Rotting Reviews: Resident Evil is an Unbearable Film, But It Could Cure Depression

The Rotting Corpse is a weekly satire column dedicated to poking fun at our many horror favorites. For daily horror news and updates, be sure to check out the Dead Entertainment home page.

Paul W.S. Anderson is a talentless hack of a director and his 2002 film adaptation of Resident Evil, which is based on a best-selling video game franchise of the same name, is a testament to this fact. To be honest, we’re fine with that because this movie single-handedly cured our depression and we’re finally going to enjoy taking a foul shit on this godawful train wreck of a film.

This scene looks and smells like shit.

Why does this movie start us off inside a cardboard box? It’s almost as if Anderson took to heart the greeting you get when you reload a save file to the first game, where the player is told they’re once again entering the world of survival horror. So, we’re supposed to believe that we, the audience, are entering the world of survival horror through a square cut out of a cardboard box? Bullshit.

First off, this box is badly soaked and smells like a basement that had its fair share of leaks from the upstairs bathroom. Yes, it’s so bad that the stench is radiating off the screen and even the dead are offended and deeply disturbed.

Finally, why does the merry-go-round theme song make us hate ourselves and want to punch Bongo the Clown in the face? In fact, we did just that and Anderson is going to be fully responsible for paying that poor fool’s medical expenses.

Clearly, the Umbrella Corporation needs to re-examine their hiring process.

Jesus, has nobody seen Die Hard in this elevator? Everybody is in a panic and nobody thought to pop open the ceiling door and climb his or her way out. Take for example this guy with the coffee stain on his shirt, who has three degrees and is just completely losing his cool like a fucking asshole. What is the Umbrella Corporation paying these imbeciles for? Our response is this: off with them and their heads!

Schwing!

I don’t always get piss drunk, but when I do, I wake up in strange mansions with no memory.

The Brits seriously know how to party and the London clubbing scene must have been a wild night for Alice (Milla Jovovich), who was completely belligerent and passed out in a random person’s shower. Bleary and confused, she awakens to find herself in a gigantic mansion and has no memory of who she is.

While she’s stumbling around in the dark and investigating her surroundings, a voyeuristic pervert is forced to conceal himself behind some curtains and wait for the right opportunity to make an escape. Alice notices his ridiculously huge feet and tells the creep to come out from hiding, which is how we’re then introduced to gym rat Matt (Eric Mabius), who is immediately an unlikable character.

It’s time to fuck some shit up!

Hell yeah! Here comes Hunk and his cavalry to steer this shitty movie in the right direction! Damn, this part even has a sick soundtrack by Marilyn Manson to back it up too, who crashes through the windows with the crew and begins playing the music live on screen. Apart from that awkward moment between Alice and her raver friend Rain (Michelle Rodriguez), both of whom recognize each other from the night before, this scene is probably as good as it’s getting.

Then, as one would expect, it all starts to come crashing down. The guy we thought was Hunk removes his mask and tells us his code name is One (Colin Salmon) and he’s just here to check out what’s going on underground in a place called The Hive. Talk about a hugely disappointing revelation and a slap in the face to Resident Evil fans. At this point, we all have every right to be pissed off and the neat animation showing off the schematics of The Hive isn’t likely to save this ship from crashing hard and exploding in flames.

Spence! We got Spence here. See? Nobody cares.

Moving on, Alice and the commando team board an underground train and make their way to The Hive. Since everyone was getting warm and sweaty, Rain decides to pop open a door and causes a guy to fall inside the train car, which, after splashing water on his face and waking him up from a nap, we learn his name to be Spence (James Purefoy). He also has no memory of who he is. Why couldn’t these lousy writers do the right thing and just call this character Spencer? It’s not that difficult and at least it would have connected him to the series in some remote way.

Why bother slicing your deli meat the old-fashioned way when you can use this sick-ass laser?

Everyone that could possibly rescue this movie are all diced to pieces in one single scoop. Manson gets his arms sliced off and quickly succumbs to his injuries. The medic takes her own life after assessing the situation as being dire and hopeless, another dies from a swift and clean decapitation, and, finally, One just bolts out of this movie when he receives a phone call and is offered a role in a James Bond film. He literally just vanishes out of thin air too, as if Q just beamed him right out of this movie.

Well, this blows and our hatred for this movie is certainly intensifying. Ugh, who is left now? We got this boring Alice character, who isn’t even remotely part of the Resident Evil video game series. Among the commandos, we still have Rain, who suspiciously looks like a vampire and is your generic badass type. Then, there remains James Dick or J.D. (Pasquale Aleardi) and Kaplan (Martin Crewes) among that crew. Between the three, Kaplan is the coolest of this bunch and might be this film’s last hope at finding redemption. Finally, Spence and Matt are still kicking around in the background and are as uninteresting as ever.

“Help! Can somebody please make me look like an actual zombie?”

Zombies… finally! Too bad they look completely botched and nowhere near the high-quality standards we have come to expect from these types of movies. How hard could it have been to make a simple phone call to either Greg Nicotero or Tom Savini? Anyway, the good news is a zombified J.D. manages to bite and infect Rain before being shot in the face. The bad news is an awful looking CGI-animated Licker is unleashed from captivity and ready to underwhelm this movie even further.

"I may look like ass, but I give a mean rim job."

Eh, fuck it, let’s just hit the fast-forward button on this stinking pile of shit and talk about when Alice and Spence start remembering who they are. Alice was simply hammered out of her mind the night before while Spence managed to smuggle out a sample of the T-Virus from The Hive before deciding to be a dick and smash a vial of it on the floor on his way out, except he didn’t get very far before dozing off on the job.

Following these events, the entire facility was contaminated and caused the Red Queen, the irritating onboard computer system of The Hive, to initiate lock-down procedures and pretty much fuck over every employee working underground that day. Not that any of those terrible and inefficient employees will be remembered anyway.

After announcing his misdeeds to the group, Spence attempts to make a run for it. What he doesn’t know is the Licker is hungrily waiting for him over in the next room and it cleanly bites his head right off. The creature then lunges at our group but is scared off after a firestorm of bullets is unleashed at it.

Before making their escape back to the train to get the fuck out of this boring place, Kaplan pulls the plug on the computer system storing the Red Queen program and thereby ends its existence. He then takes a piss on it, just to be sure. My man!

We all wanted and expected the Tyrant, but we got this bullshit instead.

We’ve finally reached the final boss fight on the train, where the survivors go head-to-head with the mutated and larger-sized Licker. Nobody knows or cares how this happened, either. Before this epic battle kicks off, Rain turns into a zombie and is shot dead in the back by Matt. Finally, this guy is useful for something.

Now, it’s up to Alice, Matt, and Kaplan to fight and kill the Licker. The creature makes its grand entrance by smashing in through the roof of the train car. There is about a minute of buildup, as the Licker starts making loud noises and new parts of its body form and tear out. We already said the CGI animation looked like dog shit and it doesn’t improve even in the slightest for this dramatic moment.

Then, seemingly out of nowhere, Alice grabs a rocket launcher off the ground and launches a grenade at the beast. The grenade explodes on contact and sends the Licker flying towards Kaplan. The weight of the creature and the force of impact crushes Kaplan to death, but the blast effectively kills the monster at least.

Nice job, Alice. If nobody hated you before this, they certainly do now for killing Kaplan.

Bye.

Alice and Matt make it back to the surface and the nightmare is over, or is it? Suddenly, some strange men wearing hazmat suits aggressively grab Matt and start dragging him away. They mention something about putting him in the Nemesis Program, but at this point we’ve all had enough of this terrible film and just want this miserable experience to end already. Honestly, who’s reached this point and gives a shit at all about Matt? Fuck that guy.

After he’s dragged away screaming like a wimp, one of the hazmat people knock Alice on the head with the butt of a gun, after which they continue spraying the place for cockroaches as they originally intended to do on arrival.

We too feel like crying.

Alice awakens in a hospital and is wired to several machines. She yanks out the tubes attached to her and walks out of facility, which we see is owned by the Umbrella Corporation due to markings of the company logo on the floor and walls. She finds an exit and enters the streets of Raccoon City.

From here, we can see this ruined city suffered a dramatic series of events. Emergency and civilian vehicles are destroyed and splayed with blood, debris and litter is scattered all over the ground, bodies are lying everywhere, and a spoiled Subway chicken teriyaki foot-long sandwich is accidentally stepped on by Alice.

With the situation looking grim, she grabs a shotgun and gives it a good cock and rub. The merry-go-round music comes back on and our urge to slam another fist in that clown’s face returns with great fury. Then, the screen goes black and the credits roll.

What’s a Canada Post mailbox doing in this apparent Midwestern American town?

We felt a rollercoaster of negative emotions watching this movie, where, after finally reaching the end of it, completely cleansed our minds and honestly made us thankful we survived this ordeal. Time is such a valuable thing to just waste away and after watching Resident Evil we began to appreciate our existence in this world even more so than ever before.

If you are one of the many out there who suffer from depression, just watch Resident Evil and you’ll realize that life can’t possibly be any worse than sitting through another viewing of this atrocious film.

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