A new and successful film adaptation of one of the most famous horror games of our time.
The once-thriving town of Raccoon City has fallen into disrepair after Umbrella Pharmaceuticals moved its headquarters from here. Local police officer Chris Redfield (Robbie Amell) receives information from his sister Claire (Kaya Scodelario) that the company is conducting inhuman experiments on residents. At first, Chris is skeptical, but when he arrives for an urgent call to a secluded mansion, he sees carnivorous zombies with his own eyes and realizes that an apocalypse has begun in Raccoon City. Now a handful of survivors will have to fight their way through hordes of mutants outside the city, which has become a branch of hell on earth.
In the early 2000s, the first version of Resident Evil not only became a huge hit and an iconic role for Milla Jovovich, but also launched the most profitable video game-based franchise. By the end of the 2010s, when the last, sixth part was released, the cumulative gross of all films exceeded $ 1 billion. Director and screenwriter Paul US Anderson, who has been at the helm of the franchise all these years, has cemented his reputation as the main specialist in film adaptations of video games in Hollywood, but in the new adaptation he is listed only as one of the executive producers. This time Johannes Roberts is responsible for directing and script - a man not particularly known to the general public, but familiar to horror fans: he directed the sequel to "Strangers" and the shark horror dilogy "Blue Abyss" (as well as the stylish thriller "The Cursed School"). The change of author is a move designed to emphasize a new arrangement of accents: the reboot of "Resident Evil" should be closer to the original game, where the action complements, but does not supplant the horror.
And I must say right away: the rate was justified. Raccoon City is not so much a bloody action movie about battles with monsters, but a visceral, nervous and even claustrophobic horror about a group of people fighting for life in a distraught city. While Anderson has always focused on the action component and spectacular shots in his films, Roberts smoothly immerses viewers in the atmosphere of Raccoon City, which is on the verge of an incomprehensible but large-scale disaster. At the same time, the film, although it uses a rich heritage (taken mainly from the first and second parts of the game), does not abuse the obsessive fan service. Yes, there are many references in it, but almost all of them are given in passing and are more reminiscent of the "Easter eggs" hidden in the game than exploitation of fan nostalgia.
The main thing that managed in the new "Resident Evil" - to recreate the very feeling of impending horror, which the game is famous for. All the action takes place over one long night in 1998, when Raccoon City was cut off from the outside world, and therefore the film is slowly gaining momentum. But this slowness only emphasizes the growing anxiety, and gradually small eerie incidents merge together, plunging the quiet town into bloody chaos. Deformed crows and dogs, strange people covered with bruises, soldiers at checkpoints - Roberts skillfully whips up suspense, using the game's rich bestiary, but dispenses with almost no screamers. Instead of harsh sounds - ominous silence, instead of a detailed picture - semi-darkness, in which shots are thundering. In the end, of course, the main monster will be shown in all its glory, but the battle with him is perhaps the most serious minus of the film. Given the scale of the threat, the heroes deliberately easily deal with the monster, despite the extremely unfavorable moment for the fight.
As for the characters, not everything is clear with them. The point is not that they are one-dimensional - in such a film it is forgivable - but that one of the key characters every other time sprinkles flat jokes that rarely relieve tension, but are almost always inappropriate. Perhaps the best scene with him goes without words at all: the moment when a zombie engulfed in flames rushes into the police station to the pop hit of the 1990s. Another flaw is the fragmentation of the action sequences. True, competent camera work and games with lighting to a certain extent smooth out this shortcoming, but sometimes shootings lack the stylishly staged shots that were full of Anderson's films. Only a meeting with a humanoid monster-slime in an abandoned shelter and several fights with zombies in a mansion, referring to the famous shots from the very first game, sticks into the memory.
But due to the sustained atmosphere and well-built script, the updated "Resident Evil" still looks solid - such an adaptation is clearly much closer to the original source. But even outside the context of video games, Raccoon City looks like a pretty good survival horror, equally suitable for those who find all the references, and those who are first introduced to the franchise.
This article was sponsored by Simona Serban
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