Resident Evil review: Netflix’s attempt to make order of the games and movies

Resident Evil is open to all kinds of things. This long-running series started out as a videogame in 1996. It has an elastic universe that can host everything, from sea monsters and zombies to powerful psychics and secret agents, without worrying about complicated explanations. However, the biggest surprise about Netflix’s new Resident EvilAndrew Dabb is the creator of this series (Supernatural) is its careful devotion to the series’ weird, and often tampered with, canon — and just how boring the show is as a result.

Netflix’s Resident Evil series follows Jade Wesker (Ella Balinska) across two different time periods. First, in 2022. She is 14 years old when she, her sister Billie (played by Tamara Smart), and Albert Wesker, (Lance Reddick) move to New Raccoon City in order for their father’s continued work at the Umbrella Corporation. The show’s second time period takes place in 2036, after the world has become overrun with zombies that first appeared in New Raccoon City… in 2022.

For the best results, use an earlier timeframe Resident Evil. In its most entertaining moments, it’s a straightforward Netflix teen series — some of the platform’s most reliably enjoyable content, though never its best — with some light horror elements thrown on top. Reddick is great as an overworked-genius father who can’t pull himself away from work long enough to be a parent, and teens Jade and Billie are fun as sisters with very different personalities trying to fit in at a new school.

One of the series’ best scenes comes early on when Albert has to bail Billie out after some trouble at school. Reddick’s Wesker shows up, flexes his power and importance to Umbrella and terrifies the other parent into dropping the issue completely. Albert threatens Albert with having the man fired from Umbrella. He also wants him to be blacklisted. The meeting is so rearranged that even the principal can’t help but watch as the principal lets Albert go his way. It’s all of the ’90s bravado of video game Wesker focused into dad mode, instead of the usual nefarious and evil plots that game-Wesker got up to. If this scene set the tone for the entire show, it might have made for a fun offshoot and addition to the Resident Evil universe, but it’s more the exception than the rule.

Netflix Photo

Netflix Photo

Netflix Photo

Instead, the 2022 part of the plot line falls prey to the series’ race toward the inevitable outbreak, giving us less high school drama in favor of boring Umbrella shenanigans, especially as the first season wears on. Things get more complicated and worse in the 2036 portion of the story. Resident Evil. The world, we’re told, is now occupied by 6 billion zombies and just a few hundred thousand humans. As Jade runs through this world with Umbrella hot on her heels for reasons that aren’t fully explained, we get a brief tour of the postapocalypse.

Uninfected people have divided the planet into smaller kingdoms, ruled over by groups called the Brotherhood. At first, this seems like it could be an interesting setup for the show to give us some compelling world-building, but instead it mostly turns out to be recycled tropes, like the religious zealots, historians who want to preserve the old world, scrappers, and a totalitarian state with the only remaining technology — Umbrella, in this case.

What’s worse, the dialogue in these sections is particularly awful, a potent combination of unnecessarily exposition and awful jokes. These flash-forwards often end in a boring and uninteresting action scene.

Despite all these issues, and the fact that it’s just not that fun to watch, it does seem like Netflix’s Resident EvilThe show might serve a purpose. For the hardest of hardcore Resident Evil fans, the series offers some interesting explorations of a world that’s been changed and discarded more than a few times by series publisher Capcom.

Netflix Photo

Dabb says that the series is set in the same world where the games are. Everything that happened in Resident Evil’s canon entries (which is a complicated web to untangle by itself) has happened here. If this leaves longtime fans scratching their heads about a few very specific characters, Dabb says that’s by design and that those questions will be answered in time. Unfortunately, we have no indication of whether or not the series itself will be considered canon in the games, so even if this is the best reason to watch the show, it’s hard to imagine it as more than a fanfiction detour (this is particularly true considering that we have no indication that the world ends in 2036 in the games, a year that their canon is already one year past).

Resident Evil as a franchise is at its best when it’s treated more like a toy box than a revered IP. It’s possible to pull out Wesker or zombies here and there. Or you could just tell a strange story with Umbrella logos at the end. It’s an approach that worked for both Paul W.S. Anderson’s incredibly entertaining six-film series and for the mainline, numbered Resident Evil games. Resident Evil isn’t exactly The Twilight Zone; there’s a definite sense of shared universe and some light rules. Good ideas are what make the most interesting entries.

But instead of using the world as a loose justification for the weird horrors that lurk in the corners, Netflix’s series spends most of its time desperate to justify its own existence in the Resident Evil Universe™, and none building a new story that’s worth caring about.