Paul WS Anderson's RESIDENT EVIL series (2002-2017)

Well, thanks to Zach Cregger and his sensational adaptation of the video games, I realized now would be the time (and what else am I doing with myself except getting by day to day as best I can) to watch the previous Resident Evil movies (not counting "Welcome to Raccoon City" from 2021. I got to draw the line somewhere...)  and frankly, sometimes, many times, cinephiles need their bags of Cheesy Puffs and Doritos and Monster energy drinks; pure carbo-junk extravagance!   

How did it go?  Well....

Resident Evil (2002)

"When I get out of here... I think I'm gonna get laid."

Ok! Not as awful as I remembered, though "good" is such a strong word in cases like this. Guilty pleasure but bornerline; Paul "WS" Anderson made an... adequate to plodding and then sometimes intriguingly schlocky thriller with some performances that wholly suck the life out of a room and others that have a little pathos (Jovovich and Rodriguez). Any time there is exposition you can feel the director's tendency to get the bare minimum of what he needs and then time to move along to the next, generic line readings be damned. Or perhaps that has to do with the fact that 75% of the exposition is "The military corporation are evil, they did this, the virus, etc."

The other thing about Resident Evil is that while Anderson does not ever make anything scary, there is a slick atmosphere that he and the crew create that is not unpleasant to look at (this is just before a lot of action movies in the 2000s got so shiny you needed Windex to get through a screening), and he knows how to stage action at points to be if not exciting then unintentionally hilarious (or maybe at times he does mean for it to be funny in his cynical way). You have to laugh when that bit with the elevator happens in the first five minutes, but there are other parts where you can see his creative wheels spinning.

Or maybe, and this occurred to me at around the point halfway into this when Alice's memory snaps more-so back that she has expert martial arts and Kick-All-the-Ass skills that once The Bourne Identity came out months after this it made her "wait I remember" arc all the more shallow feeling. Having said that, at 18 I thought her kicking the zombie dog was a bridge too far and now, a generation (and hundreds of bong hits) later, it maybe shows how far we have come that... it is kind of cool.

... Man, revisiting what I wrote about this in spring of 2002, I was a wee-bit of an insufferable ass on Imdb dot com comments. I was finally developing my taste in what I liked and hated in movies, and aside from finding much of this overbaked and stupid (and finding it insulting that there was a "Hal 9000" style super-computer), I mostly just wrote about how lame this was because it wasn't George Romero and his hallowed Dead trilogy (and because the studio rejected his script, but that is a story for another time). I will never delete that review, but I am glad I am not that same Jack from back then.

... on the other hand, these zombies are just... there. Not even a single creme pie to shove in any of their faces!

RESIDENT EVIL: APOCALYPSE (2004)

"Evolution has its dead ends." You're telling me.

So, I feel like when Mike Epps is driving all by himself on a wrecked street and intentionally runs over that one guy and shouts out to himself "GTA, motherfucker! Ha-ha, ten points!" And then proceeds to be distracted by two titties-all-out undead hookers and thus crashes his car and then sort of stumbles out of his car and makes a face like "oh, wait, you are *zombies*" and hustles away before the next round of guys with funs starts mowing down zombies, my brain just started leaking out of my ears.

Like, what the shit was that? Why are you referencing that video game right now at this moment? Was that an Ad-Lib? Yes, what am I saying, of course it was (unless Paul WS Anderson is that dumb to write that, which... sure). And you know something... Mike Epps is one of the only highlights of the movie (well, him and Jared Harris, who got to sit for his entire performance at least).

I remember so many years ago when I originally saw it in theaters finding the 2002 Resident Evil movie to be such wasteful trash, only recently to come around to it again and, while not necessarily being an ardent defender now, finding myself entertained enough by some of the daffy fight choreography and production design, was a good thing to do. Watching the first sequel, also penned (chortle) by Anderson but not directed by him, brings no such minor pleasures or junk food joy at some more playful grungy set design.

This is something that feels like it was thrown together quite quickly, and while two years is a good amount of time between movies so much of it (directed by technically a first timer by Witt though he has been second-unit directing on countless blockbusters) is so rushed and haphazard in how shots are designed and basic decisions in the sense of "ok, that take is... there, moving on."

Some of this did make me laugh, and perhaps that is something, like when Jovovich's Alice comes riding on her motorcycle through the stained glass windows of a church to come save the hapless supporting characters, who thank goodness I can mostly barely remember (a couple of them get eaten up mostly by haphazard Avid editing decisions). And on a very cheesy-movir level, when you can actually see Nemesis' face, it is fun toblook at. But then you are in a deluge of fast-to-slow motion flashbacks and absolutely inane attempts at creating... pathos, I guess, around what they did to Alice and her compatriots, and whenever someone has to talk for more than (checks watch) two seconds, it is insufferable.

If I wasn't in a mind frame to watch these movies now (post 2026 RE curiosity piqued you could say), I could have gone without ever watching it, and wish I had (let's just say for as mean as Roger Ebert's concluding line of his review of this might be... he ain't wrong). This is a movie with zombies and monsters that has no significant atmosphere to get you invested or unsettled, and action that runs through your brain like diarrhea. Suffice it to say I am still happy with my decision to skip this when it was playing in cineplexes decades ago and stay at home catching up on my education of Bergman or Nouvelle Vague or whatever I had going on at the time.

Like... the editing in that cemetery scene alone is one of the most incoherently fucked things I have ever watched. Taken 3 only wishes. But then again that is almost peanuts compared to the *bare-knuckle fight* that happens around two thirds into this between Nemesis - the hunting 7 foot tall monster man with a face that looks like it was left over and melted a bit from a Charles Band production - and Mila Jovovich who, bless her heart, tries her best to come away from this not too embarrassed.

Ok, these gotta get better right?  Oh, good!

RESIDENT EVIL: EXTINCTION (2007)

"I am... the future."

"No, you're just... another asshole."

Oh, gosh, Paul WS Anderson, I had no idea you have seen... Day of the Dead! and The Road Warrior! and Dune (the Lynch one)... and for that one (surprisingly and thrillingly gnarly and ultra violent) set piece, The Birds! And maybe Alien Resurrection, too. So, cool, good for you.

I think with this installment, Anderson as writer-producer had a small challenge that he was able to surmount which was getting Jovovich on board (despite being married, she put down Apocalypse the second movie even to publications at the time as not being what she signed up for). How he does this is by throwing as much as he can into a pot and seeing what can stick, which is more than it doesn't; he has never been that special as a writer, but at least in this case (probably with more focus as he was not off shooting an Alien vs Predator simultaneously) he knows what trashy-genre stew to put together and has a director with more skill and experience than the previous one in capable genre-carpet-bagger Russell Mulcahy (Razorback, Highlander, and... Highlander 2, woops).

In other words, it is not just that Anderson gifts Jovovich as a Desert wandering Warrior of the Wasteland who will by some happenstance connect with a bunch of other wandering travelers (including returning wisecracker Mike Epps for some reason), but that now Alice also has telekinesis and can occasionally even control the weather - that on top of having the quick wits to get the upper hand on degenerates who sic the zombie dogs on her. There is just enough explanation, however slight, or Alice and her being controlled by the Umbrella dimwits that you can at least get from one scene to the next, even as I know if I begin to try to apply logistics I will be here all night.

And hey, why not even on top of the other influences tip the hat to The Stand by a trip into sand-ensconsed Las Vegas (?) But the point is Jovovich does have more to do here even if Alice is not necessarily advancing a whole bunch as a character; she has more power, however inexplicable except ::insert new monkeying around via Umbrella Corp here:: and you roll with it because what else are you going to do with Resident Evil 3? Ali Larter with a lot of big guns!

It is hard for me to defend this exactly as "quality" exactly, especially since Anderson has his touchstones for references, even as they are included less because they really mean something to him or that he can transcend them rather that it adds familiar flavor on to the aforementioned stew (or if you would rather a more tasty metaphor, think like as a kid if you decided to mix four or five cereals in the same bowl; sure, you can do it, but your stomach may be a mess later on).

It is... *easy* to watch and sort of enjoy this as junkfood, and while Mulcahey is not immune to shooting action with many quick cuts at least it is not incomprehensible as in the last entry. I will even give Mulcahy that there are some impressive images like all of the swarms of undead holding around the facility, or when we first see Vegas... until ot becomes a melee of bullets and special effects. It is a mindless but harmless guilty pleasure.

It must have been such a good change of pace for Iain Glen to get to play Jorah, that relatively decent dude looking after Kahlesei on Game of Thrones, following this sneering, total unrepentant corporate/medical douchebag in this movie/series (and he is quite amazing at it, a real unironic delight when he leers on as his hapless underlings are newly fresh undead meat food). Lastly: kudos to the bit with the joint, that made me laugh like... it was the Cregger movie.

RESIDENT EVIL: AFTERLIFE (2010)

If I were 12, maybe this would rip. But I am not 12, so it just rips a rampantly stylish, occasionally funny, substantively dry but awfully, bloody wet series of farts.

While on one hand I know it may not be fair to go in to a movie like Resident Evil Afterlife, the fourth entry in Anderson's franchise at Screen Gems) and he directed, wrote and/or produced the first six movies over 14 years so I consider it his even if not all of them have the full mark of auteur, and expecting something high quality as far as Junkfood action-horror cinema, after the third one the stakes were at least raised a little to be more ambitious at least as far as mixing up some influences and locations. For this one, while there is a brief trip early in the film (well, after the six month time jump) to Alaska, which provides some cool sights, most of the movie takes place in a typical gray and drab city with interiors that just speak to "well... this is another one of these."

But I am not critical of this movie for its locations; what I can be critical about is that Anderson tries to return to a story that has more emphasis on characters surviving through an impossible mission ala the first movie, and it is just... adequate. Barely that. Anderson has a competency and even a certain panache for making WOO COOL shots that are not mind-numbing on the Michael Bay scale, though he leans on the kind of shallow spectacle of bullets in slow motion, rain, and other ephemera that make it little wonder that he shot this in 3D (and you can tell, oy you can), but as a writer and then how he gets his actors to not even emote but simply to *react* with some urgency at times are parts where he shows up quite lacking.

Ali Larter is a good example; she is a returning character from the previous movie (how she is discovered would take too long and I don't have time I'm double parked after all), and while I can't say she was exactly Sigourney Weaver or anything in the last entry, she said establish some kind of characterization. Here, she seems mostly adrift and while that is somewhat explained by a plot contrivance - good ol' memory loss - I rarely believed her just in the basics of what she was doing. Not that she is bad, and no one here is bad (ok maybe someone I will mention at the end of this was laughable, and Wentworth Miller is a stack of talking cardboard), but just not given anything to work with to make scenes more compelling or suspenseful. Even Anderson's wife and muse Milla Jovovich has one (two if I stretch) moments where she gets to show some range past her passive Determinating Action Lady face.

Aside from that, the movie just sort of chugs along as a super discount Romero-is Zombie melodrama where a group is surrounded on all sides and it is really (dun dun dun) one or more in the group who will be self-serving dicks that make things rough for everyone else. This is not to say Afterlife is a wash or even hard to watch, and actually when Anderson gets to show of the "Axe Man" in *a(x)tion it is a thrilling sight and the actor playing him gets to have some fun swinging it around. And a few moments, like one where a character escapes on a plane and nearly totally fumbles it in the getaway is legitimately funny. It never gets to the headscratching excrable filmmaking of Apocaplyse (the 2nd one), but Anderson is also not growing enough as a director for actors to make this less than a rote exercise either.

Oh, and Paul, as much as you might want him to be in your head, in execution as far as Matrix and specifically Agent Smith rip-offs Shawn Roberts is fucking definitely no Hugo Weaving.

(*sorry, couldn't resist)

RESIDENT EVIL: RETRUBUTION (2012)

Anyway... is this post-modernism? Judges? At the least Resident Evil: Retribution is one of the guiltiest pleasures of the 2010s.

I say this not to exactly excuse parts of the dicey quality of the special effects (at times, some of the effects are also, at least for this series, pretty good), but because I had an enjoyment of Paul WS Anderson largely eschewing anything related to a tight-knit plot, which has never been one of his strong suits, and focused here on making something almost, but not quite, avant-garde in presentation. If this Video Game adaptation, where Alice following the battle at the end of Afterlife is now in a series of simulations and needing to get across them to stop... something, it is the feeling of being in a video game.

Maybe Anderson knew, writing his 5th script here (well, writing being relative, a lot of this may just be "This is Set Piece, cool and gnarly shit happens, TBD") that it was time to cut loose and try something different. Seeing Alice interact again with characters who have been long gone, like Michelle Rodriguez from the first movie, is fun especially as it is a total simulacrum of her and other characters like her (up to an including a daughter for Alice who she has to protect at all costs), but at the same time I don't want to act like this is not Anderson also retreating into Member-Berries for those still sticking with the franchise by this point.

What is on the side of the filmmakers, and this just may be in comparison with the weaker entries in this series, is that they give Jovovich more to do, and I don't simply mean in terms of action even as the climactic bout where Alice fights that one super-charged lady who has all of the skills to kill down pat (Anderson is a little better holding on some angles and images, though this is just barely and has aged poorly in the face of all the John Wicks when it comes to fight choreography and mis en scene). Jovovich actually gets to have... emotional beats and reactions and things that I imagine were a breath of fresh air for the star who has been the muse of her husband's for years.

At the same time, I don't know if I am on board calling this some secret great/genius piece of post-modernism, even if that is what Anderson is going for with these simulation set pieces. This is still a mess when it comes down to looking for any kind of story - like, uh, why is Wesker back in this one, didn't he get wasted in the last, oh, nevermind what is the use - and there are sections where characters in non-descript black coats and clothes just shoot over and over at hords of zombies and monsters and it can be numbing.

But I was laughing through a good deal of this (maybe some unintentional but more I think Anderson having some good fun, like Rodriguez's character stating she is anti-gun), and the ending is just so gloriously stupid that I truly admire the big swing that Anderson takes both in setting up the next one and in the grandiosity if the final shot. It would be hard for me to defend it, but among this series this is one of the better/least obnoxious ones (along with Extinction).

Last but....least!

RESIDENT EVIL: THE FINAL CHAPTER (2017)

So.... EDITING! ALL OF IT! I need a Tylenol... or 5.

There were issues both narratively and stylistically here and there (to put it mildly) throughout the six Resident Evil movies written, produced and/or directed by Paul *WS Anderson, though often times his love of other genre works as influences and messing with expectations and conventions - as seen in the third and fifth movies, Extinction and Retribution - helped to add some energy and vitality to the relentless, sometimes aggressively presented action and spotty character writing.

But by the time he got to The Final Chapter I am not sure whether it was just being done with it all and needing to get over it, or working up a flop-sweat to up the ante on the "Cool Sick Action, Bruh" aggressive stylization (what I have read is also dubbed "vulgar auteurism" I guess), but the movie ends up being a total fucking chore to sit through and one of the more drab and needlesslt grim would-be Blockbusters of this new century. And the wild thing is that if you were really amped up for what was to come following the "Hell Has come Washington DC, Alice, now you and I Mr. Wesker will fight together" cliffhanger.... it is all for not.

Maybe Anderson just couldn't see how he could live up to the expectations that that ending imposed, or just leaning into the grim-dark beats for this entry as Alice is set on a course to return to Raccoon City (where it all began) snd the Hive, but what he has in place is plodding and lumbering and, worst of all, so pushing past in terms of stylistic excess with the kind of edits that would make the gun fire from an AR-15 look quaint, that it becomes near epileptic in outcome. His and his collaborators' work on action in these movies could be hit or miss at times (the less said about Apocalypse, which this one resembles in that incoherence, the better), but it is a wretched turn from the previous entry where it looked like Anderson was starting to understand that getting us to see a little more of the action could make it more impressive.

I don't know if this is unfair to say, but for me it strikes as seeming like Anderson doesn't trust his or any audience, like if he took some time for an image (already/often a little shaky too and inelegantly framed, but whatever) to last longer than half a second that we might be bored. But his style is boring because once everything is MAXIMUM EDITING POWER like a cracked-out chimpanzee hitting the razor keystroke on the Premiere software then nothing means anything and it is all just visual noise.

One could try to argue that might be fine to add to the chaos of hordes of zombies on the attack, but the characters we have here have been through so many of these attacks for a long time so it is not like the excess even means much for them. But once you get to, say, Alice is Dr. Isaacs (more on him in a moment) in that hallway of lasers from the first movie, even that is cut to ribbons and it strikes me that this movie is why the likes of John Wick and those action movies became more prominent and exciting for giving scenes and choreography to breathe (unless if, another guess on Final Chapter and another thing adding to the suck, the edits are there to cover up a lack of proficiency in action choreography and geography).

As for characters, or any memorable images? For the latter I did like those all too brief images of killed undead hanging from overpasses. For the former? What characters? Dr. Isaacs and especially the sneering, scene-chewing turn from Iann Glen in the third movie added some kick to the conflict at hand. In this movie, whether because Anderson couldn't think of a new antagonist or that his Wesker is now even *more* of a standing-up expressionless lump, Glen is trying as a clone or a series of clones or who cares to make this character a viable threat, but even he is stuck in the narrative and formal miasma that Anderson has created here, compounded by sceens of the Red Queen (good this time for no discernable reason) going on and on with interminable instructions, and even he is lacking aside from the expected and excrable villain monologue in the last third.

And aside from the editing problems, the movie just doesn't look good for what it is; I assume Anderson had a sizeable budget for his last big go around, and it became a hit internationally if not domestically, but except for those handful of times he adds like one light things are dark and cluttered, and there is no threat or anything like that from the thousands of undead hordes running and tumbling over each other less like an apocalyptic threat and more like the rush on Black Friday.

The point I want to get at here is this is not even fun as a guilty pleasure bad movie like Retribution. This takes all of the bad points of the previous movies and almost none of the attributes, and while it is bad enough if you are just looking for something to have a junkfood-genre appreciation I would imagine it is worse if you did care more about the lore of the series and how this one undoes so much that came before (or if things were explained before, like how Alice no longer has telepathic potential, it doesn't seem clear why she... doesn't now). It all just sucks.

(*I will choose to believe the WS stands for Wingstop. Now to see myself out...)

So.... 5 > 3 > 1 > 4 > 2 > 6