Extraordinarily non-descript is the phrase I would use to explain the trailer for the new Resident Evil movie. I absolutely did not get what they were going for. All I could guess is that it seemed like a small town slice-of-life take on the franchise. In a way, that did turn out to be true, however, the movie was so much more than that! What made this film great is the fact that it had you feeling like you were actually in a Resident Evil video game! And you weren’t one of the tough cop characters or anyone like that. You were just a regular person dropped into an extremely difficult situation. Let’s jump into a few other video games and see how it feels to be in one!
My first choice is the famous survival horror game called Sonak dee PigHog. Wow, I’m suddenly inside the data! Oh no there’s stuff I gotta survive! Ahhhhh a hole! Ouch some spikes! Even worse, FISH! Somehow I actually made it to the end of all the platforms on this level. Now I have to avoid an unhygienic scientist’s mustache?! True horror! I’m sure some people have a problem with me classifying Sonak dee PigHog as survival horror, yet I pretty much proved it with direct evidence, didn’t I?
Next, let’s jump into a video game of the other primary survival horror franchise. I believe it’s called Noisy Pile O’ Dirt. I’m walking around this town full of mist, and various things keep popping out at me, such as oxygen and microscopic germs. As I gather more and more clues, I start to notice that I don’t even have legs at all, and I’ve been doing absolutely nothing this whole time. Turns out, I’m the dirtiest dirt pile that ever was! I’ve just been a stationary pile o’ dirt the whole time that has imagined I’m a person with mobility. On top of that horrific revelation, some of my dirt has smothered an ant, potentially ON PURPOSE! It’s as if my brain locked the memory of my misdeeds, but that’s ridiculous, because I’m just dirt, and I don’t have a brain in the first place.
Is It A Good Video Game Movie?: Honestly, Resident Evil was probably the best video game movie I’ve ever seen!
Final Thoughts: 8/10 Crowns. Resident Evil gets an 8 on a scale of all movies, but it would probably get a 10 out of 10 if it were a scale of only video game movies. I truly felt like I was playing one of the games. Every moment was a matter of survival. Do I have anything to defend myself with? Do I have enough supplies? What am I gonna find behind this door when I open it? There were probably other video game movies that attempted to do the same thing from the perspective of actually feeling like you’re in the video game. This is the only one I’ve ever seen that did it successfully. Also, one last note I’d like to say (which is a spoiler if you haven’t seen it yet) is that I would like to make a comparison that I’m sure is a bit cliché from overuse. The ending of this film reminds me of the Ether Drift Theory episode of Aeon Flux. In both cases, the protagonists are literally just the tiniest fraction of a detail away from being successful at the very end. In the Resident Evil case, it’s kind of funny, because you realize the final events make the entire story pointless. You think you’re following a character that does something important, only to see he just becomes like everybody else and fails at surviving. I almost skipped this movie, and I’m really glad that I changed my mind and went to see it. I Highly recommend this one to any horror fan! Pardon me while I turn on my Surreal Dreamcaster and play some more of that game where I get to be a pile of dirt!
