Resident Evil - Story and Series Analysis

In my study of the cultural artifact medium of cinema, I have discovered that my least favorite "creature feature" is that of the Zombie Flick. I'm about as jaded a film watcher as anyone can be, but something about zombies really turns my stomach. I think it's the part about what zombies eat and who they used to be. I was curious about this sub-genre of horror, so I Netflix'ed the entire "Of The Dead" series, including the British installment starring a slacker named Shaun; we'll cover him sometime in the future. I've also checked out a documentary titled The American Nightmare which featured horror masters Wes Craven, John Carpenter and zombie-master George A. Romero. This film chronicled their rise to cinema greatness during a time history displays an era of national hopelessness and moviegoers flocked to watch other people suffer unspeakable horrors in order to escape their own lives. This film series, while giving homage to the Zombie Patriarchs, is not a product of a culture of hopelessness.

Resident Evil speaks up against oppression by a corporation whose monopoly saturates its customers lives. The film travels from a lab to the entire world, scarring the planet with a pestilence that destroys all life. Along with the pestilence is the negligent Umbrella Corporation who considers anything against their interest expendable assets. The greatest example is when they decide to destroy Raccoon City with a tactical nuclear warhead, leaving hundreds of people, Umbrella employees and security forces behind to die. Commando Carlos Olivera (Oded Fehr) is one of those left in Raccoon City and he speaks for the masses, saying, "we are assets, Nikolai, expendable assets...and we've just been expended." While the world fends off the hordes of undead, the corporation sits below the surface in their bunkers, safe. For once, an entity is completely human; only living on the wrong side of the moral compass.

I did say their was hope, didn't I? Well it comes in our hero, Alice (Milla Jovovich) and her many friends. Last post, I mentioned that she's a perfect audience proxy, in the fact that she begins the series with amnesia. She possesses an innocence almost childlike which is gradually drained as the series progresses and as she increases in abilities, intensified at the end of each film when captured by Umbrella and released. She fights each film to maintain her humanity regardless of whatever "upgrades" Umbrella's given her. The conclusion of each film ends in resolve more potent than how it begins. Through the bleak hopelessness that serves as a landscape, humanity still reigns: love, loyalty, heroism and sacrifice. And in the end, the evil monster bites the dust.

This film series is brilliantly executed. Despite the undead subject matter, and the fact that it's based on a video game, I find it more than competent film work; the third installment is beautiful. Its sets, costumes, make-up and photography, as well as some solid performances by Fehr, Ali Larter and Jovovich, all made for a classy post-apocolyptic road-trip movie. The first film's score is edgy and intoxicating; Marilyn Manson's hard-edged and ethereal score adds to the action with character, depth and an edge that speaks, in a way, for the machine that is the Umbrella Corporation.

The story, like video games, is meant to be episodic; the action going incrementally more intense as each film goes along. And the stakes grow more dire as each film finishes. And the films are honest about what they are: as a result, I'm able to engage fully every time any of the films enters my player unlike the times when a film tries to be something else.

So, despite the zombies; I'm a fan.

****

In: Colin Salmon

Out: Milla Jovovich

Coming Soon: Ultraviolet