27/12/2021
Resident Evil: Welcome To Raccoon City movie review (spoiler free):
So to set the scene, I'm a big resident evil fan and not been a fan of the original movies that released, I was intrigued to learn that holy s**t, there's going to be a reboot covering the first 2 games? The trailers drop, and they all look interesting, I'm not too bothered about the characters looking different to the source material, whatever, as long as the acting, story and comparisons to the game keep hitting those marks, I'll be sold!
And then we come to today, where I finally watched it. It was, for lack of a better word, awful.
I have a lot of issues with this film and not really many positives to say either to the point where it's hard to know where to start but I'll try:
I'll keep this spoiler free but the changes to the story aren't done well, they leave fans like myself feeling confused as to why they changed anything in the first place, I understand you can't exactly have Chris, Jill, Claire and Leon standing around reading notes to get the story across like what happens in the game but they made weird choices to the story that only make you question people's motives further, not to mention filling in spaces that simply didn't need to be made around Chris and Claire's childhood for example.
One of the best parts about the first game is Lisa Trevor, what a terrifying but sad story she has, it's haunting but finding her is a great moment in the original game. Having her be a guide for Claire is just so weird and questionable, within the first couple of minutes in the film she's watching over Child Claire and Claire asks 'where do you live?' To which Lisa writes a note stating 'Below'. My issue with this is, if she can just appear at the umbrella orphanage and casually talk to the children, she could just escape, and proveably does only a couple of minutes later when it jumps forward to Claire as an adult and you see Lisa again. It undermines Lisa's tragic story if you're sitting there questioning why she doesn't just...leave? And it also ruins the scary reveal in the original game.
The references to the games are both a blessing and a curse in this instance and by that I mean that some of the set design is fantastic, yep! That's the R.P.D. I remember, that's the Spencer Mansion I remember! But then it very quickly falls apart when they change stuff for convenience sake, there's a scene that features the room you find the piano in the first game where you play Moonlight Sonata, but instead of having Jill solve what to do, Wesker (who by the way is just chilling with Jill the whole time up till this point) whips out his Umbrella provided palmpilot and instantly solves the puzzle. One of the scariest parts about the games is how lost you can feel at first, the tension of not knowing what to do and things like that, I'd have loved for them to portray that somehow in the movie but they don't even attempt it in the slightest.
Another thing I want to mention is the changes to Wesker's character. They, for some reason, spend a LOT of time establishing the characters, their personalities and such, which makes me question who exactly this film is for? You have all these references slapping you in the face, screaming at you THIS IS THE THING YOU LOVE but then you still treat the people watching like it's the first time they've seen this cast? Anyway, they make out as if Wesker was bought out by Umbrella essentially, he took money to help make sure evidence doesn't get out against Umbrella and he feels reluctant to screw over his S.T.A.R.S. compadres. The issue with this is that Wesker isn't meant to be relatable, he's a huge as***le and you're not meant to like or feel sorry for him, every choice they made changing the story or characters left me incredibly confused.
Any moment that could've been cool, like the zombie writing 'itchy tasty' on the window would've been a nice, subtle nod to one of the most famous notes in any video game ever, but then they have the zombie literally scream ITCHY, TASTY and suddenly the moment was ruined for me, those nods should be subtle in my opinion, having it right in your face isn't very enjoyable or clever, the sonic movie somehow handled subtle references much better than this
Another problem I had was that they did the reveal of the first zombie you see in the game, in the movie. However, it was done like half an hour into the movie, after you've already seen regular zombies, zombie dogs, zombie crow and so on, not to mention the practical effects really don't look good in this movie at all.
It really feels like they didn't know what direction to go in here: do we make an obscure but celebrated film hyperfocusing on recreating the games exactly in the movie medium or do we make a more generalised film to bring in a wider audience? Why not try both! Well, they did that it feels, and it falls flat on it's face in the process.
I'll be glad to give more thoughts in the comments if anybody's interested but I'll wrap this up for now
I think the performances were bad, the directing and camera work was flat and not memorable at all, the cgi and practical effects look dated, the story changes were distracting and frustrating, trying to force that many character stories and personalities in such a quick speed whilst simultaneously making it boring or inaccurate wasn't any fun to watch, the lighting was bad for the most part too, horrors can be scary in bright lights, the original game is a prime example of that, the mansion is lit up perfectly fine but the situation is the terror, not if it's dark or not, shame they didn't translate that into the movie either
Overall I give this a generous 2/10, there is very little I enjoyed here, the occasional moment of 'heh, I recognise that' just couldn't win me over because then they'd have Chris saying things like 'Birkin is like a dad to me' which is just...absurd. also no Barry Burton.
