For quite a while I’d been meaning to play the entire catalogue of Resident Evil video games, and so far I’ve gotten the first three originals under my belt and am currently about half-way through Resident Evil – Code: Veronica X as this post goes live, and I have to say, I totally get the hype. The 90s-made originals still hold up so well. As a huge fan of the original Tomb Raider it probably helped that I was already used to similar controls and graphics, but just the gameplay itself is still so awesome. Now, I thought it was about time to venture into the movie versions of the zombie apocalypse before Zach Cregger’s new reboot hits cinemas on September 18th. If you’re unfamiliar, the premise of the games and movies is that the creation of a bioweapon, named the T-virus, by the Umbrella Corporation unleashes a zombie apocalypse upon the world, and some select people are intent on curing it and stopping the people in charge from destroying the world even further. From what I hear, the films do veer quite a way away from the games, which says to me that maybe it was pointless to make movies based on the games, but perhaps it means I’ll be more forgiving (or maybe not). Let’s find out…

Resident Evil (2002)
Director: Paul W.S. Anderson
2.5/5

This was so not what I thought it would be, disappointingly. As far as game-to-movie films go, this was so loosely based that it should just have been its own movie separate from the games. The film sees a new character created for the film, Alice (Milla Jovovich), lead the charge on the “bioweapons” (zombies), making it more group-based than the original games, with less actual threat from the virus until late in the film and more heavy on the action. The characters aren’t that interesting, not even Alice, and she’s not nearly as badass as the marketing made her out to be. What it does succeed at is the gore and gruesome scenes (those lasers!) and the sets, Cerberus dogs and mutants that all have that Resident Evil flavour to them. There are some nods to the early games, namely a cop snooping around desks (half expecting him to find a typewriter ribbon), with he and his sister possibly being based on Chris and Claire Redfield, and the ending with an abandoned Raccoon City, burning vehicles and a shotgun was probably the most Resident Evil-looking scene in the entire film. It also looks like a character is going to become Nemesis in the next film, which I’m excited about. On the whole it’s not too terrible as a standalone action/horror, but it’s too far removed from the core of the games to really be labelled as Resident Evil in my opinion.

Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004)
Director: Alexander Witt
3/5

In this sequel, Alice is stuck in Raccoon City, along with many others, and has to bargain to get out of the now-overrun city. Apocalypse is a little closer to the games, which is both good and bad: good for familiarity, bad for the women in their inappropriate-for-an-apocalypse clothing, even if they do more closely resemble their game counterparts. It also introduces Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory, a great choice for Jill, physically speaking), a fan favourite, and uses Nemesis as the main infected antagonist, both of which were adapted well for this film. The general atmosphere and vibe is more on point, and some shots are closer to the game, making it more aligned than the first, with the sets more reminiscent of what was seen in Resident Evil 2 and Nemesis. Sadly, I’m still not onboard with Alice. Perhaps it’s because she was created for the movies, but I just don’t feel she has earned her place, especially now she has ‘evolved’, somewhat. I also don’t know how I feel about the ending, the way that Alice is initially saved. On the whole a better film than the first, and I really liked Nemesis, but that’s not really saying much.

Resident Evil: Extinction (2007)
Director: Russell Mulcahy
3.5/5

Ok, maybe we’re getting somewhere now. With the Earth essentially ravaged by the T-Virus, this Mad Max meets The Walking Dead instalment sees Alice trying to survive in a decimated country, nomadically roaming until she meets a convoy led by Claire Redfield (Ali Larter) heading for Alaska. Something I’ve noticed by now is that the films tend to have a really good opening ten minutes, and this one is no different, with its gritty, horrible intro after revealing what the Umbrella Corporation is up to now. Fortunately, this film has an upward trajectory from there, unlike the two previous films, and although it’s seemed kind of short, it has the best action scenes so far, the zombies coming across as far more of a threat and more front-and-centre in the story. It’s also about time that we got Claire, one of the protagonists of the game series, and I think she was portrayed well by Larter, however the film is even further removed from the games in spite of the inclusion of Claire and Albert Wesker (Jason O’Mara), a popular villain from the games. I also think the Alice thing is getting way out of hand now, with what Umbrella are doing and how Alice’s abilities are changing. I am curious to see if the quality continues to go up, or if this is going to be the peak of the series.

Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010)
Director: Paul W.S. Anderson
2.5/5

Oh, the inevitable decline is here already. In spite of Paul W.S. Anderson returning to direct (and having written all the Jovovich-led R.E films), it seems the series cannot be salvaged now. The characters all seem to veer off in strange directions as Alice returns in search of survivors and a safe place to escape to while taking on Wesker (Shawn Roberts) and an Umbrella-controlled Claire. It also brings in Claire’s brother, Chris Redfield, another OG of the games, played by Wentworth Miller (another good casting, in my opinion), and includes a (wholly uneccesary) cameo from Jill Valentine . The whole thing gives Underworld vibes, with the colour grading and the style of action, and clear inspiration taken from the Alien film series. It introduces more creatures akin to creatures from the game, and they do look pretty cool and very threatening, and the design of Wesker looks very much like he was pulled straight out of the game, which I really liked. But, I’m bummed to say, I zoned out a lot more in this film. They’re becoming like a bait and switch, with a solid interest-catching first ten minutes then a formulaic plot that values style over substance. Afterlife has bags of style but little substance, which is a shame. Wesker should have been more heavily involved as he was definitely the coolest character (though he should have stayed dead), and Jill has been so underused by this point in the series. It’s also a shame that the Alaska plotline was thrown aside in favour of a different, less interesting plotline. I think the series keeps taking wrong turns and going down paths that are neither interesting nor containing characters worth caring about.

Resident Evil: Retribution (2012)
Director: Paul W.S. Anderson
2/5

After another fairly solid, if confusing, opening, Alice finds herself at an underwater Umbrella facility and is assisted by Ada Wong (Li Bingbing, voice dubbed by original Ada voice actress Sally Cahill) to escape, finding that Umbrella has been simulating outbreaks with the use of clones and juicing up some zombies into some really undesirable abominations. With Wesker now apparently on the ‘good’ side, Alice teams up with more characters straight from the game, namely fan-favourite Leon S. Kennedy (Johann Urb) and Barry Burton (Kevin Durand). The whole thing is definitely its own entity away from the games by now, even if it still steals aspects of it (including Ada’s ridiculous outfit) and has completely ruined Jill Valentine as a character, in my opinion. There was no real relationship built between audiences and Valentine before Umbrella took control of her, so it was hard to feel any sympathy for her. The film is, once again, more style over substance, and although it has decent action and horrifying creatures, I just don’t care about any of the characters at this point, least of all Alice and her costume that doesn’t even look cool anymore, not to mention thoroughly impractical (viewers notice these things and always have done since Jill’s outfit from the game Resident Evil 2). I also still think Wesker is the best part and is thoroughly underutilised.

Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2016)
Director: Paul W.S. Anderson
2.5/5

The end?! Thank god. Tying everything up, Alice and company look to release an airborne cure for the T-virus and they come to find out why the virus was created in the first place and just how involved Alice really is in the whole affair. I can understand Anderson’s thought process in this ending, but a lot of it just seems so loosely tied that it’s a wonder it holds up at all, with the whole clone thing getting to be a tired excuse for why some characters keep returning. Some of the traps and sets are kind of cool, reminiscent of the Saw films even, but that’s about all that really holds interest until the ending, with the film picking up somewhat in the third act. It’ll be down to individual opinion as to whether Alice’s eventual fate was worth the whole series leading to that or not, and my opinion is that it was not. I never took to Alice and found her to be a weak protagonist to lead the series. If either Claire or Jill had been given the lead, I think the series could have had a stronger, more meaningful ending. Instead of going out with a resounding bang, this Paul W.S. Anderson-helmed series has died its virus-fueled death ironically quietly.

Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (2021)
Director: Johannes Roberts
3/5

A reboot was to be expected, I think, and this Johannes Roberts-written and -directed film does its best to be more faithful to the games. With Claire Redfield (Kaya Scodelario) as the main protagonist, she returns to Raccoon City to warn her brother Chris (Robbie Amell), a cop, about Umbrella’s experiments on children. As she arrives, a zombie outbreak begins and Chris is sent to the Spencer Mansion along with Jill Valentine (Hannah John-Kamen) and Albert Wesker (Tom Hopper) to find out what happened to the Bravo team, much in-keeping with the first game, while Claire teams up with rookie cop Leon Kennedy (Avan Jogia) to escape the city. The atmosphere is way closer to the games, specifically the first two/three, the sets are familiar, even some of the camera angles resembling angles used in the game, and it was way more gruesome with the experiments. It gets a little too insane toward the end, and Claire seems rather redundant (I’m pretty sure events would have played out more or less the same without her), but at least this film tries to balance the games’ influence with its own story. The casting is a little… unexpected, I suppose? It’s not unlikeable, just different to what might be expected. Each actor does a good job of their respective characters, and though the characters are surprisingly kind of boring, they’re still easier to care about than Alice was. And honestly? I much prefer it without Alice. This film made me realise that she really never made sense to me within the context of how the films relate to the games.

Resident Evil (2026)
Director: Zach Cregger

Well, there’s a lot resting on this reboot, if the last 24 years is anything to go by! The good news is it couldn’t possibly be any worse than we’ve seen before, and it has a decent director and co-writer in the form of Zach Cregger (Barbarian, Weapons). Watch this space for a review coming very soon!

Getting through these films was certainly quite the up-and-down rollercoaster. The Anderson series seemed to really struggle to find itself, continually looking to connect itself to the games whilst also find its own identity, which it never really managed to do. Extinction was certainly the peak of the series and Retribution the pit. I began to wonder if they started to become an excuse for Anderson and Jovovich (who met and married thanks to these films) to continue working on something together. It’s also clear a lot was inspired by multiple other films, including Asian action movies with the stunts and fight choreography, which made for a bit of a mish mash of tones and atmospheres throughout the series, and the inclusion of myriad characters from the game, some I’ve not mentioned, started to feel closer to fan service (and we apparently came close to having Jensen Ackles as Leon Kennedy in the Anderson films… I love Ackles, but I’m not sure I see the vision there). Roberts’s attempted reboot was a brave one but not strong enough to begin a whole new series. There’s also the 2022 TV show that was cancelled after one season that I’m tempted to watch for the sake of completion, but I’m not sure if I can put myself through more disappointment yet. I think I’ll get back to the games for now and enjoy being immersed in a world I can actually believe in (and where there’s no Alice, thank you very much).