You know what series never really gets a fair shake? Resident Evil. I’m not talking about the hugely successful game franchise, I’m talking about the hugely successful movie franchise. The 3D holiday mainstay that keeps putting food on Leeloo’s table, it just never gets the chance to be what it could.
I won’t bad mouth Paul WS. Anderson. I enjoy his work. Event Horizon desensitized me at a pretty young age to most of the gory hellscapes I’d witness later in life. I’m sure the movies he directs/produces currently are having some sort of impact on other young minds, so I can’t completely ignore what he’s put out. But Resident Evil could have maybe used a more nuanced helmsman, someone less mired in the cinematic juices of such gems as AVP.
And I know it’s “fun” to rag on RE because of bad voice acting, or cheesy scenarios, or Jill sandwiches, or being a master of unlocking, or remember that ugly Mega Man box art? What were those guys thinking! Whoops, accidently tripped on a pile of overused video game minutia. It happens. Those things are a product of their time though. They can help to make a product infamous, and it’s amusing when it’s dredged up for fans, but that trivia should ultimately stay sealed in the era that spawned it. Besides, I’m not drawing solely from the PS1 title, I’m more interested in the GCN REmake. I more interested in dread. I’m more interested in Lisa Trevor.
Short and sweet regarding Lisa Trevor, here’s a video that is neither. Sorry, but why summarize when you can just set up a hyperlink. If it’s good enough for your professors, it’s good enough for me.
Resident Evil, the first 3 games, takes place in an upsetting world. The people behind the curtains are monsters. The people shambling in the streets are monsters. Sometimes even the animals are monsters. You’re stuck in a hopeless scenario. And that concept can be a breeding ground for horror. If you have an audience confined to cold plastic seats, cramped between elbows and popcorn, you don’t have to yell at them to scare them, you can make them uneasy. The expanded lore of the first RE is upsetting. Just in terms of the basic humanity you’d expect people to exude being completely absent from all parties involved. The zombies are workers, the people responsible are already moving on to bigger, more profitable ventures, and you and your team are stuck in this mess. On top off all that the guy sitting in front of me has the most audible jaws in the entire nation, bam horror movie going gold.
Menacing faceless corporation might be an easy target for sure, but sometimes, especially for horrors sake, you might want to avoid “humanizing” the antagonist. You don’t need a scene of a zombie pawing at a lunch pail his partner set up for him the day before he got his second life. I want to unflinchingly stare at the situation and marvel at how hopeless this band of soldiers is. Humanizing unearthly scenarios leads to Superman soul searching for what felt like 4 hours. I see humans every day. We take the bus together, they act up in my store, and sometimes we make idle chat. I get that zombies can be a blank canvas and, in a way, they’re more like us than we are. I’ve had those conversations; we all went through the 11th grade. But I need an unstoppable force, because nothing sets the mood like having to get up for the 3rd time so someone can get into the aisle, sitting back down, and knowing that there isn’t really a happy ending to all of this. Shock isn’t the only tool in the horror satchel. Dread can be just as effective.