Not sure what is more surprising: releasing a horror movie Thanksgiving weekend (instead of the more appropriate October last month) or the movie's quality itself. Dubbed a "reboot" of the film series of six prior entries, it utilizes its visibly low-budget of a reported twenty five million on recreating numerous set pieces from the video game franchise all this is based on, relying on suspense instead of overblown action sequences like the pictures before it. To middling overall results, but hey, I had a blast, and when at the movies, that is all one could ever want.
The plot is a weird hybrid of the first two video games, changing a few moments here and there but maintaining the same basic mythology laid out by its digital forerunners. Did I care that the truck driver, who as fans may remember tips his tanker and explodes, meets his grisly demise by a dog rather than some person at a gas station? Nope, didn't care, diehards beware and be-damned.
Anyway, all the fan-favorites are here, Jill (Hannah John-Kamen), Claire (Kaya Scodelario), Leon (Avan Jogia), Chris (Robbie Amell), among others, new and old, as they battle their way through a zombie outbreak in the soon-to-be ghost town Racoon City. The dual plots, adapting both basic settings of each game, allows for twice the nostalgic bang for your buck; one moment, you see the iconic Spencer Mansion entrance from RE1 and the next you see that slimy Licker scaling the ceiling from RE2. Most major beats are touched upon allowing for a trip down memory lane in just under two hours. Does it have a point? No, especially since you really can just play the games themselves, but writer/director Johannes Roberts clearly loves the games, it shows, and he wants us to watch his playthrough.
But just being faithful doesn't qualify three stars, so what's going on? Why is the rating so high? It's the little things, the parts that showcase that the filmmakers know how to make a film, not just adapt a popular piece of pop culture. It was these neat touches that were fun as a viewer regardless of the material.
The sound design was spot-on, not afraid to be completely silent save for the faint undead screams coming from each end of the theater. Even when a character (or portrayal of a character) I didn't care for was onscreen, there was noticeable tension was I never quite knew what direction the zombie was going to jump out from next. And it's efficient pacing leaves us with seldom a dull moment- even when its just basically somebody shooting at those boring, lumbering zombies, it's often spiced up with gimmicks like a completely black screen, our only illumination being the gunshots of a desperate would-be survivor.
There's another thing that stuck with me as I watched "Resident Evil: Welcome to Racoon City," and that was the timeliness of the story. Vaccines, outbreaks, lockdowns, corrupt businesses, gun violence- it all felt "real" despite being a movie based on a 90's video game. I doubt that was the intention, but it should have been.
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