Resident Evil (2002)

And so begins a movie franchise once described as "The Twilight Saga for teenage boys". It's not hard to see why it got that title. The films aren't exactly well written and they're there more for showing off a variety of things there just for being "cool" and how "awesome" Milla Jovovich is. But you know what, I bloody love them.



The Resident Evil series is a series of movie adaptations based on the hugely successful game franchise of the same name. Starting off on the PlayStation in 1996, the first game in the series became famous for it's awfully written dialogue (featuring such gems as "You were almost a Jill sandwich!") and even worse voice acting. But the series quickly got better with the second game of the series commonly named as one of the best games on the PlayStation console and the revamped 6th entry to the series (confusingly called Resident Evil 4) commonly named as one of the best games ever made.

I doubt that the movies however will get much praise from the likes of the AFI anytime soon. They're at best pure and simple popcorn entertainment. Lots of action, lots of Milla Jovovich and lots and lots of zombies! But enough about the series as a whole, it's time we review the very first film of the series!



A viral outbreak in a top secret facility called "The Hive" causes the AI system that controls the complex to kill all the workers inside. At the same time, a woman called Alice (Milla Jovovich) wakes up in an empty mansion with no memory of who she is. Soon, a military unit working for the corporation who owns the Hive bursts into the mansion and takes Alice into the mysterious facility, where they learn that the people there aren't quite as "dead" as they seem...

The movie takes the same basic format of the games. There are the zombies and other horrific mutants. There's the shadowy evil Umbrella Corporation. They go to some laboratory where the viral outbreak all began. However, they do get rid of quite a bit. The most notable omission is the lack of puzzles or hunting for keys but let's face it, that would never translate well into a movie and would just end up being a huge bore.

Maybe it was a bit silly of me to do that analysis of the series up the top here, as this entry doesn't have a lot of what I described at the top. Sure, there's quite a bit of action and there's quite a bit of Milla, but outside of maybe one scene, Alice doesn't really do the OTT crazy stunts she does later on in the series. It's like watching one of the very early Bond films. The series is finding it's feet. However, I'm not sure if finding it's feet is really the right term as it arguably makes the series worse rather than better.

In terms of the characters the only decent ones are Alice and Spence (James Purefoy). Matt (Eric Mabius) just walks around with only able to pull one awkward facial expression through out the entire movie and you have to feel sorry for Rain (Michelle Rodriguez). All she does over the course of the film is get bitten over and over again.

My favourite bit in the entire film is probably the very eerie ending. The last shot of Alice waking up in some mysterious lab then walking through the empty, ruined streets of Raccoon City shotgun in hand makes for a great cliffhanger. Shame the next film isn't up to scratch but for that's another review!

Overall, Resident Evil is a decent film and probably one of the very best video game adaptations around. It takes enough elements from the games to justify it being an adaptation whilst making it different enough so that people who are familiar with the games can find something to enjoy in it as well. It's definitely worth a watch if you want to watch some fun, dumb horror/action movie.

The Vampire Diaries - 3x06 - Smells Like Teen Spirit

In which it's the start of Senior Year, Stefan combines a Blood Orgy with a game of Twister, Tyler reveals his love for Klaus and Elena gets drunk.

Previously on The Vampire Diaries...
Klaus, now a full on hybrid, has been going around trying to make new hybrids, only to learn that he can't because Stefan has been hiding the fact that Elena is still alive. Angered by this, he goes on a rampage in Mystic Falls. After compelling Stefan to try and feed on Elena, he then compels Stefan to lose his humanity. Klaus then discovers that only by feeding on Elena's blood can a Hybrid survive the conversion process. He then uses this to make his first Hybrid, Tyler.

Klaus also resurrected his bitch sister, Rebecca, who has an awful mangled "British" accent and is generally a brat. She and Stefan go way back to 1920's Chicago where they went on a killing spree alongside Klaus... or something. Katherine and Damon discovered another way to kill Klaus - a vampire vampire hunter by the name of Michael (played by that guy who was Newton in Fringe) and after coming back from the dead at the end of last season, Jeremy has been haunted by the ghosts of former girlfriends Anna and Vicki.

This Week...
The Good
Elena has started to train with Alaric as a way of trying to get over Stefan or even saving him from Klaus' compulsion. This is a very promising addition to the story and an interesting development for Elena, who last season was willing to simply give up and die when she learned about Klaus and his ritual. It also pushes her character out of Bella Swan territory and makes her more of a Buffy Summers, which is honestly quite relieving.

The whole "Ghosts of Jeremy's Girlfriends" story is starting to have a point now too and it seems that Matt's little ritual to bring back his sister may have really huge repercussions for everyone in Mystic Falls. I really liked Anna in Season One, so I'm really happy to see her back this season and this all leads to a great shock cliffhanger at the end, which The Vampire Diaries is always good at doing.

It was also fascinating to see the role reversal between Stefan and Damon. You could easily see the scene with the Twister game happening back in Season One, with Damon feeding on the girls and Stefan taking the moral high ground. But here it's Damon all concerned whilst Stefan is sitting there with the girls' blood dripping down from his mouth. I hope Stefan stays bad for a while now as it's going to be very interesting to see how bad "Stefan the Ripper" really is.

The Bad
Rebecca. Oh Klaus, why didn't you dump her in someplace that was as far from Mystic Falls as possible? As you might have gathered from the recap, I really don't like her. She's dull and an annoying brat, which I'm sure is the intention of her character but I hope she starts to become less annoying soon. Though one of the show's biggest strengths is improving it's characters as the show goes on with really solid character development and of course, the ability to transform characters into one of the many supernatural beings that inhabit the world of the show, so I do have hope that Rebecca will be made into a much stronger character by the season's end.

Overall, this was a pretty solid episode and it dealt with the aftermath of last week's game-changer pretty well. It also giave us a great cliffhanger to keep us hooked over the next week. Once again, The Vampire Diaries has proven why it's much better than it's "vampire fad cash-in" title would suggest.