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Rating:  - A ZOMBIE FILM WITH A GREAT STORY AND GREAT ACTION 9.5 OUT OF 10
Resident Evil brought zombie horror back from the dead, and it did so in a superbly crafted fashion. This is the best zombie film when it comes to story and it puts all zombie films to shame in comparison. It is a definite must-watch for any zombie fans and it will surely put many of your zombie favorites to shame when you watch it.
WHAT IT'S ABOUT: In an underground lab facility called The Hive; which is owned by the Umbrella Corporation; an outbreak of the Umbrella-developed T-Virus has escaped into the air-conditioning system. So the AI security system known as the Red Queen, seals The Hive, and kills everyone underground to prevent the virus from escaping; trapping them in elevators, filling lab rooms full of water, and spewing a gas that removes all of the oxygen in the air. When the report is received an Umbrella unit of soldiers are sent to retrieve the security people from the Spencer Mansion; Alice a hot, young woman, who wakes up naked in the shower after a nerve gas was released into the mansion knocking her out and making her lose her memory, Spence, a guy who wakes up inside the train that takes the Umbrella team to The Hive and also has lost his memory, and Matt, an environmentalist disguised as a cop in order to retrieve samples of the T-Virus from The Hive in order to expose the Umbrella Corporation's illegal genetic experimentation and find his sister who works in The Hive. So the group goes into the basement of the mansion, and takes the train that is stored in the basement, and takes it to travel to The Hive which is located a half-mile underground. Their main mission is to go the Red Queen's chamber and shut her down, to unlock the doors and see if there are any survivors. All hell breaks loose when the Red Queen is shut down, and all of the doors are unlocked, because it turns out the dead have been re-animated (a.k.a. have become zombies). So the team has to find a way out and prevent the zombies from eating them or something else eating them and get out of The Hive before time runs out because if they don't get out in time, the doors to the basement which they entered will seal shut and they will be trapped a half-mile underground. The team also learns of the Umbrella Corporation's misdeeds and the things they've created. And as Alice and Spence regain their memories they begin to remember how the events leading up to the outbreak transpired and caused it, and remember who caused it.
MUSIC: The music in the Resident Evil movies have always been great, and this is no exception. I also love the song played by Slipknot in the credits (My Plague).
GORE FACTOR: There is very little gore throughout most of the movie, and only really has gore near the end. But this film takes a more realistic approach to zombies as to the fact that the blood in them has become coagulated (Dried up) because they're dead.
ACTION: There are shooting scenes which are pretty cool, there are zombie escape scenes which add a nice effect, the scene with the infected dogs was awesome, and the scenes involving the licker were cool.
ENTERTAINMENT: This is definitely an awesome zombie movie. The story is great, the plot twists are excellently done, and the characters are cool. The action really keeps the film going as well and the music really sets the mood. This movie also has good pacing, and is hardly boring or over the top. A definite buy, don't just rent it. Plus the ending is bizarre and is actually kind of creepy and it will bother you in a good way.
OVERALL: It is a spectacular zombie film that every zombie enthusiast should watch (Get to it, J-Train, while I focus on finding Day of the Dead and watching it). It is a great representation of the classic game franchise and it serves as an example of how game-based movies should be made.
THE GOOD: Great story, great music, great characters, cool creature designs, cool action, bizarre ending, hot female lead.
THE BAD: One or two scenes of action and acting are a little cheesy, thankfully these happen early in the movie and don't last long.
Rating:  - RE1
this was a great movie. arrived quickly
could be faster if usps was not used.
Rating:  - Special effects look exactly like that of a computer game, not real. + Over the top action + No plot = Not woth watching.
The pecial effects look exactly like that of a computer game, not real. The action is the top. There's no plot. It's not woth watching.
Rating: - First of a great series.
I haven't played the game version, but I'm certainly hooked on this action/horror/sci-fiction story that moves along at a great pace. When experiments by the Umbrella Corporation result in an out of control, mutating T-virus, Raccoon City suffers the consequences. Alice is a highly trained super-chick who fights Zombies as she tries to get the secret to the surface of 'The Hive' to warn the innocent people. A mad scientist has more sinister plans for Alice and her fighting skills, not to mention the computer run 'Red Queen' who doesn't want to risk letting anyone out and taking a chance on spreading the virus. Of course, it's already too late for many of the living. Can't wait to view the next in this series!
Chrissy K. McVay - Author
Rating: - Milla Jovovich -- making zombie-fighting sexy since 2002
There's just something about watching a hot babe laying the smack down on anyone and anything that gets in her way - and no one does it better than Milla Jovovich. She is, to put it mildly, a whole lot of woman. Resident Evil isn't all about Milla, though; nor is it all about the gore (actually, the movie wasn't nearly as gory as I expected). Above all, though, Resident Evil is not to be dismissed as just another video game adaptation thrown haphazardly together just to make money. This film has substance, subplots, and surprises to go along with the generally impressive special effects and, for my money, pretty good acting. In other words, while the unfortunate denizens of the Hive may be essentially brainless, Resident Evil is not.
I have only limited experience playing the original video game. I never got very far into it, mainly because I wasn't very adept in the gameplay department and didn't spend the time necessary to significantly improve my minimal skills. All I remember is exploring the house and trying to kill the occasional zombie that popped up along the way as the music did the principal work of creating a spooky atmosphere. The movie is much more intense than that - and far more suspenseful. It's not like some clumsy scientist just happened to drop a beaker, thereby exposing the deadly T-virus all of his geeky colleagues. On the contrary, this story generates a whole host of questions in the first few moments, questions such as who released the virus and why, but also why is the room housing such a deadly virus tied in to the ventilation system of the whole complex to begin with? (I can't say I got an answer to that last one.) I actually had to go back and watch the exposure moment a second time because I thought I had missed something the first time.
Don't expect Milla's character to supply you with any early answers, as Alice wakes up in a ritzy-looking house with no memory of who she is. Even the shocking jolt of a stranger claiming to be a cop grabbing her just before a team of commandoes suddenly crash through the windows fails to jog her memory, but she doesn't question the special ops commander when he tells her she is one of two security agents stationed in the house to protect that particular entrance to The Hive, the mega-powerful Umbrella corporation's top-secret, underground facility devoted to all kinds of dangerous and illegal research into bioweapons and the like - and that her amnesia is the temporary byproduct of exposure to a nerve gas. By the time she and the suspicious cop accompany the group to the entrance to The Hive, Alice has met her equally amnesiac "husband" and learned that the Red Queen, The Hive's central AI, locked the whole facility down and killed everyone inside in an effort to try and contain the super-deadly T-virus from spreading outside the complex. Their mission is to get to the Red Queen. It sounds pretty simple, what with everybody down there being dead and all. As they soon discover, however, those 500-odd dead bodies have arisen as blood-thirsty, flesh-eating zombies, and the Red Queen isn't going to let anyone into her inner chamber without putting up a fight.
The majority of the movie, to no one's surprise, consists of the team members trying to survive the onslaught of hordes of zombies, high-tech computer defenses of last resort, etc. As all of that exciting action is taking place, however, we see Alice trying to sort through the memories coming back to her in intermittent waves. She is a much more central figure in all of this than even she knows early on, and she isn't the only team member with secrets to be revealed. That leads to some surprisingly effective plot twists that not only advanced the story in important and plausible ways; they were also presented very much in the context of earlier scenes in the movie.
It doesn't matter if you've ever played the video game or not - Resident Evil is just an exciting, action-packed horror film. I don't consider it to be the least bit scary, but it is quite atmospheric. As a horror fan, I must say I've never counted zombies among my favorite monsters - let's face it, they're basically mindless, slow-footed creatures with no erotic potential whatsoever - so I'm not just whistling Dixie when I say that Resident Evil is a great movie. Of course, a lot of the credit has to go to Milla Jovovich, the finest of one-woman killing machines.
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