The Randomguy's

The video game-based reboot of Resident Evil is almost family friendly

It was nothing but pure darkness. A crowd of soldiers rushed into the mansion to avoid crazy dogs and later found there were zombies in the house. This goes way back to my junior high days. I was playing on a Nintendo DS with the almighty R4 card. It was late at night. I was so ready to be scared and got into the legendary franchise. Then I noticed the poor animated cutscene, turned the game off and never once played it again. This is my first intentionally contact of Resident Evil. Ever since then I've watched the movies, enjoyed the CG animation, but none of them told the original stories, until now. When Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City was up, I knew the time has come for me to finally experience story of the first few games.

Obviously, everything happens in the Racoon city. Claire, the one escaped came back to warn her brother about the conspiracy of the Umbrella company. On her way back, she started to notice there was something very wrong about the city, and so the story begins. Literally every living creature turned into zombie except the cops, which were protagonist in the movie along with Claire. To be honest, the movie itself is actually not bad. The main plot is told very well, just some minor plot that doesn't really connect to the flow. There are many scenes that clearly intended to mimic the angle of the video games. Some worked brilliantly, some felt just weird, and some were just funny. My favorite scene is the one when Christ was shooting in complete dark. Each shot lit up his surroundings and almost each time a different zombie came up to say hello. Pretty sure it was supposed to be a terrifying scene but the way it was delivered is really funny, or cute as my mate said.

Didn't know much about the characters, but the movie introduced them in a brilliant way that we learned how they behave and their thought process real fast. I know Chris, Leon and Claire from the CG animations, and they felt about right except Leon. In the story, Leon was a rookie with some embarrassed past and had no purpose of life. He just slept through the first half of the movie even if a trailer flipped and exploded right in front of him. It's hard to imagine that this young one will be the future secrete special agent. If the series will be continued and we get to see Leon grows along the way it'd pay off, but in this particular movie he's just here for jokes. There are some strange characters that did not do much for the plot or has nothing to provided once some necessary twist ended. For instance, the half zombie girl was only just there to get Claire to the secrete elevator, and the hatred of the doctor towards Chris doesn't make any sense, at least not in the movie.

Another thing I'd like to mention is the film itself. It's fair to say that everyone ever heard of Resident Evil will expect the movie to be a terrifying one. On the contrary, the horror element didn't stand out much. The movie felt like an action movie with a little bit horror in it. I'd dare say with little modification, this could be a G-rated movie.

All in all, Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City is a good movie to kill time or if you'd like to know the original story of the franchise. It's nothing brilliant but it does serve as a good opening of a new series. If you just want some good theater experience, the movie will do the job, but don't expect anything more.