Film of the Week: Resident Evil

With the final film in the franchise to be released later this year in December, I thought I would bring the first film back into the spotlight one more time. Kicking off an epic series of films, this includes all the elements that make the games enjoyable, scary, and thrilling.

The game series are among the most popular in its genre and continuing to increase in popularity as a whole. Known for its slow-paced horror with epic battles with zombies and other gruesome mutated beasts that only ever get larger and more gruesome, the game’s enjoyable experience is nothing but slow. Being a horror franchise, there are plenty of elements that will make you jump out of your skin, or simply make you feel as if something’s behind you. When you’re walking through an area that you know is teaming with infected humans and animals alike, you’re constantly on the edge of your seat, hoping that you won’t accidentally stumble into the path of the infected.

There has been a total of 23 games in the franchise, but they are the only ones that have been released. With six main entries and a seventh in coming out next year, and with plenty of spin-off games as well, there’s plenty to get your teeth into. If you do want to take a break from the gameplay for a while, then you can sit down and watch the film series instead. Resident Evil, released in 2002, and staring Milla Jovovich as Alice, the first film in the franchise combines several elements from the first two games, Resident Evil, and Resident Evil 2, which shows Alice waking up with amnesia in a mansion and is suddenly involved in a plan to stop the T-virus from breaking free and infecting everything that it can. A team of Umbrella Corporation commandoes attempt to shut down the main A.I. within the secret underground facility hell-bent on doing anything it can but is unsuccessfully containing the virus.

If you’re fans of the franchise, then you would know a lot more than those who are going in blind and just watching the films, but those references are intelligently placed that they would be just another part of the film, or would be something that needn’t have any attention drawn to it but is just there for the fans of the games to notice. The film as a whole does magnificently stay true to the source material as well as staying true to the horror genre it so rightfully sits in – with its occasional moments of deliberate tension to keep you guessing what’s going to happen next, and the epic battles between the zombies and infected animals – it is one of those rare occasions when a film adaptation of a video game is good, and remained good, if not increased in quality as the franchise continued over the many years.

There has been so many film adaptations of video games that just haven’t met people’s standards, but the continuing and gradually increasing popularity of the Resident Evil film franchise proves that it can be done and done well. A games experience cannot be fully replicated on film because a game has a longer story, interactivity that a film cannot provide, whereas when a film is trying to replicate it, I believe does it fall short of capturing people’s attention, but when it comes to the Resident Evil franchise, whilst they are replicating the story, it is also creating its own unique experience that can only be felt through film. It’s a horror film, through and through, made up of certain elements from the two games that can actually be moved from game to film. In other words, it was written to be a film, not a direct adaptation of the games. If more films did that, then there might be many more successful game adaptations.

I am looking forward to the final instalment in the film franchise. It will be an end of an era, essentially. Whilst the game franchise will continue, there won’t be any more films. Will they go out with a bang, or end on a clever cliff hanger, that subtly sets up some sort of possibility for another instalment, even though there probably won’t be one. Whatever they decide to do, us fans of the franchise are expecting something of a dramatic and climatic ending so we can walk out of the cinema happy that it had ended well instead of poorly.

Whilst we are saying goodbye to that franchise, we shouldn’t say goodbye to good film adaptations just yet. An Uncharted film is scheduled to be released sometime next year, although after constant problems revolving around creative differences problems and people dropping out and other people declining the offer to play the lead character and write and direct, we shouldn’t pick our hopes up too much, but there’s always a chance that it can be just as good as the relationship between the game much the same as Resident Evil’s relationship between the games is. Fans of the Uncharted game are keeping their fingers crossed, but aren’t particularly getting too hyped over it. The scary note that I’m going to leave you on is the possibility that Resident Evil won’t be just coming to an end, but will also end the era of good video game adaptations for a very long while to come. It does make you wonder what is going to happen next. What film adaptation of a game will actually be brilliant instead of a pile of mess that tries to replicate that of the game and not be its own thing?

All we can do is wait unfortunately. Wait for the films whilst playing the games we love. 

Thanks for reading

Antony Hudson

(TonyHadNouns)