Movie Night! The First Three 'Resident Evil' Films... (Or 'I really need to get my Reading Groove back now...')

I'm not going to bore you with more details of what a crappy week this has been. Basically, it has been but Wednesday's more or less done now so that means we're on our way to the weekend. At last! Finally...

There hasn't been a lot of reading done this week, just the odd couple of pages here and there, I've got a review that I need to write (for a book that I finished last week) but this week has been more about watching absolutely awful movies as a way of giving my brain a little bit of time off. The only rule was that they had to be fun at the same time, I didn't want a movie where I would find myself checking my phone as time went on...

With that in mind then, well... It had to be the 'Resident Evil' movies didn't it? And so at least a couple of posts were born... This one, where I go through the movies that I've actually seen and another one where I watch the remaining films for the first time. I'm not looking forward to but if I can get through the last few 'Crabs' books then I can do this ;o)

Here goes...

This paragraph would normally be where I italicise everything and copy/paste some blurb. There's no need for that here though, not when we're talking 'Resident Evil' movies. Basically, the Umbrella Corporation (the world's largest and succcessful business) is absolutely awful at locking down it's nastier experimental viruses and these first three movies show the consequences of this; starting from an infected research installation ('Resident Evil'), moving to an infected city ('Resident Evil: Apocalypse') and ending with the whole world being infected in 'Resident Evil: Extinction'. Throughout all of this, our heroine Alice karate kicks various undead people/animals/monsters and tries to work out why she is so awesome at fighting the undead. Seriously, you could take that last sentence and that's the basic plot of each of these first three films. Same plot, different setting and they clearly think that's enough to fool us into thinking that we're watching something different each time. Not this Graeme...

So, how did I manage to sit through these three films (again) then...?

Well, they're full of zombies and that on it's own is more than enough to guarantee that I will watch them all the way through. I love zombie movies in case you didn't already know ;o) It's not just regular zombies either, we're talking zombie animals and other undead monsters as well, all of which are being sliced up by a karate kicking Milla Jovovich who is pretty handy with a blade as well. So there's loads of action then and a nice variety of undead stuff on the rampage. You can't ask for much more than that really which is good because these three films don't offer an awful lot else.

I can take or leave 'Resident Evil' as it's just a straight 'zombie fight' with little else in the way of story. 'Apocalypse' and 'Extinction' though do redeem themselves a little bit with some attempts to flesh out their respective plots. 'Apocalypse' wins here with a missing girl that needs to be found and people fighting to escape a locked down city, there's an urgency to it that I can get behind. 'Extinction' struggles manfully to make something out of refugees trying to steal a helicopter. Yep, that's it. I mean, Alice is still fighting mutated scientists but she's more or less been doing that for the last two films so you almost forget that she's there really.

What I do like about these two films though is that they stick to the 'zombie apocalypse' trope that things will not get better if people don't work together. Things get a lot worse and you can't see it getting any better, fair play to that bleak streak running through these three films.

So visually spectacular then but you can't help but feel like these movies are trying desperately to distract you before you realise than nothing is actually happening, it's just a long hard slog through the undead and before you know it, that's what watching these films feels like. A long hard slog. I haven't really played the computer games (apart from a brief stab at 'Resident Evil 2' on the PS1, god I'm old...) so don't know if the source material has played too large a part in these movies. I mean, watching them does feel like constantly moving through the levels and fighting 'Bosses'. I think the fairest thing to say is that the movies did what I needed them to, take me away from real life for a bit, and I'm grateful for that. Seriously, thanks 'Resident Evil' movies :o)

Once you realise though that all these people are far too good looking for the Zombie Apocalypse (seriously, there is clearly a shower hidden in one of those 'Mad Max' style buses) and that focusing on Jovovich's legs has nothing to do with anything really, that's when you realise that these movies are just hollow, missing that touch of humanity which can turn a run of the mill zombie movie into something special. And that's what they're supposed to be, I guess, so score one for the film people. If you're after something a little more though... Well, you knew that already didn't you?