Switching off the "seven year old writing about their holidays" mode, yes, I did indeed go to see Resident Evil at the cinema today. I had been promising myself this as something to do during my week off, and had always been intending to go while Andie was away, as I seriously doubted (correctly) that Andie would want to go and see it. I treated myself to a seat right at the front of the "nice" seats (the ones that recline!), a bucket of popcorn and a big drink. And it was a good time!

The movie itself is endearingly stupid. If I were to get analytical and critic-y about it, I would say that it is a sequence of largely unrelated vignettes featuring dialogue that primarily consists of the word "fuck", which are all quite entertaining in themselves, and which eventually build to a slightly unsatisfying conclusion. But this is not a movie intended to be taken seriously. It is a movie about spectacle, and wilfully observing that horror and comedy are, more often than not, very much adjacent to one another. It was a genuinely amusing movie — and it's clear that this was entirely intentional, too.

For the unfamiliar, the 2026 Resident Evil movie follows the misadventures of Bryan, a medical courier tasked with delivering a top-priority package to Raccoon City General Hospital. Along the way, his drive through the snowy night is interrupted by him hitting what he believes is a regular human being, but which becomes clear almost immediately is an infected person. He flees into a nearby spooky house after his "victim" causes a passing police officer to crash, and finds himself confronted with a variety of other monsters. The movie then charts his gradual journey towards his eventual destination, with a kind of half-hearted side plot about his fear of becoming a parent with his partner.

Resident Evil is not particularly "good" from a narrative perspective, then. It's largely a sequence of Things Happening, and Bryan's characterisation primarily consists of him saying "fuck" a lot and occasionally exhibiting half-arsed anguish over the fact he left his girlfriend hanging over a conversation about her apparently being pregnant.

But where it does shine is in its wilful adoption of the conventions of survival horror video games. The "everyman" protagonist who is barely competent at the things they end up forced to do as a result of the horrifying situation in which they find themselves. The inexplicable prevalence of locked doors that cannot be opened just by shooting the locks off them. The fact that incidental characters more often than not end up dead just a few minutes after they have been introduced. The gradual escalation of stakes in rough parallel with the level of firepower the protagonist has. And the way that, after not very long at all, you are almost desensitised to the sight of blood and gore, because there has just been so much of it.

In short, the film is primarily entertaining because of its overall vibes, rather than anything especially clever or noteworthy that it is doing with narrative, themes and characterisation. That's no bad thing, mind; if there's one thing Resident Evil as a video game series has never been strong on, it's narrative, themes and characterisation. The series knows that it is dumb and has always been dumb, and prides itself on its predictability in many ways — but that doesn't, in any way, stop it from being enjoyable. In fact, for many people, it is this "switch your brain off and just enjoy the absurdity" mentality that keeps them coming back for more Resident Evil games; the series is a deliberate and stark contrast to Silent Hill in this regard, and it means that the two can happily coexist, despite the original Silent Hill being initially regarded as Konami's response to Capcom's series back on its original release.

So I enjoyed the Resident Evil movie, then, and I'm glad I went to see it at the cinema. The big screen and the general environment added to the experience a great deal; the fact seeing a movie at the cinema is something you cannot help but enjoy in the moment, without external distractions (hopefully — turn your fuckin' phone off!) really helped, too.

I'm not going to be in any rush to see it again or pick it up on Blu-Ray or anything, but I am glad I went, I am glad I experienced it — and I agree with many people that, while it has many shortcomings taken as a movie on its own merits, as an adaptation of its source material and an homage to video games in general, it does a fantastic job.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.

The post #oneaday Day 854: Resident. EEEVIL. FILM! appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.