Video Games Double Feature

Video Game Double Feature - Jason McLaughlin

I like video games. I'm not an avid video game fanboy like some folks in my age bracket, but I've been known to fiddle with the controls now and again. Hollywood, apparently, has a similar relationship with video games: they like them enough to buy the rights to popular titles and hope to court the obsessive fanboy market, but not enough to bother doing any sort of good job with them (with few exceptions). But we're not here for video games and there are a million sites out there that will preach endlessly on the horror of video game to movie adaptations. I'm just setting the tone for this pair of reviews, both of which are horror movies based on popular video game franchises.

Resident Evil

Just to clear things up, I'm talking about the first that came out way back in 2002, not its two sequels, neither of which I have seen. Resident Evil is the archetype of a popcorn zombie flick, really: it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense, but it has gory human vs. zombie action and plenty of T&A to keep the guys glued to the screen.

The story, such as it is, is that the subterranean base of shady research company Umbrella Corporation is intentionally infected with the T-virus, a virus they developed for reasons unknown that causes the dead to walk again. Fun! And then the guy who infected the place casually walks off with the virus and the antidote (there's an antidote?), leaving the base to go on the offensive and kill all of the employees within to contain the virus and keep it from leaving the base. This, of course, results in the employees and non-human research specimens rising and craving sweet human flesh. Honestly, whose bright idea was it to kill everyone because they were infected with a virus that RAISES THE DEAD? But anyway...

Enter a group of commandos employed by Umbrella, who are sent in to figure out just why the base went nuts and killed everyone inside. With them is Alice (the ever-lovely Milla Jovovich), a commando who wakes up naked with only vague memories of who she is and what she's supposed to do, but is ready to kick zombie ass and wear very little while doing it.

I've heard a lot of negative press about this movie from fans of the game series, but I've only had the barest exposure to the games so I have no particular affection for them myself. So from a purely objective standpoint, this movie isn't exactly high art, but it's fun, it's fast paced, and it's a guilty pleasure for anyone who just wants to kick back and watch pretty, scantily-clad girls kick zombie dogs in the face without having to think too hard about it.

Silent Hill

And now we enter the complete opposite side of the spectrum: not only is this a thinking man's horror movie, which relies just as much on psychological terror and deep thinking as it does on cheap surprise scares and disturbing imagery, but I also happen to be a big fan of the series of games it was based on, so I am going into this one with a slight bias.

The general plot (as we'd be here all day if one were to get into the nitty-gritty) is that the main character, Rose, is worried about her adopted daughter, Sharon, who has been sleepwalking into dangerous situations and blacking out, drawing disturbing pictures when she does and repeating the name "Silent Hill". Rose finds out Silent Hill is an abandoned ghost town, but believes that the key to solving Sharon's problems is to take her to this town that obviously has had such an impact on her. But after crashing her SUV on the way in, Sharon is missing, and Rose has to go into the town to search for her, finding out that when the air raid sirens go off, the town turns into a nightmare right out of the depths of Hell. Now she has to unravel the mystery of the town if she ever wants to see her daughter again.

The thing about the Silent Hill video games that makes them so popular and resonate so deeply in the minds of their fans is they are incredibly clever, psychologically disturbing little nuggets, probing the depths of the human psyche while the player probes the depths of a town gone to Hell. While the movie got the atmosphere dead on, and has the unique pleasure of actually scaring me on several occasions, it also suffers from trying so hard to be as smart and psychological as the games that the plot becomes needlessly convoluted and silly at times.

Make no mistake, if you're looking for something that's going to scare you and you don't scare easily, you won't be disappointed. It's incredibly gory, graphic, and there are things that will even get under the skin of the most hardened horror movie fan. Just don't think too hard about the story, because you won't get it and you'll be annoyed and frustrated to the point where even the scares aren't enjoyable. If you want the whole enchilada, stick with the games.