For six choppy hours, Andrew Dabb’s adaptation of the shoot-em-up zombie franchise struggles to find its footing. Then Lance Reddick takes over.
When I think of zombies – or I should say when a zombie show is either meticulously convincing or utterly unconvincing in its depiction of the undead – I often think of their transformation. Long or short, the process of losing your humanity and becoming a walking, snarling, flesh-eating corpse usually ends with a sudden change; a moment when the multi-faceted human disappears and a single-minded (zero-sense?) being takes over – like a light switch being flipped, or, as intended, like the transition from life to death. There is no choice in the matter. To see also : What If, In hindsight, You Really Want to Move to Canada ASAP. Once bitten or otherwise infected, the Bite-e is doomed. Giving up is the only option.
“Resident Evil” offers plenty of time in the first six episodes to deal with zombie symbolism and veracity. Staring into eyes surrounded by a clear, indented separation between real skin and latex breaks the spell of a fictional horror adventure. Ditto for bad zombie acting, where discrepancies in movement, speed, and ferocity invite further unwanted distractions. (For example, some zombies dive-bomb their victims, piercing through body armor and skin with a single bite, while others politely step aside when the hero’s only shield is a trash can lid.)
Building a compelling world isn’t the only conflict in the Netflix series. The episodes are split into two timelines, one in the apocalyptic “present” of 2036 and the other in 2022, months before the end of the world. Everyone revolves around Jade, played by Ella Balinska as an adult and Tamara Smart as a teenager. In the future, Jade studies zombies – or “zeros” as they’re known locally – hoping to find a way to tame, if not heal, them. In the past, she and her sister Billie (Siena Agudong) moved with their father to New Raccoon City, a metropolitan campus set up for Umbrella Pharmaceuticals employees and their families. Jumping back and forth between the two timelines doesn’t just throw up mysteries to solve – what caused the zombie outbreak? What happened to Billy? – but also dueling tones and even genres. The future is almost all action, filled with the franchise’s signature mutant zombie revelations and plenty of gruesome battles. The past is akin to a teen soap opera where the revelations are drawn out and predictable and the only struggles are emotional. The seriousness and seriousness of the somber timeline of 2036 (ablaze with red and yellow imagery staving off a pitch-black night) is hard to sustain alongside the half-assed arguments and love stories in the other (which are captured in icy blues and shades of gray embedded in the sterile white backdrop of the suburbs).
For most of its eight-episode first season, Resident Evil is a mishmash of ambitions that will likely satisfy very few fans of the franchise (whether they like video games, movies, or both). It’s stubbornly divided between the human concerns of a world already promised to be wiped out and the undead urgency of a landscape that always prioritizes survival. Instead of telling one story well, it tells two stories poorly, and in a refutation of Jade’s quest to break in 6 billion zeros, it’s clear that the living and the dead cannot coexist.
But then, as the switch inevitably flips bottom to top, Resident Evil surrenders to what it has become, and utter insanity reigns supreme. The last two episodes are not perfect. They’re not reason enough to recommend the series as a whole, although you could watch it without the previous six hours and still have a damn good time. But what these final two hours are doing that the others aren’t is giving in: giving in to the absurdity of the premise, the franchise, the conflicting stories that forced them together. The ending is actually fun, partly because Resident Evil unleashes its best actor, but also because it’s forced to serve the story that created it, rather than some other notion of what it should be should.
Chaos reigns, and like so many great things, it begins with Lance Reddick.
[Editor’s Note: The following portion of the review contains spoilers for Resident Evil Season 1, including the ending.]
A zombie dog in “Resident Evil”
Until the opening of Episode 7, Reddick plays Albert Wesker, the father of Billie and Jade, who happens to be Umbrella’s top scientist. Albert works directly under villainous CEO Evelyn Marcus (Paola Nuñez) and is up to some shady shit. He helped cover up an outbreak of violence at a Tijuana plant. He injects himself with his daughters’ blood and it’s unclear how he became a father in the first place. (There’s a convoluted explanation involving surrogate mothers and twins early on that I won’t repeat here.) Still, his devotion to his girls is absolute. When Billie breaks into Umbrella’s house thinking she’s going to expose the company about animal testing and instead gets bitten by a deranged zombie dog, Albert covers her up, wipes off the security footage, and smears his face with the animal’s blood, leading everyone to believe he has killed the dog, not Jade and Billie.
From there it seems only a matter of time before Billie turns into a zombie. While the 2036 story follows the franchise tradition of showcasing weird zombies of various species before Adult Jade (some new monsters, some classics), showrunner/developer Andrew Dabb extends Young Billie’s transformation to include additional subplots about Jades Crushing (on Evelyn’s son) and embarrassing school trips. (Side note: I absolutely love that “Resident Evil” maintains the film’s focus on female action stars, and even doubles it by centering around the broken relationship between two sisters. I just wish this relationship would come with more of a emotional honesty than relying on hackneyed boy drama to drive them apart.) For a while, the series implied that Billie died sometime between the first and second timelines, but the way Jade talks about her sister’s fate, is more than enough to believe it’s still there.
And she is, but I digress. Albert’s major conflict in Season 1 is that Evelyn wants to market a mood-boosting super drug (lazy named “Joy”), and he thinks it’s not done yet. Eventually, Albert’s disobedience ends up in an Umbrella holding cell, where we meet… Bert, a clone also played by Lance Reddick! Now, before we delve into Bert’s fame, it’s important to understand that Reddick has had to do very little up to this point. He is serious. He’s smart (hence the glasses). He devotes himself to his daughters. It’s no easy task for an actor like Reddick to convey these qualities, and for those who know what he’s capable of, watching him hit the same notes for six hours can be frustrating.
Bert has Reddick play a happy new song, but to explain Bert, Resident Evil has to introduce a whole band of Reddicks. Opening Episode 7, we learn that Albert used to work with Bert and Alby in a laboratory in the Arklay Mountains. All three are clones of the original Albert Wesker, who made them to conduct clandestine research on his behalf. The only problem: Umbrella didn’t know about it, and as they storm the facility, the original Albert (dressed head to toe in leather in a nod to the original video game character) shoots Alby and attempts to kill the other two clones before being forced to to escape with his life. Evelyn then finds her, imprisons Bert to carry out her orders, and “lets” Albert run the Umbrella scientists as a “free” man.
Set in 2022, with Albert locked in alongside Bert, it wasn’t long before the series gave in to an undeniable desire for body-swap comedy. Bert has to pretend to be Albert – to be the father he never got the chance to be – and suddenly he’s in an Olive Garden with Billie and Jade, yelling for breadsticks. “This is my unlimited basket, you need your unlimited basket,” he tells the waiter. “I’m sorry, sir,” she replies. “One per table.” “But… that’s a limit,” he asserts, earning a laugh bigger than any monster that’s ever walked the screen.
Lance Reddick in Resident Evil
Seeing Lance Reddick play multiple characters serves two great functions: First, it gives us more Reddick, and more Reddick is always a good thing. The star of ‘Corporate’, ‘The Wire’, ‘Fringe’, ‘John Wick’ and, lest we forget, four episodes of ‘DuckTales’ has long shown that he is so much more than the role he… who he remembers best. He can calibrate his sonorous intonation to terrifying intimidation or humble curiosity with a sophisticated precision, and he uses it—along with subtle physical changes—to create assertive and mellow versions of Albert. The original Albert is eye candy, not for the nostalgic nod to video game lore, but because Reddick looks like Blade and threatens to cut off Bert’s finger with a “little promise.” Reddick makes him happy, not the reference.
Second, and arguably more significant, Bert’s introduction “Resident Evil” spills over the edge. It’s no longer two shows competing against each other, one a sluggish teen drama/origin story and the other a life and death thriller. It’s all a comedy. Any solemnity faked in the future timeline is forever colored by Bert, handcuffed to an SUV, yelling at his attacker, “I don’t like you! You are not nice to me!” Freed from conflicting directions – “Feel sad! Now you are afraid! Ignore that stupid zombie! Forget that plot hole!” – audiences can’t help but laugh along with the silly zombie story. That might not be the result you want, but it’s definitely better than not feeling anything at all.
And it comes just in time. “Resident Evil” is consistent in its attempts to convey substantial proportions (be it the physical sets or the CGI monsters that fill them), and the finale belies its boring title (“Revelations”) by throwing open the silly floodgates. Teen Billie nibbles on her sister’s wannabe boyfriend. Evelyn shoots her own son in the face. Adult Billie kidnaps Jade’s daughter. Hordes of zombies are wiped out by drones. And the entire episode is literally loomed over by a massive mutant alligator, unleashed by the good guys as a last resort and introduced through an amazingly dramatic zoom when its virus-infested eye-gliders open. The unnamed sea monster justifies its stardom by eating zombies, blasting helicopters out of the sky and even befriending a little girl. A real cutie, Aly saves the day, and despite being unfairly rewarded with a deadly rocket fire, her MVP status for the last hour is undeniable.
With the six choppy hours leading up to Resident Evil’s rousing two-part ending, it’s hard to believe future seasons will stick with the banana ghost Season 1 stumbled upon. The two timeline structure remains intact. We still don’t know exactly when the teenage sisters split, and there’s no guarantee multiple Alberts will return. Jade, who was shot in the stomach, was supposed to be dead, but her determined look at Billie’s escaping helicopter implies that she will find her way back to life, back to her quest, back to marrying two groups who find themselves in the are at war. But maybe, just maybe, she’ll give in again. Because once the transformation is complete, there is no going back. Surrender is the only option, and for Resident Evil, it’s the best.
Grade: C+
Resident Evil Season 1 premieres Thursday, July 14 on Netflix.
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Where was Resident Evil Raccoon City filmed?
filming. Principal photography began on October 17, 2020 in Greater Sudbury, Ontario, Canada with Maxime Alexandre serving as cinematographer. See the article : Netflix’s Resident Evil is a time-hopping zombie story, but the human characters lack bite: TV review. Filming wrapped on December 24, 2020.
Where is Raccoon City in Resident Evil? Raccoon City is a fictional town in the survival horror franchise Resident Evil, where it has been the setting for many games. It was a small industrial town in Arklay County, a remote mountainous county in the Midwestern United States. It was destroyed during the T-Virus outbreak in 1998.
Where is Resident Evil series filmed?
Filming began on September 18, 2015 in South Africa. The film was released in Tokyo on December 23, 2016 and in North America on January 27, 2017. Three weeks after the events of Resident Evil: Retribution, humanity is on its last legs after Alice von Wesker in Washington D.C. was betrayed.
Which Resident Evil should I play first?
Resident Evil Remake Next on the Resident Evil timeline is the first Resident Evil game, although we highly recommend playing the remake, which was released for the GameCube in 2002. It’s the game that started it all.
Should I start with the first Resident Evil? The trilogies also inform each other’s storylines, so you might want to start over if you want maximum knowledge of context and history. That being said, you can get started on Resident Evil (original or remake), Resident Evil 4, or Resident Evil 7: Biohazard without too much trouble.
Which Resident Evil is the best to start with?
“REmake,” as it’s affectionately known, is such a perfect distillation of the first game that fans are still pointing out that the series should return to pre-rendered backgrounds. It’s the perfect classic Resident Evil game and where any new fan should start.
What order of Resident Evil games should I play?
If you want to experience the core Resident Evil experience, you should play in this order:
- Resident Evil Remake (PC)
- Resident Evil 2 (GCN version on Dolphin with HD pack)…
- Resident Evil 3 (PC)
- Resident Evil 0 (PC)
- Resident Evil: Code Veronica X (PS3/360)
- Resident Evil 4 (Project Mod for PC HD) …
- Resident Evil Revelations (PC)
How old is Chris in re6?
Chris Redfield was born in 1973, meaning he was 23 during the events of the first Resident Evil game in 1996, when he was serving as Point Man for the STARS Alpha Team. Resident Evil Village is set a good 25 years later in February 2021, making Chris Redfield 48 years old.
How old is Ada Wong in re6? 9 Ada Wong Ada is playable in both RE2 and RE4, but only becomes a real protagonist in Resident Evil 6. Therefore, at 39 years old, she is one of the oldest protagonists in the history of the series.
How old is piers in re6?
Piers happens to be 25 during Resident Evil 6, the same age as Chris was during the Mansion incident in the first Resident Evil.
How old is Chris Redfield in RE8?
Assuming Chris was around 25 on Resident Evil, the 23 year jump to the events of RE8 would put him at 50, consistent with his character’s gray appearance.
Is Resident Evil a limited series?
Resident Evil wasn’t billed as a miniseries or limited series, meaning its narrative could continue in a second season.
How many seasons are there in Resident Evil? How many seasons will Resident Evil have? As we’ve said before, Resident Evil has yet to be renewed for Season 2.
Does Resident Evil have a series?
Resident Evil is an action horror film series based on the Capcom Japanese video game franchise of the same name.
How many episodes is Resident Evil?
According to the sources, there are eight episodes of Resident Evil. Each episode is about an hour long.
