Resident Evil
Bryan Hodukavich is trying his best; he may not have a heart of gold, but he does carry a cooler bag with organs in it, a courier in the service of Lightfoot Medical Transport at the end of his shift and braced to head home for a difficult conversation with his girlfriend when he is asked to undertake an emergency run up in the mountains, lying that his car is outfitted with tyre chains and four wheel drive for the winter weather.
His mind on life decisions rather than the road he is too slow to react when the woman walks out of the treeline in front of him, yet beyond the impression in the snow where she was thrown by the impact there is nothing, only footprints leading back into the forest where he finds her, cold, contorted, confused, helping her back to the car and resuming the journey to Raccoon City General where she can be attended to.
Based on the videogame series of the same name and directed by Weapons’ Zach Cregger from a script co-written with Army of the Dead’s Shay Hatten, Resident Evil takes a different approach to the source material than the many previous adaptations launched in 2002 by Event Horizon’s Paul W S Anderson and starring Joan of Arc’s Milla Jovovich, less focused on the sequence of events and more concerned with the experience of the game, unfolding as a nightmare for which there is little explanation and no escape.
Bryan (Euphoria’s Austin Abrams) on a road with no turns as darkness closes in behind him, the situation in which he finds himself is not ideal yet he persists, making all the right moves to deliver the urgently needed contents of his satchel and offering assistance despite the delay but realising something ain’t right with the lady sat beside him beyond her injury, a surprisingly reasonable police officer (Johnno Wilson) steps in as a knight in blue armour but swiftly goes off the road.
With blood on the snow and the city on fire as Bryan approaches, the phrase “bad day at the office” scarcely begins to describe the swing into gallows humour which drives Resident Evil, an incremental accretion of oddities increasingly uncanny and disturbing, forests and fields haunted by impossible mutated forms which will not relent, mediated by practical effects in the early stages where possible, the theoretical “experts” of the Umbrella Corporation like him dealing with unintended consequences which hit like a spray of bullets.
A tunnel through the mountain full of abandoned cars and horror, Bryan proceeding though he knows it is not a good idea and conscientiously trying to offer help and hope, embracing the splatter and with occasional first person shooter vibes the arrival at the hospital becomes more conventional survival horror but the good work is done, offering what Cold Storage aimed for and failed to deliver, carried by Abrams whose charm endures even under extreme duress.
Resident Evil is on general release now
