It seems that in this post-modern modern world of ours, you can barely turn your head without being slapped in the face with the fruitcake of irony, or the fish stick of homage. And with this in mind, feel free to point and grumble at all the bits in Resident Evil that were blatantly nicked from other places. Now, being a fan of the games, I’m all to aware that they were constructed as both an original piece of gaming entertainment and as a clever nod to the zombie flicks that the creator loved so much. So was the move to blatantly rip off a few other movies in this feature a “clever” “ironic” choice or just bloody lazy? I’m leaning towards the latter. The military team are straight out of Aliens, as is the set design for the chamber in which genetic experiments are housed. George Romero’s far superior Dawn of the Dead is aped with the zombie feeding parts. And for fans of Canadian sci-fi, you may well recognise a death scene as being EXACTLY THE SAME as a certain feature called Cube. This last “homage” is very well done, but there must be SOME original ideas left in Hollywood? What am I saying – they’re already considering a sequel to Titanic. You heard me!

***ZAWM-BEEES!***
Now – I don’t know if you’re a fan of the Resident Evil games. If you are, there’s a few nods to the series here – so when people start piping up about Nemesis and the T virus, you’ll be going “ah-ha!” But the main key to the games was – the only danger you faced was (drumroll) zombies. Male zombies, female zombies, zombie dogs – and the occasional freakishly large insect, reptile or genetically engineered freakazoid monster. This may not have gotten through Paul WS Anderson’s brain – seeing as zombies probably amount to 15 minutes of screen time. The rest of the threats come from the Red Queen – a nonsensically bad concept. That’s the name for the computer system you see (you have to call computer systems women’s names ever since – yup – Alien), and it has a holographic representation – a 9-year-old girl. One of the military team points out that she’s there to try and put off the team from shutting the mainframe down. So later in the movie when it starts offering them advice, one has to wonder why. One wonders a lot of things during the course of the film, especially why in this modern age of ours that the CGI zombie effects are laughably bad – physical effects would have worked so much better for people with half a head, but you can clearly see the outlines and it kinda detracts from the horror.

· At one point, a character bemoans the fact that she can’t see to shoot. A few minutes later – she gazes at her digital watch and reads the time off it perfectly.
· My most hated of all movie devices – flashbacks to events WE ALREADY SAW HAPPEN. All filmed jump-cut style.
· A woman, surrounded by zombies. No gun. All seems hopeless. Screen whites out – and inexplicably, she is safely away from them.
· A flashy CGI map flashes up from time to time, showing out plucky team on it via heat registers. For some reason, it doesn’t pick up the zombies or anything else warm.
· Trapped in a corridor full of deadly laser beams, the “crack military unit” abandon an obvious safe part of it in favour of standing in the middle of the room and trying to jump over the beams.
· The “crack military unit” sit around as all goes to hell, letting their prisoner (a snooping cop they find in the mansion) just wander off.

***DIRE-ECTION***
Paul WS Anderson is a B-movie grade director making C-movies. Event Horizon worked for me because it was really out there with gore and concepts. Now, a lot of it was ripped off from other movies but it got away with it because of camp value (Sam Neill made me laugh as the bad guy) and decent SFX. Plus the direction was pretty good. Anderson’s other efforts suffered from too many jump cuts, inappropriately loud music and passionless action sequences. The same can be said here.

The only redeeming feature that made me grin was the references to in-game concepts players of Resident Evil will be familiar with. The Umbrella logo is all around, the Nemesis is mentioned, the zombie dogs are nasty buggers and the mansion and train are in place. The best part of the entire movie is, ironically, the ending – where fans may well cream over the attention to detail that will be familiar to those who have played Resident Evil 2. It makes it kind of like a poorer “X-Men” in that it’s based on a well-loved concept but uses its time to set up a potentially killer sequel.

· Crack military units ain’t what they used to be.
· Zombies only appear on their own if they’re related to the person they’re about to try and eat.
· Flesh getting caught on train tracks at high speed inexplicably catches fire.
· Never trust the person who seems incredibly relaxed as zombies attack.
· Highly advanced scientific complexes have poorly constructed piping.
· Super Mario Brothers – sucked. Tomb Raider – sucked. Mortal Kombat – sucked. Double Dragon – sucked. Street Fighter – sucked. Spotting a pattern?