Resident Evil

When you put an omniscient, ruthless supercomputer in charge of a heavily fortified underground facility that produces illegal bioweapons for an all-encompassing multinational corporation, you're just asking for trouble. That goes double if you decide that this might not be such a good setup after all and send in a small group of warriors to preserve humanity. However, if you are in the audience watching the supercomputer versus the plucky humans, this setup becomes a nicely designed vehicle for what all horror cinephiles like to see: futuristic weapons, all-powerful mutants and a group of people who draw ever closer as their numbers dwindle in ever more violent ways.

Such is the setup of "Resident Evil," a film based on the video games of the same name. Thankfully, "Resident Evil" differs from most video game-based movies by being quite watchable indeed. Since it's intended as a prequel to the actual games, you don't even have to know anything about the series to enjoy it, although writer/director Paul W.S. Anderson, with help from all-encompassing multinational video game manufacturer Capcom, has apparently cleared up some issues in the games' storylines. (See Kyle Orland's article in the Diamodback here, as long as they have it up anyway, for more info.) For most people, though, this will just be a nice shot of horror, an effective antidote to stress as we enter midterm season.

We enter the film knowing nothing; calamities are occurring, occasionally shown to us by analytic cameras watched by we don't know who. The film then cuts abruptly to Alice, played by Milla Jovovich, who begins the film just as confused about who she is as we are. She wakes up in a running shower and gets dressed in a trance, moving slowly, letting the tension build (and, not coincidentally, letting the camera look her over). Soon enough, though, she's been abducted by black-suited, heavily armed security personnel led by Rain Ocampo (Michelle Rodriguez). There's no time for amnesia now, as they all plunge into the Hive, the aforementioned bioweapons facility. The Red Queen, the aforementioned malevolent supercomputer, has killed everyone in the Hive. Their team must stop the Red Queen and figure out why all this happened.

Unfortunately, the Red Queen didn't quite kill everyone in the Hive. Or, rather, those who died aren't staying dead. While the team fights down to its last member, Alice must probe her memory to figure out why all this happened, and probe her dormant fighting instincts to rediscover herself as the ass-kicking machine she was previous to her memory loss.

Anderson gets an eternal demerit for having directed "Mortal Kombat," one of video-game cinema's many, many low points, but he has redeemed himself by showing enough stylistic chops in "Resident Evil" to sustain the whole enterprise. He establishes a moderate pace, allowing silences to echo and menace to grow in the rich soil of bewilderment. Marco Beltrami and Marilyn Manson help Anderson out by providing music that effectively amps up the horror when used. And his cinematographer, David Johnson, establishes a blue-green industrial hellhole atmosphere early, but manages to lighten the mood subtly with occasional wary brightnesses.

Anderson also shows a heretofore unexpected kinetic sense occasionally, although the trailers that make this look like an action film are misleading. He deploys what effects he uses well, in particular a huge, angry mass of blood and guts called the Licker that seems more real than most such monsters. But most of all, he seems to really have had fun extending the "Evil" franchise, and brio is a quality that had been lacking in some of Anderson's earlier efforts.

Only Rodriguez and Jovovich have anything much to do, acting-wise, in this film, but both prove themselves worthy of the challenges set for them. Rodriguez's gifts for withering scorn and unchecked aggression are well-known; here, she shows she can discharge firearms and snarl one-liners with the best of them, too. One still wants her to star in an action movie at some point, but this works for now.

Jovovich's pale, wide face takes on a becomes mesmerizing when shot in the blue light that dominates this film, and she transforms convincingly from extremely confused person to extremely confused person who deals with her confusion by whomping mutant ass. She also is dressed in an extremely torn red dress and black hotpants, which never hurts in a horror film, particularly when said clothes are (barely) adorning Milla Jovovich.

Admittedly, Anderson's script sometimes lets him down; the undead pop up with dismaying regularity at certain points, and the snuffing order of characters is pretty easy to predict, including the depressingly standard killing of the black character early in the film. But these faults merely mean that "Resident Evil" does not transcend its genre. Those starving for horror and those worshipful of video games can both celebrate: You finally have a decent movie.

In the original marginalia for this review, I discussed a cute girl who I sat next to in one of my economics classes. This is an experiment which will not be either repeated anywhere or memorialized here. You'll have to scour your ancient inboxes if you want to read about Cute Unnamed Girl. This is probably best for everyone.

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