Steve King

Not that it’s a high bar, but this is easily the best adaptation this franchise has received. Sure, we all enjoyed the dumb fun of the original movie twenty years ago, in spite of the writing, acting, and complete lack of faithfulness to the source material. The movies went downhill from there. Is it weird that Wesker isn’t Wesker? Is it strange, at first, that it doesn’t seem to follow the games (until they start talking about the Raccoon City incident in episode three)? Yeah. But does it have easily the best acting we’ve seen in a Resident Evil property? Yes, Lance Reddick has that covered handily. Are the effects better than the films? RE looked bad in 2002. This looks like it was made in at least 2008. If you like zombie stuff, give it a shot. Hell, if you like Resident Evil, give it a shot. Just pretend it’s another of the games that has no connection to the first.

I spent the first 10-15 minutes of this film trying to figure out if it was "bad on purpose." Like, was it an attempt at a Grindhouse, tongue-firmly-in cheek, mock horror? The silly opening scene, bad gore, terrible acting... "it is time to cut out the cancer..." line had me laughing, and then I kind of sat there wondering where we were even going to go with this. More bad acting, cheesy "creepy" build to the first kill that just feels like a low budget 80s film. All building up to a less-than-inspired twist that makes me think Wan fell asleep watching Basket Case or something. Shockingly bad movie. Hugely disappointing.