Hidden underneath Raccoon City is a base called the Hive which belongs to the worlds #1 company, The Umbrella Corp., who sees much of their business in the manufacture of secret military weapons. Someone tries to steal a virus and the bases computer, the Red Queen, turns on its defenses and locks in all of the scientists who have become contaminated. Alice (Milla Jovovitch) wakes up an amnesiac, and after running into a cop, the two are escorted by a squad of soldiers into the heart of the base. With the intent to shut down the Red Queen, they get more than they bargained for with the Red Queens defenses and find that the Hive is overrun with zombified Umbrella Corp. employees and even nastier biological experiments.

You can tell it is a typical Hollywood production from the outset. As the camera tracks along the sterile research facilities hallways, its employees hustle and bustle around with their normal routine- and all of the faces are young. I swear, there isn't a face over thirty-five, not one miserly mega-brain scientist, and for a second I almost thought I was watching a remake of Logans Run. The oldest face in the film is the head of the squad and he has to be mid-thirties, at the most, which hardly qualifies him as a grizzled paramilitary veteran.

Anyway, although I went into the film not expecting well developed characters and a thoughtful, scintillating plot, I was still amazed at how utterly uninvolved and yawn inducing the film turned out to be. Courtesy of Paul Anderson, who parlayed his success from Mortal Combat: The Movie, into two of the decades biggest sci fi duds, Event Horizon and Soldier, the plotting almost completely throws character development out of the window, going so far as to make our heroine an amnesiac for most/all of the film and surrounding her with a group of soldiers we barely know the names of before they are picked off. There is never really a chance to give a damn about any of them; for Anderson, his characters are given as much substance as the slo-mo fallacy of the automatic weapons firing. Aside from the lame Alice in Wonderland references (the Red Queen itself being an uninspired amalgam of HAL from 2001, the computer from Wargames, and the devil from the "Toby Dammit" segment of Spirits of the Dead), the script doesn't attempt too much other than throw them in the Hive and watch them die, but even the transitions between sequences is clumsy (one minute they are surrounded by zombies with no way out- CUT- they safely dive into a room), like reading a comic book with missing pages.

Now, I don't mind changes. It isn't like Resident Evil: The Game was some storytelling masterpiece. I don't even mind that the studio dropped George Romero, the godfather of all things zombie, from making the film (though most of that has to do with reading his terrible script- though it wasn't any more terrible than Anderson's). What I do mind is the fact that they completely missed the tone of the game. The fun of Resident Evil: The Game was that it was methodically creepy, dirty, and gothic, whereas Resident Evil: The Movie is slick, polished, paced for those who suffer from Attention Deficit Disorder, and has annoyingly cued industrial music blaring at you every action scene. Where is the horror? It is certainly not in the aggravated slow motion hand-to- hand combat which is more reminiscent of Tekken than Resident Evil. It is also certainly not in the fact that zombies appear 39 mins into the movie and are almost an afterthought (Hell, half the soldiers are killed, sliced into pieces, by a defensive laser grid like in the movie CUBE). For me, Resident Evil: The Movie was just a vacant mass appeal mess, less gory, scary, or involving as the games that inspired it

The DVD: Columbia

Picture: Widescreen Anamorphic. Well, because it is Superbit, your DVD players bitrate will be maxed out giving you better visuals. In all honesty, aside from movies on display at stores, this was my first Superbit experience. I am more of a pure film fan than a techno junkie, spending most of my money on films, rather than equipment, so I didn't notice a tremendous difference on my system. But, after popping it into a better much larger widescreen tv, you do notice the clarity. The image is sharp, colors strong, contrast deep, no technical glitches whatsoever. The only thing I noticed was a few scenes on the print suffering from some grain. Most likely this is from the actual production and even going Superbit doesn't eliminate what is only a minor quibble anyway.

Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround or DTS channels with optional English, Spanish, French, or Portuguese subtitles. Well, everything is crisp and clear, from the sharp gunfire, to the thundering underground train, to the clicking of zombie Doberman's nails on the slick lab floor.

Extras: Chapter Selections.... that's it.

Conclusion: If I were reviewing the film only, I'd say it qualifies as nothing more than a rental, but I realize it being Superbit means you are most likely a fan of the film with a nice home theater setup. Well, if you are a fan and an image junkie, more concerned with getting the max out of your expensive system, it is certainly worth a purchase. Those Resident Evil fans on a fixed budget, still making due with that 35 inch standard tv, the non-Superbit extra laced edition of the film will suffice.