Resident Evil

REVIEW
Based on the extremely popular (and extremely violent) video game, Resident Evil should have been gory, scary fun. It's merely gory. Jovovich plays an amnesiac corporate agent who must do battle with zombified office workers (and other creatures) when an experimental drug is released in an underground lab. Mildly entertaining for a short while — mostly due to anticipation of the zombies to come — this quickly becomes almost a chore to sit through. The zombies aren't very scary or cool, the characters are nil, and the CGI effects are unconvincing. The film is also derivative in the extreme (there's a particularly egregious steal from the superior Cube), with writer-director Anderson giving up around the midway point and recycling every cliché from the Living Dead and Alien films. Okay, zombie movies tend to be moronic, but they occasionally are fun. This one doesn't come close. Resident Evil, like the crummy Tomb Raider before it, just feels like you're watching someone else play a video game.