitate people moreso than the previous attempts despite having more from the source material?

The games of Resident Evil are held in mostly high esteem by its player-base for its mixture of legit horror and campy goofiness, featuring elaborate traps, monstrous creatures to fight and too many quotable lines to count. Transforming these into films wouldn’t be as easy as expected because despite having a decently straightforward narrative for the first two games (which is what this film is based on), the game’s odd tone, long stretches of awkward walking, puzzle solving and charmingly cheesy cut-scenes would need to be adjusted to make it work not only as a film, but as its own thing. This could have been done correctly with the proper amount of time, dedication, and handling behind the screen, but a lot of these aspects seem ill-handled and not that smart in creating the final product. The director and writer for the movie, Johannes Roberts, is a relative newcomer and has really only worked on off-shoot horror films in the recent decade, so his line-up doesn’t bring a lot to the table. While his directing doesn’t feel awful and has aspects that feel decent from a visual perspective, it really doesn’t work in a movie like this. The story is so sectioned off and watered down from its original counterpart, as nothing feels interesting, well-paced out or clever in terms of new or old content. What could have worked as a decent series chronicling two concurrent events at the same time instead is a loosely faithful retelling of two games in one ‘’almost two-hour long’’ sitting that just provides a heavily truncated showcase of two separate storylines and games. It lacks character-depth and moments of reprise for emotional moments, it only spends time throwing out constant plot and exposition in an attempt to cram in as much as it can, and in ironically forcing in as many familiar elements, locations and even lines from this franchise at a sad attempt at fan-service, it only proceeds to infuriate said fans more because they are viewing something they recognizable in a way that doesn’t feel satisfying. While something like the previous franchise had nothing to do with the source material, its failure came from its lack of intrigue, whereas this one lacks a basic three-act-structure and by extension, as a basic adaptation for being similar in look, but dissimilar in spirit, character, and tone.

The characters of Resident Evil are decently iconic in look and their presence throughout different games, but their personalities are a little basic and have room to be fleshed out into bigger, more meaningful roles. It becomes a point where anybody could play these roles with a smallest idea of the attitude, but the actors weren’t really given much to work with in these movies. Changing up backstories and the looks of the characters doesn’t have to hurt the film, but the weak characterization, complete overhaul of backstory and plot direction, and a lack of time to let any of them develop or grow in this film at all, leaves them coming out like under-cooked cookies; mouldable and somewhat reminiscent of something nice, but definitely not correct or digestible. Every actor in this movie is good and could have pulled off some of these roles if they were given better dialogue and direction, but it doesn’t feel like a movie where that is the main focus. It doesn’t even feel like the movie has a main character as nobody gets any substantial moments that feel special or unique from the other (if the characters didn’t get named, nobody would remember that outside of them decent actors). Claire and Chris could have worked as leads, but very little is discovered about them outside of a shaky and rushed past, most of Chris’  team are throwaway stereotypes who only exist to become zombie chow, Leon is a complete wimp of a character and doesn’t offer much, fan favourite Jill Valentine (played by Hannah John-Kamen) feels like a very strong afterthought, and the villains are horribly forgettable as well, it’s a failure of characterization all around.

Another foley with the Paul W.S Anderson film franchise was its handling of the tone and how un-Resident Evil it really was in that regard. It technically had ridiculous situations and even tried later on to feature characters and scenarios from the games, but not only were the films never enjoyably campy (only providing awkwardly serious camp), but they were also never scary, instead being prominently action films as opposed to horror. Returning to the more traditional horror basis for this film was a key element when remaking this movie and, to the film’s credit, it does have a much stronger idea of how to create a scary atmosphere and build a suspenseful scene as opposed to the other films. While the movie definitely isn’t scary as it relies too heavily on easy to predict jump scares, the build-up and pacing of said scares aren’t too bad and shows that this director is capable of setting up a scare even if it’s not delivered. What also helps is the clean and well framed cinematography by Maxime Alexandre that does its best to get some nice shots of some otherwise generic looking locations and angles that have the potential to reveal something creepy (if that were ever to be the case). The score by Mark Korven is also not that bad; creating that appropriate sense of unease through a subtle high-pitch choir-esque musical piece feels like something that would be appropriate in the franchise in a manner that is noticeably vocal, yet still effectively eerie. While some of the make-up on the zombies actually doesn’t look that bad, the CG is really awful whenever it shows up. While it is painfully noticeable (especially towards the end), the movie doesn’t live or die by it and when coming off another film franchise with awful effects, it isn’t too dissimilar.

Video game movies have always had a curse on them, and it seems like Resident Evil has a specific curse that just doesn’t seem to leave them alone. They had a whole film franchise that failed, it had a short-lived Netflix animated series that failed, it had a few spin-off animated films that failed, some of their very own video games failed, and now it looks like the newest film failed as well. Its weird that people are much more against this one than the other movies, but maybe because of the initial franchises disconnect from the original games, it didn’t hurt as hard to those that love the franchise. This one does technically try harder to get closer to the story, it just happens to fall extra hard in doing so. It has a bland, paper-thin narrative with no sense of emotional tissue, the characters are at best forgettable/at worst annoyingly bland, and the visuals and aesthetic do much better at being a horror film, but still do nothing to actually feel like the game. Maybe it might provide a more enjoyable experience than the other films, but if you’re a fan of the games, chances are this won’t be what you were waiting for. Unfortunately, this is not a film worth sinking your teeth into.

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