Maybe if you aren’t at all familiar with the “Resident Evil” big screen stories—the Paul W.S. Anderson movies that star Milla Jovovich as Alice, at the very least—this new version from Netflix will shake and startle you as it so desires. But chances are another tale of zombies, an evil corporation, and bad-asses is what intrigues you, in which case: low expectations are the safer bet. This series from creator Andrew Dabb is assuredly different than what came before it, but few of its features are novel ideas. “Resident Evil” has some solid action moments but Dabb scatters them among plotting that proves counterintuitive to creating a larger sense of terror.
This “Resident Evil” jumps between two timelines: 2036 and 2022, the year that everything ended. In 2036, Jade (Ella Balinska) is someone who keeps the zombies at a safe distance. She knows they can only smell, but after accidentally nicking herself, she sets off a course of events that involve a batch of zombies and a very large bug (more on that later). Jade is navigating a chaotic point in time. She’s trying to get back to her husband and child, but she’s also being hunted by certain figures of the Umbrella Corporation who are behind this world-destroying mess. Balinska is a robust action presence in this plot line, but for all that’s going on in Jade’s life, there’s just not enough tension. Her attempts to get safe passage become redundant, less of a journey and more of an obstacle course with monsters scattered about.
To provide way too much backstory for this, or at least appease the ravenous YA audience that Netflix gave “Boo, Bitch” last week, “Resident Evil” also focuses on Jade as a 14-year-old (Tamara Smart), her twin sister Billie (Siena Agudong), and her father Albert Wesker (Lance Reddick) as they move into a sterile suburb of overwhelming whiteness (the people and the walls) in New Raccoon City in South Africa. In 2022, the Umbrella Corporation runs the city but also needs something new on the market to correct its dwindling funds. On that end, Albert has a hot new product called Joy, meant to make people happy (and make the Umbrella Corporation billions if not trillions of dollars). Unfortunately, Joy also has a brain-rewiring side effect that leads to zombification.
Young Billie and Jade get involved in their very-stressed dad’s work when they break into Umbrella’s labs late one night. Their original intent is to investigate some animal testing that disgusts the vegan Billie, but they find something even worse: a zombified dog with super-strength. After it bites Billie, Umbrella hides the incident to protect their prized product and its potential to save them from their financial woes. Billie’s bite and exposure could have been the beginning of the 2022 plot line’s terror, but “Resident Evil” instead decides to kill more time, dragging things out in the process.
And so the series loads on more backstory, including a bully who picks on Billie at high school and causes Albert to threaten the bully’s father with intimidating corporate relations. These flat, boring scenes don’t mix smoothly with Jade’s anxieties in 2036, which usually involve her being shot at or chased. Neither timeline enhances the others and only clues the audience into what Jade already knows through generic and obvious story beats. TV veteran Bronwen Hughes, director of the first two episodes, establishes a concrete sense of power for the Umbrella bad guys with lots of low-angle shots in the cold 2022 world, but this visual intention only gets the story so far.
Another sludgy issue the series has is how it fails to make an interesting villain out of the greedy and destructive Umbrella Corporation. Sure, the company wipes out people as part of their conspiracies, even after an outbreak that causes the end of the world, but it’s all done in a rather ho-hum fashion. There’s a bearded baddie named Baxter (Turlough Convery) who rolls into different scenes with gun-toting, faceless Umbrella soldiers, designed to bring in comic relief while trying to capture Jade, but, unfortunately, he makes Umbrella’s sinister nature feels all the more superficial.
It’s clear how much Netflix’s series struggles to make Umbrella’s corporate menace scary for anyone familiar with “Resident Evil.” And actors like Reddick and Núñez can only elevate conference room discussions that demonstrate how the company’s Elon Musk-like greed that leads to a zombie outbreak so much. In short, little is ominous about this version of the Umbrella Corporation, especially compared to Paul W.S. Anderson’s movies. At least the monster action in this series delivers, like when a gargantuan slug with sharp tentacles and a bad attitude explodes out of the ground in the pilot’s first few minutes. There’s also some successful action with sound-driven beasts called “lickers” and a massive spider to go with the usual “brain-eaters.” While these scenes may be too reliant on CGI to be scary, the series is good at finding ways to make these monsters creep out in the shadows or reveal just enough of them with a character’s stray flashlight before they pounce.
It’s tough to say how the series will end up, but there’s a nagging sense through the show’s first four episodes that the show doesn’t have nearly enough kineticism. The same beats get repeated, neither timeline’s emotional journey feels all that tense, and the outbreak as a whole is far too drawn out. A zombie apocalypse stretched out over two timelines shouldn’t feel this overly labored and passé. [C]