We Need to Talk About the Live-Action Resident Evil Films

So, initially for this Halloween, I had the ambitious goal of watching every single horror film adaptation of a videogame. However, upon doing more research and watching through about half of them, I realised that if I ranked them, I’d have at least half the list consisting of Resident Evil.

In an effort to save you all from reading that, I thought, “Why not just do articles about each movie?” Which, I assure you, is the more sensible option. I can’t put enough words in about the Resident Evil series, let alone the likes of House of the Dead and Silent Hill. Instead, let’s talk about the live-action ones. For the sake of this article, I’ve omitted the animated ones, and I’ll be talking about them at a later date.a

Now, let’s dive in as I discuss each live-action movie. Be warned, none of these will scare you.

Resident Evil as an adaptation was first dropped in 2002. While there are a lot of discussions about how it would have been if George A. Romero was put in charge of the franchise, I think that there’s enough about that topic to last a lifetime. There are podcasts and documentaries on the subject, and while I’m happy to discuss them in another article, this time, I just want to focus on why none of the live-actions seem to work.

See, the 2002 one was directed and written by Paul W.S. Anderson, and I genuinely enjoyed it as a kid. While it wasn’t my favourite, it was reasonably compelling. It’s all about Alice, an Umbrella Corporation security operative who, upon waking up in the Spencer mansion, finds herself going into the underground laboratory of the Hive with a special Umbrella unit to check out what happened with the Red Queen going homicidal.

The Red Queen is an AI who was programmed in the image of the child of an Umbrella scientist. She’s essentially there to prevent anyone from leaving the Hive alive, and while the first game allows for a good amount of exploration in the Spencer mansion, we’re stuck with the sterile lab. While this did spook me when I was a pre-teen who was reasonably obsessed with the films, I found that it hasn’t aged well.

The zombies and the Licker are all coated with CGI effects, and it’s hard to take them seriously. Considering this was 2002, I’m trying to give it the benefit of the doubt, but the rest of the films don’t appear to have revolved around the CGI as much. I can’t really take any of the enemies seriously, and there’s even more going on in the background.

While the outbreak is occurring, there’s Matt, who, with his sister, has been attempting to reveal Umbrella’s secrets to the world. Then, there’s Spencer, Alice’s fake husband, who is trying to sell the T-virus to the highest bidder. Alice isn’t sure of what she’s doing, as she’s lost her memories, and the special operatives? Well, most of them are dead early on, and Rain and Kaplan are the only memorable ones left. Kaplan is the only one who appears to be terrified of what’s going on, and there’s more chemistry between Alice and Rain than anyone else.

Outside of this, the characters themselves don’t have backgrounds beyond the plot. You would think that there would be more incentives than just get rich, get laid, and survive, but eh… what can you do? While the action scenes are decent, I found the overall film isn’t nearly as compelling, as honestly, I didn’t care much for the Umbrella employees who were impacted by the T-virus. These aren’t normal people; they’ve literally been working underground for all this time.

It also begins the tradition of leading us into the next film. For example, Matt and Alice’s escape from the Hive is hindered by the fact that Matt is being mutated by the Licker, thus being chosen for Project Nemesis. Meanwhile, Alice is being kept for research for other purposes.

This leads me into my personal favourite film of the Anderson franchise: Resident Evil: Apocalypse. It really highlights the cruelty of Umbrella, as with the T-virus outbreak occurring, every citizen is essentially trapped in the city. Anyone who tries to escape will be shot. These are mostly ordinary people, and the S.T.A.R.S. task force is the one who is trying to keep people alive.

Alice emerges just as shit hits the fan, and when she’s noticed by Umbrella, they decide to send out Project Nemesis. I admit, there’s no sense of paranoia about Nemesis following the team, but there’s better characterisation here. I have absolutely no complaints about Oded Fehr as Carlos Olivera and Sienna Guillory as Jill Valentine, with the two of them being great in their supporting roles. Jovovich felt a bit more compelling as Alice in this one, and the fact that they’re trying to expose Umbrella once more is a fun touch.

The battles with Nemesis and such are just a lot of fun. It also makes sense for the film why Nemesis would eventually recognise Alice, and him turning on Umbrella made sense considering this iteration of him was once a friend of hers. Plus, he looked cool. I’m not going to say this is a great adaptation, but it sure as hell felt stronger than the other ones. With the addition of Jill and Carlos working well, surely any other characters introduced would work too, right?

Wrong. After the events of Apocalypse, where Alice was captured and eventually freed by her allies, America has turned into a dystopian hellscape. Even with Raccoon City being destroyed, the virus has come out. Now, the survivors are in a Mad Max–style world where they have modified trucks and cars that can also kill the infected. Ali Larter’s Claire Redfield leads one such convoy of survivors, and with her is Carlos and L.J., both survivors from the previous film.

We have no idea what happened to Charles Ashford’s daughter, Angela, who was saved by Alice and the others before. It looks like they just abandoned the kid somewhere. The Resident Evil films really do treat their child characters terribly. Like, “Hey kid, we get that you’re an orphan now and the world is dying, but that’s your problem. Buh-bye now”, which seems… contradictory to the way the characters usually give a damn about the kids.

Alice never asks about Angela, and Carlos and the others don’t mention her. Carlos doesn’t even mention where Jill is. Instead, it looks like they worked together, then went their own separate ways after Alice was fine. But now Alice has gone off on her own, until she finds the infected crows attacking Claire’s convoy. Using some newly emerged telekinetic powers, Alice is able to defeat the crows.

After that, their goal is to head to Alaska, but first, they need to deal with Dr. Isaacs, the man in charge of Project Alice. With an army of Alice clones held in a lab, Alice lets the others escape, Carlos is killed, and Claire and most of the other survivors escape with one of Umbrella’s choppers. But of course, Alice beats Dr. Isaacs, killing his mutated form, and informs Wesker and the other members of Umbrella that she’s on her way to destroy them with her army of clones of herself.

With that, Extinction is over, but Afterlife starts off in Tokyo. Tokyo. I’m sorry, but how did this make sense? Alice has somehow got the ability to fly a plane to Japan with an army of clones, ready to take down a bunch of Umbrella operatives? Where did she learn to fly a plane? This was never mentioned before. How did she get a plane big enough for her and the clones? I thought fuel was a massive issue. How did she even get there?!

As you can tell, I really was losing my ability to get what the hell was going on at this point. Of course, that plan fails and she just… heads back to America? Goes off to Alaska to find the others, but, while there are a field of planes there, there are no survivors. Except Claire appears! With absolutely no memories, and oh, did I mention Alice doesn’t have her powers anymore? Yeah, Wesker removed those.

Now, Alice tells Claire that she knows her and the two team up to hopefully find Arcadia, which is where they were all headed to in Alaska. It’s here that they end up flying into the city, where there are other survivors asking for help. While they’ve kept themselves safe in a prison, they don’t realise that Chris Redfield, Claire’s brother, is also here. And so, while Claire doesn’t remember her brother, Chris allies with them and the three of them manage to escape Los Angeles and somehow get to Arcadia.

So, Arcadia is a ship that they just happened to find, and they discover that it was all a trap by Umbrella to lure survivors. After defeating Wesker, but unable to kill him because he’s escaped, the trio end up using Arcadia as a new base of operations to protect all the survivors who were trapped there.

Except… by that point, they lose Arcadia because remember Jill? She’s blonde now, and controlled by Umbrella. You see, the blonde hair must signify she’s evil, after all, Wesker’s blond, so maybe he needs anyone brainwashed to have the same hair colour? Then, there’s the fact that Resident Evil: Retribution is essentially Inception but Resident Evil. I wish I was joking. See, there’s another Alice who is married to a Carlos clone and has a daughter, Becky. While they’re trying to survive an apocalypse with a clone of Rain, who is the polar opposite of her original iteration, Alice has been taken in by Umbrella… again.

It’s in Retribution that Alice is joined by other characters, like Ada Wong and Leon S. Kennedy. Where’s Chris? Who knows. Like the children, Chris has been abandoned by the plot. He’s probably not dead, but he sure as hell isn’t alive anywhere. So while Alice finds herself now a mother — because once she finds herself in Suburbia, she just adopts Becky because she figured out her mother was a clone of her — and with Ada, she looks for a way to get out of the simulation. Oh, by the way, Wesker’s a good guy in this one. Just casually chilling in the White House, and definitely not planning anything nefarious.

So most of this film is them taking down the Red Queen… again, because she’s a part of all this. Now, at least this time when they’re travelling anywhere, we know that they’re just below an ice field. Travelling through Tokyo, New York, Moscow… yeah, there’s a lot of budget being spent on location, this time around, huh?

With the Red Queen defeated and Jill no longer evil, Alice and the others head to the White House, where obviously, Wesker is a little shit who ends up trapping them. All leading to the Final Chapter, where you would think that they’re all going to fight Wesker, right?

Wrong. Wesker has never been the ultimate villain, but Dr. Isaacs, who reveals that Alice was a clone the whole time. She’s just the clone of Alicia Masters who has prematurely aged and is now an old woman. Most of the characters you know and love from the games? Mostly dead. Claire? Still alive. Chris? Eh, no one cares where Chris is. I’m going to assume Ada and Leon are dead, and so is Jill, as they were also at the White House. Only Alice survived that one.

With an ally in the Red Queen, they have to beat Dr. Isaacs, who can predict their movement. Except there are two of him, and I don’t think they even know who the real one is. But no matter, they still win, the Anti-Virus is thrown into the air, and so everyone will survive… Eventually.

I’m not going into a lot of detail with the later films because I think this confirms just how messy they are. Sure, they’ve got a lot of action, but the plots are solely “Hey, this is popular and fun, how can we make this, but Resident Evil?” It’s just… The latter films are just bad.

When Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City was released in 2021, the people were hopeful. I was hopeful. Since we’ve got Claire and Chris Redfield, Wesker, the S.T.A.R.S team exploring the Spencer Mansion, Leon as a rookie in the police department, except where the Anderson films all-but abandoned the games, we’re seeing a movie that puts in too much.

Like, don’t get me wrong. I did find it a little funnier, mostly due to some hilarious song choices, but anyone hoping for a good adaptation has been lied to. By all accounts, I enjoyed the set designs and the inclusion of the Spencer mansion, but we don’t exactly get a lot of emotion with William Berkin mutating and eventually attempting to kill them all. Where’s the build-up? Why was Wesker such a wasted character? He was just basically there to do his own thing, and then boom. Dead.

Claire is a lot more experienced with things than Leon, and Leon is essentially roasted by everyone. He’s a rookie with no experience, and honestly, I’m not too sure what he was doing there. When I was watching it, I was actually surprised he was there, as I thought, “Okay, so, is this going to be more about Chris? More about Claire? Leading into a sequel?” Nope. Mash it all up together.

At this point, I don’t think we’ll ever be getting good live-action adaptations of Resident Evil. They either get too caught up in the action, which is a shame because the later Resident Evil games, such as RESIDENT EVIL 7, offer plenty of opportunities to explore the horror. Frankly, I have no idea how they’d make a good one.

The only way I can imagine them working is if they just… I don’t know, set it in the world but focus on characters unaffiliated with Umbrella? Try not to stick too closely to the games, but don’t do what Anderson did with Alice? Go by a play-by-play of one game at a time?

God, I have no idea. I just want a good live-action Resident Evil film. Is that so much to ask for?