Resident Evil (film)
Resident Evil, (also known as Resident Evil 1, Resident Evil: Ground Zero, and Resident Evil: Genesis) is an American movie shot mostly in Germany and based upon the survival horror series of the same name.
Tagline: A secret experiment. A deadly virus. A fatal mistake.
Plot overview
The movie is said to take place prior to the original game. In this film, the Umbrella Corporation have sent a special operations unit to their biological warfare lab hidden beneath a mansion on the outskirts of Raccoon City to find out why contact has been lost. En route, the team discover Alice and Spence, two Umbrella employees with amnesia, a complex full of zombies and a computer system gone mad.
At a high tech lab, office staff and researchers are going about their business. Suddenly, containment protocol is set in motion by the Hive computer. We see researchers drowning in a sealed lab, and people in their offices suffocating as a chemical is injected into the air. In one stuck elevator people are trying to jam the doors open. Suddenly, they all go quiet and hear people screaming and an elevator crashing in the shaft next to them. A woman tries to squeeze through the hole in the door, but it is too small, she is stuck. Suddenly, the brakes release and the elevator falls.
A women wakes up in a shower, confused. (Her name is Alice, however this is only revealed in the closing credits.) She walks around the huge mansion, but she can't remember her name, doesn't know where she is, or what she is doing here. A helicopter drops a few Umbrella troopers and they advance upon the house. They find her and decide to take her along while they go towards the Hive. The mansion, it seems, is the gateway to an underground railroad that leads into the Hive, a research facility located hundreds of feet below Raccoon City.
The team finds two other men along their journey, one of whom is apparently Alice's husband, and take them with them on the way into the hive.
They find the Hive complex deserted and eventually the team reaches the access point for the Hive computer. But the Hive doesn't want to be invaded and activates a laser protection system that cuts most of the team to pieces.
After the team inside is dead, the remaining soldiers along with Alice manage to get access to the Hive's central computer room. They are confronted by a hologram dubbed The Red Queen, a manifestation of the Hive's intelligence in the image of the original designer's daughter.
The only way to stop the Hive is to reboot the computer. The Red Queen she says doing so will have very bad consequences. They shut down the computer anyway; all over the complex the lights go out, and all the door locks are released, releasing scores of zombies.
The team learns that the Hive, operated by the world's most powerful company, was designed as a research laboratory for biological weapons including viral weaponry. One strain could reanimate the dead into mindless zombies, or cause mutation in living beings.
The Hive deployed its containment protocol in order to make sure the virus would not escape. An accident resulted in the virus being exposed to the air and distributed throughout the complex via its ventilation system. An environmentalist had wanted to steal information on the Hive and expose it to the public. A guard at the Hive overheard this and had decided to steal some viral weaponry to sell to the highest bidder. He threw one of the vials as he left a research room, the vial broke, and the airborne virus was released. But he became stuck close to the exit when the sealing of the Hive began and the gas knocked him out and removed his memory. The Umbrella team finds the brother of that environmentalist (it is learned that Alice was involved in that scheme while Spence, one of the men found in the Hive, is the corrupt guard) and the whole group tries to escape the facility, pursued by mutated dogs and a humanoid creature called a "licker."
One by one, the remaining team members die or are infected by the virus, which they learn turns people into zombies whether they are alive or dead. Alice finds an antidote for the virus and the last two survivors -- one of whom is Alice, the other the brother -- get out just before the Hive seals itself for good.
As soon as they leave the mansion, they are grabbed my men wearing biological protective suits. The order is given to restrain them, and as the brother of the environmentalist is taken, he shows signs of mutation, and the order is given to put him in the Nemesis program. Also, orders are given to prepare a team and go into the Hive to find out what happened.
Alice is taken to the Raccoon City Hospital. She wakes up on a table and removes all the wires around her. She walks out, and in one area of the building we see a zombie walking around. She walks outside and sees that the city around her is devastated. She grabs a gun and gets ready for whatever she will face next.
The events of this film lead directly into the sequel.
Cast and crew
- Alice: Milla Jovovich
- Commando leader, One: Colin Salmon
- Commando, Rain Ocampo : Michelle Rodriguez
- Matt Addison: Eric Mabius
- Spence: James Purefoy
- Kaplan: Martin Crewes
- Computer, Red Queen: Michaela Dicker
- Screenwriter and Director : Paul W.S. Anderson
Novelization
- Resident Evil: Genesis by Keith R.A. DeCandido, 2001, ISBN 0-743-49291-9.
Trivia
- The film ends with Alice waking up in Raccoon City, the city of the dead featured in the Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3: Nemesis games. This is the starting point of the sequel film, Resident Evil: Apocalypse. The movie takes place in an alternate universe to the games and would occur before the first Resident Evil game if it were included in that timeline.
- Paul Anderson also directed the first Mortal Kombat movie, which was also based upon a video game.
- Milla Jovovich became engaged to Paul Anderson after making the film.
- The lead character, Alice, is never referred to by name in the film. According to the novelization, her full name is Alice Abernathy, which is never mentioned in the sequel, either.