A film based on a successful electronic pastime franchise, Resident Evil was released on the 15th of March 2002. It has a neat run time of one hundred minutes, and a pleasing commitment to financial sobriety by its writer/director — a Mr. Paul W.S. Anderson — who married his lead actress, a Ms. Jovovich, in what I can only presume was a successful attempt to reduce outgoing wage bills. And yet I still cannot recommend this film. If only such estimable respect for the world-as-is had been extended to the rest of the production.
We open in a laboratory, one that has apparently been constructed by a madman. Air is clearly flowing out of the room – yet later events reveal that work involves microorganisms that easily meet or exceed the World Health Organisation’s classification for risk group four. These biohazards should thus be dealt with only in a laboratory with an inward directional airflow – such that negative air pressure passively prevents any airborne contaminants from leaving the room and entering other parts of the facility. The neglect of this important safety feature shows a lack of professionalism on Mr. Anderson’s part.
As events progress, we are introduced to a group of mercenary soldiers, who find themselves at the mercy of a corridor full of laser beams. The beams appear to have an incredibly high continuous power output, and slice straight through the cloth, metal, and human forms in their path. Such a contraption would indeed by useful in my own field, offering an apparent clean, neat and simple way to divide living or once living flesh into consumable chunks. And yet I confess that my mind must be less inventive than Mr. Anderson’s, as I can find no explanation for the seamless way this feat is accomplished.
While light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation creates a fine and precise cutting tool, it is one that works primarily by creating heat – with the attendant smoking and scarring over any cut surface. Those individuals who have undergone laser eye surgery can attest to the unfortunate smell created as their corneal tissue is burned away. A carcass prepared in the same way as the commander of the mission would, in reality, be rendered unfit for human consumption.
For the remainder of the film we are treated to a sad barrage of reanimated deceased bodies. The human and canine wanderers offer little of interest to those in my field – one would hope that even a simpleton could see that once dead bodies are unlikely to get up and move around, no matter what biohazard they have been exposed to. The drive towards cannibalism displayed by the bodies is merely the cherry on top of a poorly thought out cake of assumptions.
Perhaps of greater interest is the reaction of one character, whose infection appears to call forth tentacles from a gaping wound on his body. Indeed, throughout the film many bodies react to said infection by producing tentacles or appendages from various bodily orifices. This seems unlikely.
Certainly, the human genome retains many basic body plan genes that are as active in a fly, or a snake, say, as a Homo sapiens. The Hox gene family may, perhaps, be involved in these early stages – as a set that appear across vertebrate and invertebrate lineages, they decide the identity of a section of the body, and could perhaps be prevailed upon to create writhing pseudopods. But to suppose that the infected could so rapidly marshal their body’s resources in the service of tentacles with no obvious, immediate utility? This seems without logic.
Of most importance is the actions of the film’s artificial intelligence – a sensible entity that appears to desire the protection of the wider world, via the destruction of the facility. Indeed, one feels that this destruction is well overdue, poor laboratory biosafety practices alone surely damming the place long before the infection. And yet Mr Anderson chooses to deny this sensible intelligence its victory, and allow several main characters to survive their experiences. This is disappointing.
As the production comes to its end, we see the true cost of this choice: a city in ruins. While I applaud this realism, I cannot help but feel that a greater practicality displayed by all parties could have avoided much unnecessary suffering. I understand that the film has several sequels – let us hope that Mr Anderson was able to exhibit a greater coherence in those future efforts.
much time online. She has a degree in the history of science.
I love this more than I think I have ever loved anything.
“We open in a laboratory, one that has apparently been constructed by a madman. Air is clearly flowing out of the room – yet later events reveal that work involves microorganisms that easily meet or exceed the World Health Organisation’s classification for risk group four.”
please continue to review all lab-originating disaster movies in terms of their compliance with WHO, OSHA, & other safety acts so as to encourage more sensible dystopian building codes; many thanks
Seconding this motion.
Umbrella Corporation, and their futuristic peer Cerberus, seem to specialize in expending enormous resources dedicated to developing highly sophisticated and complex facilities and projects in such a way that they are designed to spectacularly malfunction and collapse, killing everyone involved.
The insurance pay outs though
I think that even the game acknowleged that, with some dialogue that Cerebus experiments always seem to end with “…and then it got loose and killed our guys.”
That would be my dream job, so….
Yes please. And then review the engineering plans in space operas, to encourage more sensible evil space station design. (Really people, who keeps designing these Death Stars with one, easily accessed weak point?)
Best theory I’ve read is that the Empire (and its successor, the First Order) simply go with the lowest bidder. “Yeah they have their flaws, but we keep blowing up significant portions of our tax base, so…”
Including “30 Days of Night.” I would love to hear the meat processing professional’s views on OSHA safety exhibited therein. (I would also love to hear from a meteorological expert.)
Try this, which is not quite what you were after, but does note that the whole point was that the northern winter meant the vampires have weeks of sunless time to feed on the townsfolk, but hit the town in an orgy of murder instead.
Aww, I can’t get it to open. It says their website is offline.
I suppose murder is the first step for a vampire to feed, and I’m ok with that. I’m ok with the premise that a sunless winter is a great idea for vampires. If the donnée is vampires, I can accept vampires. I can even accept vampires arriving by magic ship through frozen arctic seas in the dead of winter. But I can’t accept all the problems with sun and light (that’s not how the sky works!) and temperature and ethnicity and OSHA violations and people going out without mittens and oh so so so much general wrongness about the town of Barrow AK, which is a place I love. (There is a scene in a scrap processing plant (?) where huge gnashing destructo-blade-crushers are right next to a tiny low wall with no acrylic shield. Of course someone’s going to fall into that. The whole town should have just jumped in and saved time.) Also, apparently planes can’t fly in the dark? And nobody at all is Iñupiat.
Phew, ok, glad I got that out. I have more, but I’ll spare you.
Also, since the vampires are entirely there for access to a meaty bloody food source, it would fit nicely with the meat processing professional’s knowledge base.
Can we have a tag for the meat processing professional’s reviews? They are wonderful and I would like to be able to more easily go from one to the rest.
Clicking the more by Helen Craig link will get you more (but I agree – the tag would be nice).
The first time I got to “Mr Anderson” I read the rest with Agent Smith’s voice and vocal inflection. It worked.
Never let it be said that a meat processing professional can’t also be well educated in the more academic biological fields.
This is comedy gold.
YES I THINK SO..
I was trying to figure out exactly how those lasers would have to move to achieve that completely pointless twirl at the end, and then I noticed that they stole my IntenseDebate avatar! Those lasering bastards!
Let’s have LOTS more of these!
i can’t wait for the deleted comment that says “You didn’t understand the movie”.
Even though I have only watched one of the things reviewed over the course of this series, it is one of my favourite things on The Toast. Please never stop.
I watched this movie because I was really deeply into my Milla Jovovich phase at the time. Now I’m glad because I can read this review with the proper context.
(I’m not really out of my Milla Jovovich phase. She is an unearthly and inhuman beauty and I love her.)
I’m still putting “In a Glade” on mixes for people! That record never gets old!
I bristled a little at the suggestion that anyone would marry Milla Jovovich for any but the most romantic of reasons.
For some, cost control is the most romantic of reasons.
I watched the second one b/c I had an ex who was into Milla Jovovich. I was not informed of the premise of the franchise. I do.not.do. zombie movies. Milla was very nice, though.
This is brilliant and amazing. Never leave, Meat Processing Professional!
I do wonder, though, just how useful a high-powered magic laser beam would be in meat processing. I guess it would be handy for cutting off heads and hooves and sawing through racks of ribs, and maybe for cutting a roast into steaks. I’d be afraid to use it on anything that required more precision, though, for fear of ending up with bone chunks where I didn’t want them.
Quite right, the meat processing field is certainly one that rewards, nay encourages, the intimacy of human touch.
The Resident Evil films are some of my favourite bad movies and I can only hope you’ll watch and review them all.
now the bad resident evil voice acting from the first game will be playing in my head all day long. (if you haven’t seen it, please look up ‘resident evil voice acting’ on youtube, you owe it to yourself.)
But just take- a- look- at- THIS.
You, the master of unlocking, must have heard about a fan project to restore the terrible voice acting to the shiny new HD remake of the first game.
“let us hope that Mr Anderson was able to exhibit a greater coherence in those future efforts.”
*cough* I mean, I own most of these movies and Milla Jovovich is perfection, but… there was a definite lol at this line.
For some reason I’m reading this in Nick Offerman’s voice
I relish any excuse to talk about the Resident Evil movies tbh. For what they are, can we discuss how great they are?
1. Every movie passes the Bechdel test.
2. It is a female led action franchise of soon to be SIX movies (also the highest grossing movies from a video game franchise ever) spanning FIFTEEN YEARS. The lead has also always been played by the same actress (they haven’t “upgraded” to a younger actress or tried to have an actor lead the films.)
3. They make an attempt at diverse casting/characters in every movie. I know that in the second movie the character in a wheelchair was played by an able-bodied actor and the casting and character are both problematic. However, in a later movie a significant minor character was deaf and played by a deaf actress, and as far as I can tell they didn’t have to write the character that way.
Obvies they aren’t perfect at all but I think they low key do some things right and just the mere existence of the films is pretty amazing.
I’ve only seen the first two Resident Evil movies. Honestly, I love them both. I wish we had more female-led dumb action movies. I love the moment in the first movie when Alice runs up a wall (in heels) and then flips off of it to kick a zombie-dog in the face and then (awed by her own actions) says in a moment of self-discovery “I’m a badass.” FUN!?
Have you seen Aeon Flux (the movie)?
I just noticed that this is posted in “Beauty.” Makes sense.
Resident Evil 1 was very good, all other sequels got worse and worse with each movie