If you’re going to do an adaptation of a beloved video game franchise, you better do it right. Critics haven’t been the kindest to Netflix’s Resident Evil series, as it currently sits at a 53% on Rotten Tomatoes. But just in case you thought this was going to be one of those situations where the critics hate something but the “true fans” love it, the opposite is true.
Audience results are terrible for Resident Evil. Some of the lowest I’ve ever seen for a major show on the service. It has an audience rating of 22% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 3.4 on IMDB, both deeply horrifying on a level rarely seen.
Compared to other poorly received Netflix series, the famous superhero disaster Jupiter’s Legacy has a 41% critic rating and a 73% audience rating. Space Force, the controversial comedy has a 64% critic rating and a 77% audience rating. Hates Back Off, which often appears on “worst Netflix shows ever” lists, has a 50% critic rating and a 76% audience rating. One comparable series is the CG Resident Evil series on Netflix, Infinite Darkness, but even that scored higher, 50% with critics and 39% with audiences. I’m telling you, I haven’t seen a single major series on Netflix that comes close to these results.
I’ll say up front that we can’t rule out some level of bombardment with racist criticism here. Four of the main roles in the series are actors and actresses of color, given that the decision was made to cast Albert Wesker, who is otherwise white, as Lance Reddick (who is the best part of the series, by the way). There’s been a lot of buzz about it before, so I can’t rule it out as at least a possible contributing factor here.
But the show is just… not good. Big fans of Resident Evil will probably be disappointed by the fact that this is a completely original story that pays only superficial attention to the games, and is not even a “stupid but fun” blockbuster like the Milla Jovovich movies (which do well at the box office, although the audience results still intermediate). Many fans don’t like the idea of Resident Evil trying to “reinvent itself for a younger audience” which is what the main teenage-focused plot seems to be trying to do.
If you’re not a huge Resident Evil fan like me? It’s still not good. Again, I appreciated a few performances like Reddick’s and the main villain played by Paola Núñez, but trying to see this as just a sci-fi/zombie series without any major connection to the source material doesn’t make it any better. There are far, far better zombie shows out there, even on Netflix itself (everyone go watch Black Summer and Kingdom). I’m also offended by the fact that Resident Evil Season 1 ends with about five different challenges without anything being resolved, I’m extremely confident that it will be renewed for a second season, which doesn’t seem like a sure thing with these results and Netflix at the price. – cutting mood.
This is a failure from top to bottom. And Resident Evil fans are the most ruthless of all. We’ll see what the fate of the series is after this and how long it can stay in the top 10.
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Take my sci-fi novels, the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
