Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
Here's our new regular, Steve Dallas, with another of his views from the barstool where he sits, surrounded by degenerate cats and kind-hearted penguins. Sounds like the man wasn't impressed by what he saw, although I can't imagine a world where a nude Milla Jovovich isn't worth $7.50...
M.,
Through some quirk of the universe, I stumbled into a RESIDENT EVIL screener the other night. It's based on an enormously popular video game, which I've never played. It stars Milla Jovovich, who I rather liked in THE FIFTH ELEMENT. It's directed by Paul W.S. Anderson, who has been attached to some very ambitious science fiction projects, and made interesting messes out of all of them. This film has had some very bad word of mouth, so I walked into this film with very low expectations. Even so, I left disappointed. This film is bland, boring, and completely forgettable. I can't think of a single reason to see it.
Here's the setup: Deep beneath Raccoon City, disaster is brewing. In a top secret research lab called "The Hive" a deadly virus has escaped, killing everyone inside. A group of commandoes, accompanied by three amnesiacs, descend into the facility hoping to figure out what went wrong. When the dead start to walk, it's time to leave. Turns out, zombies are the least of their problems.
According to the friends that I saw this with, the film is true to the games. It ends with a coda: the opening act of NEMESIS. I really didn't have any problem with the story - truth be told, I kinda dug the concept. My beef is with the way it was told. After the catastrophe at the Hive, things move very fast. You get a lot of tension, but very little exposition. The plot is revealed very gradually, and eventually you realize the film isn't about what is happening… it's about what's already happened. There isn't any rhyme or reason as to how you figure out this mystery. Occasionally one of the Amnesiacs just remembers something. We follow the action through their eyes, and consequentially, we're just as clueless as they are. This might have worked a little better if we had followed the commandos, and had some idea what the hell was going on.
Another problem with having three amnesiacs in your group is character development. As the film begins, you've got five faceless commandos, and three folks who don't even know their own names. Needless to say, amnesiacs don't have much backstory and make for wafer-thin characters. Add to the mix the five commandos whom aside from the black commander, and the female ( Michelle Rodriguez, from GIRLFIGHT),you can't distinguish. It's BLACKHAWK DOWN all over again - if you don't know who they are, and can't tell them apart, it's hard to identify with them. You need to be able to identify with the "red shirts", or else their deaths are meaningless. Regrettably, you simply don't care. "Oh, look.. another one bought it."
But lets face it. You didn't come to the theater to see ON GOLDEN POND. To hell with character development. You want to kick some ass! Regrettably, that's where the film REALLY falls flat. Surprisingly, for an R-rated film, there wasn't much violence. Whoever shot this really didn't have a clue how to shoot combat. The gunfight scenes are laughably bad. Notably, this is the tidiest zombie flick I've ever seen. There barely any blood, guts, or gore. On those rare occasions when the action does heat up, we drop out of it and have a character development moment or a flashback. Truth be told, I suspect they got the R rating for another reason altogether. It's pretty pathetic when a zombie flick has to resort to skin to earn an R. I'd really love to know if the coda where it appears was in the original cut, or if it was added in later.
One of the reason the action sucks because they don't have anything useful to fight. The zombies aren't very imposing creatures: Buffy's critters are more credible. There are some zombie dogs which seem pretty cool, but they are quickly dispatched. Finally, there are some CGI baddies I don't quite know how to describe. You're so busy laughing at the effects, you can't follow the action. What's really pathetic are the character kills. Surrounded by armies of the undead, devil dogs, and evil, evil, CGI - DNA creatures, the producers, of course, choose to kill half the party by computer glitch. Sad. This isn't a Zombie movie. Neither is it an action flick. Paul W.S. Anderson made a sci-fi flick. It's an utter and abject failure.
In retrospect, I understand why they got Paul Anderson for this film. It's not a bodycount film; it's the same sort of atmospheric horror that Anderson NAILED in EVENT HORIZON: the kind of film where you never know what's around the next corner. Of course, the EVENT HORIZON was haunted by a ghost, or Satan himself, depending on how you read it. In RESIDENT EVIL, they had real life zombies, albeit shitty ones, walking around. Pity they didn't use them. It was an interesting choice. It's was also a stupid one. This should have been NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, not POLTERGEIST.
In the end, this film left me feeling... well... nothing. It was as if I'd spent two hours staring at a wall. It reminded me of DEEP BLUE SEA, except that DBS was a much better film. If you feel an overwhelming urge to see this film, go find that wall I was talking about. Bang your head against it a few times. Save yourself $7.50.
Steve Dallas
Can't wait to see what Steve has to say about PANIC ROOM in the next few days. I'm starting to hear better and better things about the film with each new day. See you then, Steve.
"Moriarty" out.
