The upcoming Resident Evil adaptation doesn’t follow any of the series’ characters, which didn’t sit well with many Resident Evil fans. It might be a good time to delete your comment history, though, as Cregger’s RE opened to 98% on Rotten Tomatoes, making it the highest-rated video game adaptation ever.
This adaptation stars Austin Abrams as Bryan, an organ courier who finds himself with the dire task of delivering to Raccoon City at the height of the outbreak, and just about everyone is loving it.
Jesse Hassenger of The Guardian gave it 4/5 stars, calling it a wild rollercoaster ride, praising the tension, thrills, and Abrams ability to navigate this bizarre adventure as an endearing everyman.
Clarisse Loughey from The Independent also gave it 4/5 stars, calling it funny and delirious, and compared the whole experience to playing a great video game. Honestly, I’m not too thrilled about that description, as playing games and seeing films should prove two very different experiences, but I’m glad that the movie is that immersive.
Harry Stainer was a bit less enthusiastic with his 3/5 star review for Empire, saying “this lands as one of the most video game-y video-game adaptations to ever grace our screens — for better and for worse.”
And that’s the average sentiment among top critics. Right now, the only critic to have actually negative things to say was Brian Orndorf for Blu-Ray.com, who called it “A strange, almost frustrating viewing experience, with one half of the movie serving up monsters and mayhem, while the other half goes goofy, never settling on a consistent tone or particularly inviting sense of humor.” Still, even he gave it a 5/10, which is a lot more than I’d have given to most Resident Evil adaptations out there.
So, it seems like the complaint over Resident Evil telling an original story has been proven completely misguided. We’ve been living in an originality crisis for the past, who knows how long, and, regardless of what you think about the previous Resident Evil movie adaptations, few would dare deny that they’re much better off when avoiding the source material at all costs.
Apart from a few really dumb scenes, the first movie still holds up as a fun and unpredictable romp. Cregger is a much better director than Paul W. S. Anderson, so nobody really should’ve started to cast stones before the movie was out.
And I’m yet to see the movie, so this is wild speculation and not a spoiler, but how cool would it be for the sequel to this movie that got so much pre-crap for having nothing to do with the events of the original series, for it to feature a post-spec-ops training of Austin Abram’s Bryan as he goes to investigate a mysterious kidnapping in a small Spanish village?
