Halloween 2012 Day 8: Resident Evil (2002)

The Resident Evil games are interesting. They're this distinctly Japanese take on American horror cinema. They combine tropes from Japanese adventure games with tropes from American movies to create a synthesis that is, apparently, greater than the sum of their parts. I've never been able to play them due to how terribly they've aged. Even the new ones hold over too much from their older counterparts to make them unplayable. Why is my movement all on the left stick when I have a free third-person camera and a free thumbstick? Why is it still like that, Capcom?
The Resident Evil film is even more interesting, creating a distinctly American take on the Japanese games based on American movies. Paul Anderson has said that he wanted to create a distinct universe from the game's universe, but it follows that, due to the source material, the universe he created is accordingly insane. Mila Jovovich plays an amnesiac secret agent sent to purge a medical research lab of a hostile AI. Once she, and the team with her, enter the lab, however, they find it crawling with T-Virus infected zombies. The team, numbers dwindling, have to retreat to the surface before the failsafes activate and lock them inside the lab permanently.
This movie is more an action film than a horror film. Sure, it has the trappings of a horror film, the dark corridors, the pauses in the soundtrack, the jump scares, the monsters, but it lacks the tension to really classify it as a horror movie. It is, however, an excellent action movie in the absurd 80s Stallone/Schwarzenegger milieu. Attractive people shoot guns at bad guys and the bad guys explode. The soundtrack is absolutely excellent and most of the cast plays their parts well, a highlight being Michelle Rodriguez's badass commando. Why she isn't the lead in more hyper-violent action films along the lines of the Expendables is an important question we should ask ourselves. Expect mindless action, disregard everything about the video game, and enjoy the fun, stupid movie.