Professor Popinjay's Compendium of Perspicacity

A Non-review by Professor Popinjay

[THIS ARTICLE IS NOT FOR KIDS! IF YOU’RE A KID, GO WATCH MY LITTLE PONY OR SOMETHING! I LOVE THAT SHOW! FLUTTERSHY IS MY FAVORITE!]

There are a lot of Resident Evil movies out there right now and as much as I’d love to check them all off my list at once, honestly I’d like to watch the originals all the way through again before writing about a huge chunk of them. Besides, I haven’t seen all the cgi films or the Netflix miniseries everyone hated.

I wrote about the cgi film Resident Evil: Vendetta (2017). It basically sucked but the visuals were cool. I just hate the old “villain is forcing the girl to marry him” plot. What is this, a melodrama with Snidley Whiplash? I’m surprised he wasn’t tying Rebecca Chambers to the train tracks. Seriously, what does he think the end game is going to be?

Sorry, I probably already said all this in the Non-review for RE: Vendetta. Hey, now you don’t have to read that one. Saved you a trip.

Resident Evil (2026) is a story that takes place in one locale while the games are happening elsewhere.

It seems Zach Cregger must have thought it’s impossible to translate a videogame plot into a movie so let’s just make a movie about some guy.

Just like Simon McQuoid did in Mortal Kombat (2021), Cregger decided there are absolutely zero original characters from the game’s legion of characters to whom an audience can relate and therefore we must create a John Everyman through whom we may experience this story from the outskirts of the game’s original plot. Awesome!<——Sarcasm.

That’s like experiencing the Cuban missile crisis from the perspective of the president’s secretary. Oh wait, that’s what they did in Thirteen Days (2000).

Well, imagine watching the Super Mario Movie from the perspective of the dog from Duck Hunt. You know Super Mario is happening over there but right now we’re watching this dog flip us the bird and laugh at us. That is Resident Evil (2026) if you’re expecting a movie about the Resident Evil games. Deep down inside, you know there is a movie that pertains to the games happening somewhere and n this movie, but you don’t get to see it.

And it’s nothing new when considering the myriad of RE films that have very little to do with the games beyond zombies, secret science facilities, and grotesque bioweapons. Granted the previous franchise with Mila Jovovich eventually DID start tacking on characters from the game and, boy-howdy, they certainly felt like an afterthought most of the time.

But I love those movies. I thought they were fun regardless of their lack of accuracy or adherence to the games. I do think it would be cool to get a film that spends at least half the film in a zombie infested mansion instead of two minutes in a zombie-less mansion. Just change the name of these films so we’re not expecting Resident Evil and they’d be decent enough.

You know what though? I had a great time with RE 2026 too. Clear up until the end but we’ll get to that in a minute.

This film was funny! Like really funny. And it earned these frequent humorous moments. It wasn’t screwball or absurdist. The humor was purely situational, not tacked on, and perfectly relatable. There was really only one instance where the main character did something I thought was genuinely stupid but who’s to say I wouldn’t do the same thing when panicking the way the character was.

Besides, that one dumb decision in a moment of panic led to more hilarious situations. If you’re curious as to which scene I’m referring, I’ll just say: the ladder and the dog. You’ll know.

Generally, this random guy we’re following around was a lot smarter than most people in a horror film. I really appreciated other decisions he made which ultimately kept him alive. Yes, it meant we didn’t get to see some visceral horror (a fact that didn’t bother me any) but we gained some respect for the character. He clearly wasn’t an action hero, but he had some common sense. This would have been a very frustrating movie if he was just a big dumb dumb all the time.

The scares were fun and evenly peppered amongst the humor. I was smiling. Probably a strange thing to say but if I realize I’m smiling in a dark theater you know I will be saying good things about that movie. I really enjoyed 95% of this movie!

Then the last 5 minutes happened.

Before going to see this film, I went ahead and watched part of an impromptu review by Doug Walker, The Nostalgia Critic, on YouTube. Aside from an almost unforgivable misstep (he thought pyramid head was from Resident Evil! Ridiculous!) he said this film was decent until the ending which turned into a cartoon.

Hearing this, I thought “Ah, you’re just not a devout RE fan so you don’t understand the soap opera-esque story aspects of the games and it probably just seemed silly to someone as uninitiated like your erroneous-pyramid head-associating self!”

Then I saw the film for myself. No, it didn’t literally become an animated cartoon like we saw in the new Street Fighter movie. But it did become goofy. Suddenly it was pulling Scooby-Doo hijinks played either for laughs or suspense, I do not know. I’m surprised Austin Roberts didn’t start playing some groovy chase music, although Boots Randalph’s “Yakety Sax” might have been even more appropriate.

I’d hate to say the final scene pissed me off so much it ruined the whole movie for me, but if I ever watch this movie again, I’ll probably watch it clear up until that scene and not give a crap what happens afterwards. You may want to do the same with the rest of this article because I’m going to write up at least one better way this film could have ended.

Here we go:

[SPOILER ALERT IN THE SENSE THAT THE FOLLOWING IS ONE SCENARIO THAT DEFINITELY did not HAPPEN!]

“You’ve had quite the journey, Bryan. I’m surprised you made it up here in one piece.”

“Well, not exactly. One piece is missing.” Bryan shows the scientist the bite mark on his arm.

“Shit! You didn’t tell us you were infected! Quick, give me the package!”

The scientist frantically grabs the parcel from Bryan and begins to tear at it.

Another man with slicked-back hair, oddly wearing dark sunglasses indoors, standing further behind the scientist, calmly approaches the two men. “It’s too late, William. Look at him. He’s already begun to mutate.”

“Screw you, Wesker! If it wasn’t for you we wouldn’t be in this mess!” William Birkin continues to claw at the package. “Good God! Who taped this up!?! This is impossible!”

Albert Wesker casually hands William a large combat knife, all the while watching Bryan who was becoming ever anxious and glossy . “Here, use this.”

William eyed the knife questioningly but took it nevertheless. Wesker cautiously stepped back. Just as william began to open the package however, Bryan was suddenly overcome with convulsions. As he grunted and whimpered, bones, muscle, and veins seemed to shift and jerk beneath the skin of his bitten arm, until exploding with a loud crack into a bloody monstrous claw.

“Please help me!” Squealed Bryan to William, as the mutation continued to work its way up his arm toward his face with no signs of stopping.

Wesker looked on with psychotic wonder and began to laugh. “It’s Magnificent.”

Dumbfounded at the sight but brought back by Bryan’s pathetic plea, William tossed the knife aside and finally pulled the hermetic container from the package, quickly extracting the syringe contained within. This was it: Salvation for the wretch rapidly deforming before him and by proxy for himself and Wesker as well. Just one stab is all it would take.

But it would be William Birkin who would feel the stab first, and not from the syringe. Birkin refocused his eyes from the syringe in his hand to the massive claw now piercing his stomach and severing his spinal column.

“I’m sorry.” Said Bryan with tears in his hemorrhaging eyes, the last signs of his humanity ebbing away. Ironically, the last thing he would consciously witness was life dissipating from William’s own eyes just inches away. The two men crumpled to the floor, one a lifeless mass, the other a mass of convulsing tissue uncontrollably, painfully, rapidly evolving.

Albert Wesker, delighted by the scene, smirked as he collected the unused syringe from William’s cold hand. “We must be more careful, William. It would be tragic if the vaccine for the T-Virus got into the wrong hands. They could undo all our hard work.”

Wesker stood up and turned, his long black coat flourishing around him. He walked to the sealed window on the other side of the laboratory here on the 28th floor of Raccoon City General Hospital. With far more force than he appeared to exert, his backhanded blow shattered the three inch thick  tempered safety glass, blasting it outward into the night sky as if by ballistics.

“Traitor.” A faint voice came from behind him, barely audible above the rush of wind now encircling the high-rise room.

Wesker turned. “William. Still alive? Or is it alive again? It’s so hard to tell lately.”

Bryan’s same horrific symptoms were already becoming visible on William’s face. “Wesker, give me the vaccine. Please!” His voice was strained.

“What, and let you just die? Sorry, but you’re far too valuable like this. I’m interested to see what you’ll make of yourself.” Wesker laughed. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some friends to visit… at a local residence.” Briefly, a glimmer of red light became visible from behind Wesker’s dark glasses.

To William, he gestured an arrogant farewell, placed the syringe securely in his coat pocket, turned back toward the gaping window, and with that…

…he jumped.

[Roll credits]

There, you see? Was that so hard? We get a couple characters from the games. We get hints of a sequel that involves the mansion. We’re setting William Birkin up for some wacky action and we have a cool super powerful villain.

Best of all, it’s not the stupidest, most frustrating, sequence of zany events ever to show up in the last five minutes of an otherwise thoroughly enjoyable horror flick.

On Matt Belloni’s The Town podcast, director Cregger expressed intense frustration with hardcore video game fans who criticized the movie for deviating from established game lore rather than judging it as a standalone piece of survival horror.

Hmmm, if he wanted the film to be judged as a standalone piece of survival horror, maybe he shouldn’t have titled it “Resident Evil.” Just a thought. I get wanting to make your own movie and I imagine just ticking off check marks on a long list of demands purely to please hardcore fans could get monotonous and limiting but SOMEONE needs to make movies of preexisting IPs and if you don’t want to do that as a director then DON’T SIGN ON TO MAKE MOVIES ABOUT PREEXISTING IPS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Stupid!

Fun movie though aside from the big FU at the end.