Review of Resident Evil (2002) by Viniciusbrito — 20 Jan 2019

"Prep for entry to the Hive." "I shot her 5 times, how was she still standing?".

Based on the game franchise 'Resident Evil' by Capcom. A company that is very influential in the world, be with money or political situations, very poweful in different sectors of society. That company develop strange and dangerous stuff in their secret underground location, in one day they face a situation where one virus, the T-Virus, got exposed in the facility and all of the employees died becaused of that. A team is sent there to figure the situation and solve some problems, what they weren't expecting is that they would find a bunch of living dead persons, animals and monsters down there to confront. Directed and Written by Paul W. S. Anderson.].

The main story of the film is beyond simple, but honestly, very functional, I think that it did a good job in that. We have some side stories that i'm not so sure, there are the story between Alice and the brother and sister, Matt and Lisa that also got Spencer envolved, I know that the whole point of this part in the plot was to have a reason for the the T-Virus to get exposed and have another antagonist further the zombies, but I don't think that it would be that necessary, the final motivation of what was done there doesn't seem to be worth it, but isn't horrible neither, I just think it could have been better at those moments. The overall of the story is basically get inside of an unfamiliar place for a mission, finding out that it is hostile and trying to get out, but what they face in there and how they do it, for me it is a good point, the situations and arguing with the red queen, the struggle that they went trough, not perfect, but really good.

There are some moments that are really funny, but not intentionally, how the team moves, the songs that are played in some parts, some moments are goofy, some work and others doesn't.

The action plus horror are funny in some moments, creepy in others and they try to have some badass moments that don't really work. The laser room, for me it is a great sequence, the song, what is happening, it was so distressing, first, not knowing what was going to happen, and then after each time things got more tense and nervous, I could see myself in that **** situation. The first time the team met the zombies were really good, they figuring what they were doing or what was going on, I enjoyed. Now, there are some moments in slow motion, or when Alice faces the Licker, where they tried to be so epic that I found bad, doing acrobatic moviments, or fighting the Licker in a way that it would only work if she was way stronger than it, so there are some moments that was poorly done.

The Licker CGI is terrible, and they don't try to hide it in any way, when bad cgi's like this happens, the good to do would be try to hide it, only showing the cgi in dark places and hiding it in smokes or shadows, but in here they used it in places with high lights and together with the actors, so it got really bad in some moments.

The atmosphere in this film is really nice, the whole idea of being confined in a unkown place with a bunch of zombies is so dark and feels so good to be in a place like that in this film. The scenarios are all very nice and are essential to making this film that fun. The whole labs and rooms that we go into this movie have such of a dark sense, it is like you can feel the evil, the death in those places, it is so well done. Still about the ambience in this film, how the details in scenario and mise-en-scene made so much difference in making this film good, I love so much the atmosphere, objects destroyed, tables turned and covered in blood, broken glasses on the ground, grids cutted off, cages and a lot of strange stuff with pipes, sewer, flooded places. All of that together with the the zombies plus being under the ground helped into making this that nice.

The sound design is also very good, the choices that they made in here in a lot of moments making echoing sounds that the characters don't know what it is, hearing from far away, im some momentos coming from different places, it can give a paranoid position that, for me, worked really fine. Sounds of muttering, groan, incomprehensible sounds in some situations, things being dragged. Still helping into making the atmosphere to work perfectly. The soundtrack have a lot of metal songs, during action moments it worked and made some scenes being funny, probably not intentioned, but still made me laugh. The score have some nice fatures, the sounding and the less of it in other moments do a good job, helps in composing the scenes.

This first Resident Evil movie is really good and very different from the others, even if there are a few moments where you can have a shot of what is going to become, but in here the atmosphere is perfect, there jumpscares and good moments, not intentionally funny moments, really fun film.