Resident Evil Review: Netflix Series Offers Good Performances And A Modest Context
There is one aspect we want to start from when opening our review of Resident Evil, the live-action TV series available on Netflix from 14 July 2022, or that the Capcom franchise, with its over 25 years of history behind it, continues to lend itself to approaches, insights and methods of exploitation that can go beyond those from which it started with the first game for Playstation of 1996. The first film saga did it, veering towards action horror, and the same video games did it by adapting, at least in part, to the evolution of the videogame medium, we also try the new series created by Andrew Dabb for the popular streaming platform, which tries to expand the space and time of the story, starting from the future and the consequences of Umbrella’s misdeeds.
The ambition to create a television format dedicated to Resident Evil pushed Netflix to shape a work suspended between the original material and the film. Still, already very low expectations of the fans – scalded over the years by terrible proposals marked with the heavy name of the saga – they do not seem to have numerous reasons to take off, because the first episodes of the show struggle both on the narrative front and on that of small entertainment, unable to find the unitary style that can give a concrete identity to this complicated product.
Resident Evil Review: The Story
London in 2036 is a wasteland, with its gray skies cloaking the empty streets of a metropolis that did not survive the apocalypse. The silence of the English capital is pierced by the cries of the infected, beings now oblivious to their humanity who satisfy the only instinct of nourishment by gathering in hordes of hordes, hiding in the darkness of abandoned buildings to escape the annoying daylight. The leaden clouds follow Jade Wesker (Ella Balinska), a lone researcher who has left her husband and the child of their union in a haven to study the behavior of the undead and look for a way to contain the virus, but after six months of investigation, it doesn’t seem any closer to the coveted discovery. Fourteen years earlier, in 2022 when it crossed the threshold of New Raccoon City, the catastrophe had not yet occurred.
Jade (Tamara Smart) is now a young girl who moves to a new city with her father Albert (Lance Reddick) and her sister Billie (Siena Agudong): the South African conglomerate that welcomes them is a community built by Umbrella to house her employees, an oasis of purity lost in the scorching heat of the black continent where the company can carry on the development of Joy, a drug that aims to overwhelm the antidepressant market. Dr. Wesker is the head of the department that studies this new drug, but he is also a father who struggles to find the time to devote to his daughters, who have major problems integrating into the new social circle. As if the family headaches weren’t enough, the researcher must also find a way to manage Joy’s dangerous side effects, which link the experimental drug to the biological weapon responsible for the destruction of Raccoon City.
In this location in South Africa, we follow the lives of two sisters, Jade and Billie. Two different but equally problematic girls, whose father is another old acquaintance of Resident Evil players: Albert Wesker, a prominent figure in the complex gears of Umbrella. What the two girls don’t know, and what they will learn to understand during the first season, is how important and delicate the role of the father is, and how many and what secrets are hidden behind the power of Umbrella and the scenes of its patents. pharmaceuticals, and more. The story of the two sisters, played by young people Tamara Smart and Siena Agudong, is the most interesting part of the first season of Resident Evil: The series, because it sinks more into the intrigues that move between the meshes of the mythology of the Capcom franchise, but also because it knows how to involve the viewer in the personal stories of the two girls and their search for the truth as suspicions arise, grow and develop.
Resident Evil Review and Analysis
Andrew Dabb’s series carries on the two timelines alternating them at will, trying to blow the viewer not only through the change of date but also with the tone of the story. In 2036, the narrative of Resident Evil takes on post-apocalyptic classicisms, with human society reduced to shatters and forced to live hidden from the infected, while adolescence in New Raccoon City brings a sort of youth drama among the difficulties. to join the girls and the discoveries on the mysterious work of the father. During the first four episodes, however, neither of the two shades manages to stand out for concreteness or ability to entertain, because the script relies on the abused stereotypes of both genres to recreate a not too effective prologue, it refers to the videogame saga to which it belongs only for scant references without real importance.
The purpose of the TV series is to place itself as a direct continuation of the Capcom franchise, analyzing the events that take place during the first appearance of Ethan Winters in Biohazard and giving for certain the events of the main vein, but not everything seems to match and the last minutes of the fourth episode finally brings to light the questions that haunt the connoisseurs of the saga, thus fueling a moderate interest in the continuation of the story. Until that moment, unfortunately, it is difficult to find positive aspects for a work that does not shine for consistency, lost among its multifaceted souls due to a difficult thematic framework: the Netflix series approaches horror without particular conviction, floating among the splatter and the b-movie of scenes that neither creep nor scare, combining it with the thriller tints of a story widely predictable in the first evolutions.
The first crunch of loyalty, in this sense, sees Albert Wesker as the protagonist, who plays an important role within the company while in the videogame series he is captain of the STARS team and head of the Alpha division: freedom that may not please the many players passionate about the series. Net of this, Albert Wesker’s interpretation is still convincing, as we mentioned earlier. The camera then moves to Jade, who in the first timeline learns more about the zombies and the work of her father, taking an interest in the aura of mystery that surrounds him.
After that, there is the second timeline, introductory and exhaustive on what happened to the world. The adult version of Jade Wesker is played by an excellent Ella Belinska, who finds herself surviving in 2038, a decade after the apocalypse involving Earth and the human race. The Umbrella Corporation plays a major role in this desperation as the few survivors try to get on as best they can. It is an intriguing change of perspective because it allows you to have a more complete vision of what is happening, not betraying a nature that is a little too trashy and excessive, but it is natural when there is an apocalypse involved and the inevitable consequences that concern it. The scenes follow one another quickly and the production seems to play a lot on its protagonists, inevitably placing them at the center of a fun and engaging narrative. However, it is a story that has very little to do with Resident Evil, despite the references to some interesting parts of the videogame saga developed by Capcom.
We are talking about some small cameos, in particular of a specific character who appears in the fourth episode taken directly from Resident Evil 4, which however we cannot reveal so as not to spoil the surprise. If on the one hand, we have characters written convincingly, on the other it is the atmospheres that do not fully convince us. Since the beginning, Resident Evil has not been a videogame series only horror and some episodes of the brand have changed the approach to telling the story several times, managing, in any case, to be canonical with each other. In this case, Resident Evil Series looks like a production lacking the necessary twist that would lead it to be a full-fledged series on Resident Evil, an example for all the others, one of the few that would make sense.
Unfortunately, all of that falls away from the moment we interface with some major plot events, which we explore through the characters. The Virus-T, as well explained, does not seem to intimidate enough, so much so that it is minimized in some dialogues between the protagonists. Let’s be clear, the writing in some situations is well written and the relationship between Jade and Billie is exciting. Ultimately, is he a full-fledged Resident Evil at the moment? It is certainly not so in the atmosphere and not in the dialogues between the protagonists, despite a good writing that does not scream a miracle, not very different from the many other transpositions dedicated to the brand.
Nevertheless, not giving you spoilers, the story has an initially slow pace which then explodes in the second episode, while in the last two everything is focused on the action that the videogame series has accustomed us to. At the moment, and we want to remember it, we are judging this work only from the first four episodes and we certainly cannot definitively arrive at a comprehensive conclusion.
Resident Evil Review: The Last Words
Despite taking some liberties, Resident Evil Series offers good performances and a modest context. We can only hope that it improves by expressing itself at its best, above all to answer the question that we have been asking ourselves for some time now, namely whether transpositions on Resident Evil are necessary. This is a question we can’t wait to answer in the review. Another mediocre series that does not fly free or completely ignore the base material of Capcom video games. Perhaps the bloodiest thing is that at a given moment it starts to work to collapse into an open ending, full of inconsistencies. What raises the proposal a bit is the presence of Lance Reddick and the giant bugs.
Starring: Ella Balinska, Tamara Smart, Siena Agudong
Director: Bronwen Hughes
Streaming Platform: Netflix (click to watch)
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 3/5 (three stars) [yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]
