Resident Evil

I had to sift long and deep for a good comment on this. Why all the hostility? I think there was great chemistry on this production and it shows; the actors and crew involved loved the game and had a good time making this. This movie successfully recreated the feel of the game, and because it kept exposition to a minimum of what you needed to know for this particular story and didn't borrow from or revise any of the original characters or settings, it supported and strengthened the franchise. No story is retold here, no words are wasted, the setting, feel and pace is familiar to fans of Resident Evil and yet it's perfectly accessible to those unfamiliar with the broader storyline. Not giving the fan-boys their favorite characters was a good choice since characters tend to get mangled in adaptation, and yet the fan-boys still complain. With this film you have a good, watchable story that can partake of the Resident Evil cosmology, showing it due respect.

It did an excellent job establishing characters without too much unnecessary background, developing them just enough to make you want to know what they'll do next, to make you care before the sudden and gruesome happens to them. The acting was above par for a Resident Evil, certainly much better than the first game. The plot was no more comic bookish than any of the games. My one complaint was that the characters were too battle-trained, too slick, too good at fighting for them to be sympathetic horror subjects. This could've been balanced out with more reaction shots showing the soldiers wetting themselves. But Alice's over-the-top commando-style action made her too much of a super heroine to really make anyone concerned about her survival; characters made of Teflon make good action but apathetic horror subjects.

I saw this when it first was up on the big screen, and then while I thought it was pretty cool I kinda forgot about it. Then a few days ago I saw it on TV, and I have to say, it's definitely better than I remember it now.

It starts out in a slightly surreal style as we get to follow the employees of the Umbrella Corp., and the events leading to the disaster in the underground laboratory. Then in the same style we get to follow an agent waking up and how she meet the SWAT-like squad she's to work together with to set things straight again.

The overall feeling of the movie is hard to describe but I like it. No nonsense, just straight forward action. No second wasted. I am sure there were clichés in this film but certainly not many and apparently they didn't bother me anyway. Usually when you watch a B action you can get bored simply because it's like every other B action. Not so with Resident Evil, which was not B in my opinion.

Visually, it's also great. At times it was almost a dream-like feeling, from the intro laboratory scenes to the scenes from Alice's home; and most that happened thereafter.

As for storytelling, it told us what we needed to know, nothing more. If there's anything from the introduction scenes that leaves us wondering what in the world happened, who did it and why, we will get the answers as the story moves on.

Milla Jovovich and Michelle Rodriquez both make their parts really well in my opinion. I have not seen Milla in many other movies but what I've seen so far, I definitely like. Michelle was entirely new to me as far as I know, but I liked her performance.

My complaint could possibly be that some devices in the laboratory seemed a bit of a stretch, especially one particular security defense mechanism that they encountered early on.

All in all, a good action that is somewhat unusual in its style.

Not sure why I never watched this film...I grew up playing the games and seen a few of the newer sequels...this is definitely better than those sequels and is shot really nicely. Only thing is, the regular zombies were a bit 80s looking lol. But the huge deformed ones were great looking

I originally watched "Resident Evil" at a movie theater when it was first released in 2002. I hadn't played the games. There was no Rotten Tomatoes and I didn't read reviews back then so I went in blind. And I utterly enjoyed the movie: the story, the action sequences, the underground "Hive," Mila Jovovich and Michelle Rodriguez kicking serious ass, and more.

Panned by critics (36% RT) but liked by users (67% RT), Resident Evil was one of the first examples of how mainstream critics just don't "get" horror. Movies that try to be artsy get great reviews even as key elements fall flat for the rest of us. The recent "Beach House" is a perfect example of this -- it was loved by critics (81% RT) and panned by users (28%).

Unfortunately, the rest of the "Resident Evil" sequels except for a few moments, rarely captured that first movie's originality and allure. Instead, check out the writer/director's excellent previous outing "Event Horizon."

This movie means business. Quick disaster with a mystery to it, jarring deaths, naked Milla, all in the first few minutes. It keeps up the pace throughout. In terms of critical comments, yes, you don't really care about the characters, but so what? How often do you really care about the monster fodder in horror films? And true, it wasn't a literal working of the movie, it didn't take place in a mansion and it didn't involve exploring lots of rooms and solving puzzles. That's because it's a movie. A literal translation of Resident Evil would probably be really dull. Games and movies are very different mediums. I don't think some people here understand that. One guy said he thought the movie rocked but after repeated viewings he thought it sucked, and that's a video game player attitude - movies don't have to have good replay value, it's okay to enjoy them once. I only enjoyed Star Wars once, but I don't think it sucked, it just didn't have a lot of depth. Not every movie has to be Citizen Kane.

It was an engaging story, moved like lightning and had some excellent scares.