Resident Evil

Considering how liberally many video games lift their ideas from movies, I suppose it should come as no surprise that, when experiencing a drought of creative inspiration, the movies return the favor by lifting ideas from video games. It's a self-perpetuating cycle of cinematic cannibalism. The history of the films-based-on-games genre has not been particularly distinguished, with most falling to hack directors working from incompetent scripts and tiny budgets (see: the complete works of Boll, Uwe). Somehow, Paul W.S. Anderson seems to have had the best run at it, making unexpected hits out of game-based pictures 'Mortal Kombat', 'Alien vs. Predator', and of course 'Resident Evil'. None of these are good movies, per se (in fact, 'AVP' is pretty damn awful), but they're all slick and efficient, relatively coherent, and pander to horror and action junkies successfully enough to turn a profit.

'Resident Evil' began life as a survival horror game for the first Playstation console whose original title in Japan was 'Biohazard'. When importing the game to North America, apparently someone at the Capcom corporation with a limited vocabulary assumed that "biohazard" was a Japanese word and changed it to 'Resident Evil', a meaningless phrase that doesn't make much linguistic sense but sounds cool enough. Borrowing extensively from George Romero's famous 'Living Dead' movies, the game involved a paramilitary squad exploring a large mansion and the secret underground laboratory beneath it while fending off hordes of flesh-eating zombies. It was an extremely fun actioner with clever puzzles and mazes, a very moody atmosphere, and even some legitimate scares (anyone who's played the game will admit to jumping out of their chair after first encountering the zombie dogs). It was a massive hit and spawned a string of follow-ups that have extended to several subsequent game consoles.

Enter director Anderson, who hadn't made a profitable picture since 'Mortal Kombat' and was eager to return to the game-movie genre. Casting a pair of hot babes (Milla Jovovich and Michelle Rodriguez) and working loosely from the structure of the game, Anderson crafted a gloriously silly fright flick with exciting action sequences and plenty of juicy gore. High art this ain't, but the result is a lot of fun.

The stunningly beautiful Jovovich stars as a mysterious woman who wakes up sprawled in a shower with no idea who she is or why she's there. The character doesn't even have a name in this first movie, but it's no spoiler to reveal that she's called Alice in the sequels. With barely enough time to put on a sexy red dress and combat boots (an outfit that would soon become iconic), poor Alice is almost immediately swept up by a team of badass commandoes, who inform her that she's a highly-skilled security operative and drag her along on their mission to infiltrate "The Hive", the secret high-tech research station beneath the mansion where she awoke. Once inside, they discover the aftermath of a horrible genetic experiment gone awry that turned everyone inside the facility into undead brain-munchers intent on ripping the squad limb from limb. In other words, just a typical Monday at the office.

As Alice recovers bits and pieces of her memory, the audience learns the backstory of the corrupt Umbrella Corporation and her role in their plans, a clever narrative device that provides a convenient excuse to explain the plot. It also allows the main character to develop new skills and combat techniques along the way, mirroring the progression of the game. Refreshing for the genre, none of the characters are bumbling idiots going places they shouldn't go or doing stupid things that get them killed. They're all competent and motivated individuals, and they mostly remain collected and focused on their tasks even as members of team are quickly killed off by the lab's computer defenses or the freaky monsters roaming the halls.

Anderson directs with a maximum of efficiency and a minimum of pretension. Although the lumbering zombies owe plenty of debt to the rules of George Romero's universe, 'Resident Evil' doesn't pretend to offer any important social commentary. This is a movie about a hot chick who kicks zombie ass, end of story. The movie has sleek visuals, impressive production design, very effective makeup and gore effects, some particularly inventive death scenes (the elevator sequence and laser grid are rightly fan favorites), and an unsettling musical score by Marco Beltrami and Marilyn Manson. Milla is also considerate enough to offer fans a glimpse of side-boob action at the beginning, plus a little something more if you look closely at the end, and honestly that's exactly what a movie like this needs.

The picture turns a little dopey with the introduction of a mutated, tongue-lashing monster called a "Licker." That's taken straight from the game, but the CGI is poor and the idea frankly should have been scrapped. On the other hand, Anderson remembered the zombie dogs, and they work great. 'Resident Evil' isn't the type of movie to watch with critical film aficionado standards. It's a guilty pleasure, but it's a pleasure all the same.

The Blu-ray: Vital Disc Stats

'Resident Evil' comes to the Blu-ray format from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, released in conjunction with the third movie in the series, 'Resident Evil: Extinction'. Each is available separately, or as part of a 'Resident Evil Trilogy' box set that also includes the second movie 'Resident Evil: Apocalypse', which was previously released on Blu-ray a year ago.

Despite its low budget, 'Resident Evil' has pretty stylish photography, emphasizing the sleek, metallic interiors of the high-tech laboratory sets. This 1080p/AVC MPEG-4 transfer, presented in the movie's original 1.85:1 aspect ratio, is sharp and detailed, with vivid colors (especially reds and blues), rich black levels, and excellent shadow detail. The improvement over standard DVD is immediately apparent during the security camera footage at the beginning of the film. The small text overlays are mostly illegible on DVD but perfectly crisp and clear here. Being a horror movie, the photography is naturally a little grainy, but not overwhelmingly so, and the grain is always well-compressed without turning noisy until the deliberately stylized ending.

There's a shot at the 5:23 mark where the grain freezes in its tracks for a few seconds, but that has been part of every previous edition of the movie and appears to be an artifact of the production (the shot must have been artificially frozen to extend the beat), not a digital compression problem. One of the movie's final sequences features super-hot contrasts and an extreme amount of grain and noise, but the effect there is clearly intentional.

'Resident Evil' looks excellent. Ironically, it even looks better than either of its later sequels.

Continuing Sony's movement away from space-hogging PCM audio, the movie's original English-language soundtrack is provided in lossless Dolby TrueHD 5.1 format. If your hardware is not compatible with TrueHD, the disc will default to a hidden standard Dolby Digital 5.1 mix that can't be selected from the menus.

The 'Resident Evil' soundtrack is extremely loud and aggressive, with throbbing bass and jolting stinger scares. The surround channels are used creatively, notably when the Red Queen computer's dialogue cycles from speaker to speaker around the soundstage. At least for the first half hour or so, sound effects are all crisply recorded and the score is delivered with excellent fidelity. Around the time of the first major gun battle, however, things start to turn muddy. After that point, the mix keeps piling on masses of noise, each competing in loudness against the rest, and the effect is a lot of aural overkill. Don't get me wrong, this is still a very satisfying and entertaining track, but clarity isn't always its strong point.

Impressively, the Blu-ray release carries over all of the bonus features from both the original DVD release and the later Deluxe Edition reissue. Much of the content is more impressive in quantity than in quality (indeed, many of the shorter pieces could have been combined into a single longer documentary for better effect), but many of the featurettes were produced by Automat Pictures and are better-than-average for DVD material.

• Cast and Filmmaker Commentary – This notorious commentary features Milla Jovovich and Michelle Rodriguez behaving like drunken idiots. They're joined by director Paul Anderson, producer Jeremy Bolt, and actor Jason Isaacs when any of them can get a word in edgewise. This is a very jokey, obnoxious track that's frankly embarrassing to listen to.
• Visual Effects Commentary – Paul Anderson returns, this time with visual effects supervisor Richard Yuricich. Obviously technical in nature, this track is a little dry but certainly more informative than the other commentary.
• Playing Dead: Resident Evil – From Game to Screen (SD, 15 min.) – An overview of the history of the game series and Anderson's success with his 'Mortal Kombat' adaptation. The actors interviewed make a number of comments about being impressed by the "silence" of the game, which is ironic considering how abrasively noisy the movie turned out to be. Anderson describes the movie as a "prequel" to the first game and justifies the story changes he imposed.
• The Making of Resident Evil (SD, 27 min.) – A lengthy EPK piece with the usual cast and filmmaker interviews, as well as brief time spent with the Capcom game developers. Much of this is repetitive with the above Playing Dead feature. The first half is devoted to boring plot and character recaps. Things get more interesting when we're given a behind-the-scenes look at the commando and fight training, stunt choreography, production design, zombie makeup, and visual effects. It's also funny to note that, in these interviews at least, Anderson looks a lot like Andy Samberg.
• Scoring Resident Evil (SD, 11 min.) – Marco Beltrami and Marilyn Mason are interviewed separately about their collaboration on the score. Manson in particular has some surprisingly intelligent things to say about what he was trying to achieve. The piece is actually quite interesting.
• Storyboarding Resident Evil (SD, 7 min.) – Anderson briefly introduces a series of storyboard-to-screen comparisons. Boring.
• Costumes (SD, 4 min.) – Costume sketches and screen comparisons. The film's Costume Designer (who was also the Production Designer) discusses Milla's red dress and how her bare arms and legs wound up leading to a lot of bruises during the stunts.
• Set Design (SD, 4 min.) – Production Designer Richard Bridgland returns to describe the visually disorienting control room set.
• The Creature (SD, 5 min.) – A look at the animatronics and CGI used to bring the Licker monster to life.
• The Elevator (SD, 1 min.) – Visual effects supervisor Richard Yuricich shows off the miniature effects.
• The Laser (SD, 5 min.) – A look at full scale wax models of the actors being sliced up and deconstructed on camera. Very cool.
• The Train (SD, 2 min.) – The engineering challenges behind the miniatures and full scale models of the train.
• Zombie Dogs (SD, 4 min.) – "It's not like working with actors. Actors don't lick the makeup off their faces." Enough said.
• Zombies (SD, 5 min.) – Attempting not to duplicate the typical look of 1970s and 1980s zombies, combining the makeup effects with CGI, and using dancers to enact the weird body movements.
• Alternate Ending (SD, 3 min.) – Director Anderson introduces this almost-used ending that blatantly rips off the lobby scene from 'The Matrix'.
• "My Plague" by Slipknot (SD, 3 min.) – An annoying music video featuring a creepy band and lots of clips from the movie.

Some trailers for other Sony titles are also available, the only relevant one being 'Resident Evil: Extinction'.

HD Bonus Content: Any Exclusive Goodies in There?

The Blu-ray has one exclusive interactive feature, but it doesn't add any new content.

• Blu-Wizard – Rather than watch each featurette one at a time, Blu-Wizard allows you to select a series (or all) of them from a checklist to watch in uninterrupted sequence. You can also choose to view them during the movie playback. However, this is not a picture-in-picture function. The movie will pause and then branch out to each video segment, pieces of which have sometimes been broken out from their original featurettes to place them in relevant context. Had this been picture-in-picture, it might work a lot better. As it is, the process is jumpy and drags the movie out for an extra 90 minutes. It's frankly easier to just watch the featurettes on their own, in which case the playlist function is rather useful.

Easter Eggs

Two easter eggs have been found so far.

• Zombie Camera Tests (SD, 1 min.) – From the main menu page, press UP from the Play Movie option to highlight an Umbrella logo. This only works on the main menu, not the pop-up menus during the movie. The piece is also located in the Blu-Wizard checklist.
• Milla Jovovich Camera Test (SD, 2 min.) – This may also be hidden somewhere in the menus, but I found it in the Blu-Wizard checklist. In it, Milla poses for the camera in various action stances. [Update: A reader has pointed out that this clip can be accessed by pressing RIGHT from the Featurettes option in the Special Features menu to highlight a Red Queen icon.]

'Resident Evil' may not appeal to the film snob side of many viewers, but sometimes you just want to watch a hot chick killing zombies for 100 minutes. To that end, the movie is great fun. The Blu-ray has excellent picture and sound, as well as a ton of bonus features. Recommended.