Anyone that knows me, knows that I am a BIG fan of the Resident evil franchise. It was my first real introduction into the zombie genre when I played Resident Evil 2 as a child, and the ignition in my love of the undead genre. I have had my ups and down with the series over the years between the video game franchise, and the film franchise. (I absolutely love the book series by SD Perry though, and highly encourage you to read them if you are a fan of Resident Evil, or the zombie genre in general.)
When I saw the original Resident Evil film starring Milla Jovovich directed by Paul WS Anderson, I actually enjoyed it. There were some elements from the game series, but it did it's own thing, and it actually kind of worked. Then the sequel came out... Here they did a few more things for fan service, but began to drastically change characters from the video game franchise. To me, this was the beginning of the failure of the film franchise. As a fan of the video games, I felt the movie franchise took waaaay too many liberties and went way off. I really didn't enjoy the Anderson franchise of films as a whole.
When Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City was announced, I was hesitant. I have been let down in the past for a good adaptation. I was promised a "Resident Evil movie made for the fans." Is it everything that was promised? From here on out there will be spoilers as I discuss my interpretation and reaction of the film. You've been warned... Let's get into it.
This film was written and directed by Johannes Roberts who has directed a slew of other "B" movie horror films. (Honestly this should have been a red flag for me, but I remained hesitantly optimistic.)
The story of the film is really split into two stories. It tends to follow Chris and Alpha team, investigating the Spencer Estate in the Arklay mountains, and Claire as she tries to escape the (Town?) of Raccoon City from the outbreak of the T-virus.
I myself grew up in a very small town, but I never thought of Raccoon City as one. Yes it is described in the game as a small midwestern city, but this reduction was large. Did I like it in the film? Not really.
There is something eerie about small towns, that make them great backdrops for horror story telling. Look at the Silent Hill franchise. I feel it works for Silent Hill because it embraces the small town mentality. Small towns are communities deeply enriched in local lore and culture. I never got that feel from the Resident evil games. Resident evil to me was always just chaos, which is best represented with a city.
To me using a mid size city would have been better, as Raccoon City was sighted as the home of the Umbrella corporation. Granted this film is taking place after Umbrella decided to move their headquarters, I feel it should be more of a dying city because where big corporations are built there is thriving economy. They try to get into every part of where they are to be accepted by the community. It might be in jobs at the business headquarters, or even jobs at the factories where their pharmaceuticals were produced. Not to mention the shipment, that the local truckers could get work in. There would be more residents than the handful of people we witnessed in the film.
The film did a lot with fan service, that to me didn't fit the new narrative. A small town would not have an RPD building with a lobby like this.
(screenshot of Raccoon City police station from the RE2 Remake, 2019)
Granted it was nice to see the police station in a live action adaptation, albeit the bad cgi of the film, I feel the fan servicing didn't help the film.
It was more, "Hey look over here! We got Lisa Trevor!" or "Hey, look, we reshot the creepy film, action for action from Resident Evil Code Veronica!" Instead of focusing on the story, they focused on pandering, which does not make a good film.
The casting was the only decent choice I thought in the film. I liked the choices they used for Alpha team. (Kind of wish if they were going to promote someone from Bravo into Alpha, they would have grabbed Rebecca...). Robbie Amell looks like Chris Redfield! I have seen his acting in other shows and movies. He is a good actor. But an actor is only as good as their director. Same can be said with the actor that played Wesker, Tom Hopper. (Though for him, I wish he used his real accent, because Wesker has an accent in the game series.) I feel they had so much potential that they just let slide away, in an attempt to force two stories together (that took place 3 months apart in the original video game franchise) they butchered what made the original story so great.
Because they tried to fit so many characters into the limited screen time, many GREAT iconic characters became two dimensional.
For example, Claire Redfiled was a badass in the games. She is one of my favorite characters from the franchise, because as much as she is a badass, she is also caring. I did not get that at ALL from this film rendition. They put on the badass female trope, and went at 100% with it. So much so, they turned Leon into a joke for comic relief to not draw away from her.
Speaking of comedy, I never laughed so hard in a horror film trying to be serious before. There were so many things that were made to be "cool" that I couldn't help but laugh at the campiness of it.
Another thing that was jarring, from a film perspective, was the use of flashing bright lights in the face of the viewer. There would be scenes that were pitch black, but then a flashlight or headlight would blast into the screen. It happened multiple times, and became annoying. Especially in the dark theater. I also noticed that Roberts loves his closeups. Many shots were very close up in the faces of the characters. Had the acting been better, this might not have been as bad. However that was not the case.
To me, the film as a whole feels like it was slapped together on many whims, and not planned out methodically. The story jumped around often, there was little character development for the ones that survived on screen. If you want to use the trope, "well it's a horror film," that is not an excuse. Why do directors constantly abandon character development for blood and gore? Great horror films are the ones that have character development, and invest in the story over the action.
Now I want to talk about the story.
The film tries to tackle a lot of story points at once, and I feel that's where it really struggles. They try to use Claire as this investigative character to take down the evil corporation of Umbrella. While I felt they used Chris to do a lot of fan service with investigating the mansion while the outbreak is spreading in the town. Making these two stories at the same time I felt really hurt the film.
If I were to write a Resident Evil film, and they wanted me to use the first and second game, I would have focused on RE2, and used RE1 in a flashback nature. I think what made the games Resident Evil and Resident Evil 2 so good, was the active solving of the mystery of Umbrella and the horrible things they did. It wasn't right up front with what caused the outbreaks, but slowly as you made your way through the games you learn more and more about what is happening.
I would have started the film like the original RE2 games, with Claire coming back home to Raccoon City to find her brother who went missing, along with the rest of his team. Have her spring right in the middle of the outbreak, as she tries to survive, while uncovering the mystery of Umbrella and her brother.
They could have still had fan service, by replaying the events of the first game as records that Claire uncovers as she is learning what happened to her brother. Allowing fans to still see shots like this:
(Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City; Spencer estate)
In the movie it felt like characters were being rushed to get from point "A" to point "B" so they could shoot a scene here and there for fan service.
Another example of this was with Claire in the film. She finally gets a little evidence about the experiments that Umbrella was doing with the children in the orphanage, and she destroys it in anger. She rips all the pages out of the book, and takes NOTHING with her! I thought her quest in the beginning of the film was to tell everyone what Umbrella was doing?
To quote my father after I made him take me to the original Resident Evil release in 2002, "That's two hours of my life I am never getting back."
I really had high hopes for the film. If you are looking for fan service, and don't care about the story, it can be a fun picture. As a Resident Evil franchise film, I feel it is a failure. I can't believe I'm saying this...but I felt that Paul WS Anderson did a better job with his first Resident Evil film. For those praising this film over Paul Anderson's version, check the credits. He was one of the producers. So he did have some decision making in this project too.
If they wanted to focus on the outbreak of Raccoon City, I think it could have been more interesting to do an adaptation of the Resident Evil Outbreak video games, as there were some scenes in the opening (like the diner) that did well with that vibe in this film.
I give the film a 2 out of 5.
Feel free to disagree with me, but I was disappointed and will continue to wait for a good adaptation to come in the future...if it will ever get the chance.
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