Resident Not-So-Evil

I recently asked my parents if I could buy Silent Hill: Homecoming. My father, fearing for my "pure young mind" (if only he knew...) suggested I "train" before diving into the world of psychological horror mixed with gore. Therefore, tonight we sat down to watch Resident Evil.

I come from a zombie-loving family. We chat over dinner about our "zombie plans" if there ever is the virus outbreak that the world now is obsessed with. However, Resident Evil wasn't up to my expectations.
It centers around Alice who wakes up on the floor of her shower with no clothes or memory and is thrown into the super-dramatic world of the Umbrella Corporation whose main base, the Hive, is below her mansion. Pulled into a top-secret mission, we discover as she regains her memories that were lost via nerve gas that Alice was employed to hide the entrance to the Hive with her fake husband, also employed by the Umbrella Corporation. However, the Hive's super-computer the Red Queen went brutal, releasing a viral weapon into the Hive and sealing it off. This turns the entire staff and population into zombies, essentially, and now Alice and her slowly dwindling team of gun-wielding bad asses need to shut the Red Queen down and return to the surface before they're closed in for good. Meanwhile, biological experiments are loose and after them.

Dad was a bit disappointed that I didn't enjoy the movie as much as he hoped. Don't get me wrong - great acting featuring kick-A chicks that can pull off wearing leather boots in a super-sexy dress while kicking the crap out of zombies and mutants is fairly entertaining. The cinematography was good, but was also the point where the movie screwed it up for me. Uber-dramatic cuts and flashbacks backed with a techno-beat soundtrack made it feel overplayed. I prefer my zombies more like The Walking Dead - more obviously rotting, first off. These guys were fresh. Furthermore, Alice and her buddies rely on guns and pipes and crap like that to beat zombie dogs' head in with no plan whatsoever. In a typical post-apocalypse society, you need a plan to keep yourself and others safe while looking for food, shelter, and other things. These guys had to throw together their non-existent strategy in an hour, slapping a band-aid over zombie bites only to have a cool army chick turn around an bite you when Alice needs help fighting off the giant mutants. The story was too fast and tried to play off it rather than the characters. Not everything was wrong - the Red Queen's little girl British voice was super-creepy and perfect for claiming "you will all die down here" and screaming "kill her now!"

Maybe I'm picky, or maybe zombie thrillers have just evolved to a higher state since Resident Evil. It was a good shot that hit the target but missed the bull's eye.

- Much luvz, Hideki.