The way of describing the clanging, gory technohorror film Resident Evil might be to call it "Microsoft Meets the Night of the Living Dead." The villainous Umbrella Corporation, which secretly develops a lab-engineered virus that reanimates the body after death, suggests an unholy combination of Microsoft (it dominates the computer market), the Pentagon (of your worst nightmares) and the world's greediest biotech company. Like so many contemporary thrillers, the movie is paradoxically infatuated with technology and paranoid about its deployment.
In one of the movie's few witty touches, the corporation's mainframe computer, known as the Red Queen, communicates as the hologram of a proper young English girl speaking in demure Alice in Wonderland cadences. When that innocent voice calmly advises, "Kill her! Do it!" the movie hits a creepily humorous note reminiscent of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Other than that, humor is in short supply.
PHOTO COURTESY OF FOX PICTURES
Resident Evil, written and directed by Paul W. S. Anderson, is inspired by a popular computer game series. And like Mortal Kombat, which Anderson also directed, the movie has a frantic staccato style that is more game-oriented than cinematic. The action begins immediately, and there's no letup from the pounding barrage. The characters waging a desperate battle to escape from the corporation's underground laboratories, known as the Hive, which extend half a mile below Raccoon City, a modern metropolis, are teammates in a life-and-death contest between humans and machines.
As in so many horror films, the opening scenes of Resident Evil, in which a laboratory technician smashes a vial of the deadly T-virus, which leaks into the Hive's ventilation system, are its scariest. Within seconds, the Hive begins automatically sealing itself off, trapping many of the panicked workers in plummeting elevators and rooms protected by impenetrable metal doors. Those workers, once infected, turn into semi-zombies. But whereas the undead of traditional horror movies are virtually indestructible, these ravenous creatures can be dispatched. Slaying them, however, is not easy.
As it blazes its gnashing and snarling trail, Resident Evil forces a shaky alliance between two subgenres: the futuristic techno-thriller and the zombie screamfest. The plot, such as it is, follows a group of commandos, led by Alice (Milla Jovovich) and Rain (Michelle Rodriguez), into the Hive to isolate the virus. When they discover that research staff members have metamorphosed into the undead and are out to devour them, the movie becomes an escape thriller.
The nearly monosyllabic characters are familiar comic-book stick figures. All Jovovich, as the sanctified heroine, has to do is look radiant, grimly purposeful and mildly alarmed while forcing open doors, wielding wrenches and fleeing monsters. Through it all, she remains remarkably unscuffed. It is Rodriguez's job as Alice's tough, streetwise cohort to do the feeling for both of them. Once Rain is bitten by one of the undead, the film becomes a race against time to locate the anti-virus that will prevent her from turning into a monster.
For extra suspense, the movie throws in a half-baked subplot about sabotage and betrayal. Extra horror is supplied by a pack of skinless, undead Dobermans who hurl themselves at Alice and by a hideous and insatiable mutation called the Licker, with a tongue like a bullwhip, that takes its strength from its slain victims and follows the commandos on the final lap of their escape on a runaway underground train.
Resident Evil isn't the first technothriller to imagine the nightmare of having your high-tech security system turn against you. But after Sept. 11 and the obsession with security it inspired, the nightmare has an extra resonance.
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