This blog post is part of the Agora Road Travelogue for June 2025

I remembered few things about Resident Evil. I remember that I bought it in order to watch it, a behavior I used to have back when I was collecting DVDs of all things and that my current pirate-ass cannot comprehend. I remember that I watched it in my parents’ bedroom, since that was the only place in the house with a DVD player. I also checked it in my memory as “watched”, alongside its sequel, which I catched at some point on TV. But as for memories go, the only scene that I remembered was Milla Jovovich waking up in the middle of a mansion. I recalled vividly that the scene takes place at sunset, maybe because of my uncanny obsession with them. I had no other recollections of the film.

I think my overall playtime of the franchise amounts to 30 minutes, back when one of my cockiest middle school friends used to invite us to his house only to show us that he had a PS3. I labelled it in my mind, along with Silent Hill, as “the horror games that have a thousand sequels and a movie”. As such, I am unable to attest how loyal to the source material the movie is. However by the mere ammount of tropes present in the movie I can confidently say that, likely, not much.

I mentioned that at the time I had it labelled alongside Silent Hill, a game of which I only knew that my Internet crush was really fond of. My general distrust for downloading software, consequence of screwing my family’s computer after downloading Virtual Girl for Windows XP, made me hesitant to download emulators on my computer, so it was not until recently that I was able to actually play the masterpiece that the game is. While, as I’ve said, I haven’t played Resident Evil that much, I was pleasantly surprised to find how well put some of the gorier scenes in the movie are, reminiscent of what could be achieved on a low poly PS1 game. Some of the hollywood tricks, like not showing the moment a character is killed and only showing the aftermath, are the exact same techniques that a developer would use to avoid having to render a full 3D model of a character being killed.

Not to mention that the actual rendering of The Licker, probably state of the art for the time, puts it in that uncanny valley in which so many of Courage the Cowardly Dog’s villains are.

I was also gladly surprised to find out that the sample for Machine Girl’s “Ginger Claps” originates from here. Kind of a nice touch for the modern viewer.

While Jovovich’s performance is OK, it is crystal clear that they were going for a “cool badass” heroine trope. I would say that the performance provided by Michelle Rodriguez, which alternates between comic relief and the lancer, is the most enjoyable of the two. Probably her first role as such if memory serves. Also, be prepared to see a lot of male gaze in this movie.

In the vibes department, the movie switches between post-Matrix leather sci-fi and overexposed Y2K tech utopia, kind of a given for the time.

Overall, the film has a resemblance to other movies that deal with a similar plot, think Saw or Cube, obviously with an emphasis on action. The final plot twist is a nice touch and, if you ignore the fact that it is so blatantly a cliffhanger for a sequel, gives a nice feeling of despair to finish the movie, akin to that of 28 Days Later.