Due to my slump in writing, I over gorged myself on nice, ‘easy watch’ movies. I stared working my way through the Alien Movies but stopped at number two, exchanging Ellen Ripley for Alice.
Alice is the protagonist of the Resident Evil chain of movies. You meet her in the first movie lying naked in a shower. Considering that she’s played by Milla Jovovich that’s… quite a treat for all. I saw the first movie when I was still in school. Two of my mates and I went to watch it, (after I nagged and nagged and nagged them…) and we were jumpy for days. But, good jumpy in my case, I loved the thrill. For those of you who don’t know, Resident Evil basic plot is that zombies overrun the earth due to a virus that reanimates their corpses. The movies were based on a set of video games (that my brother and I played when we were FAR to young).
In the line of brilliance, there’s not a lot that I can say about the movies. I’ve discovered that as I’ve grown older, I don’t respond well to the scare factor anymore. If you’re constantly expecting it, you tend not to get scared and also, you understand the rhythm of these stories. The rule of thumb is that you will be lead into a scene where you will think something scary is going to happen, then – there will be a humoristic distraction and then, just when everybody is smiling and laughing, the worst will happen and hell will break loose.
That’s how these things work.
But, because I know how these things worked, I enjoyed it immensely. I’ve watched all four movies in the past two days (which lead to me doing some monster bashing of my own in my dreams…) and i’ve enjoyed every single one. I liked the first one because it was familiar, because when I watched it I remembered how frightened I had been when I first watched it.
Or, thrilled for lack of a better way of saying it.
I enjoyed watching Resident Evil 2 because I remembered how my friend and I laughed all the while the actors fought of hordes of zombie maniacs and I enjoyed 3 because its set against the desolate backdrop of abandoned New Vegas and strangely enough, that made me feel at home because it reminded me of the Fall Out game franchise. And, let’s not mince words, Milla Jovovich and Ali Larter together provides great eye candy.
I watched the latest one just a couple of hours ago, Resident Evil: After Life and wasn’t even terribly disappointed in that. Yes, it was more of the same and I think that Rotten Tomatoes only gave it something like a 24% rating but – it was in 3D (which is the best way to sell anything these days) and it was comfortable. I knew what to expect where. And, I liked it.
So, in this Oscar month, these movies probably try to hide away in the background until the fuss has ended but I feel that especially now they can hold their proverbial heads high. For those of us who does not harbour one shred of romantic soul in our bodies, these are great ‘feel good’ movies. The protagonist never dies, the bad guy does and there is blood. Lots of it. And slow-mo action scenes…
Let the world never discard these movies, we need them.
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