RESIDENT EVIL is a gritty 90's hit for the 2020's

“What the **** is a chatroom?”

RESIDENT EVIL: WELCOME TO RACCOON CITY is Sony’s latest offering of the iconic Resident Evil game franchise which the studio catapulted into a 6-film series running from 2002 to 2016 and grossing well over $1 billion dollars.

This reboot offers a more “gamer-friendly” take on the franchise, placing the action firmly in a 1990’s Raccoon City with a cast that consists of franchise characters like Leon S. Kennedy, Jill Valentine, Claire and Chris Redfield, and Albert Wesker. That’s, thankfully, where the similarities to the games end.

Directed by Johannes Roberts (The Strangers Prey at Night), this film plays fast and loose with the “Resident Evil” mythos which, if you weren’t aware, has all the nuance and storytelling grace of a melodramatic Japanese anime. This allows for the adaptation to borrow more from the “grounded” 2019 game remake of “Resident Evil 2” more-so than the original series.

We meet fumbling loser rookie cop Leon Kennedy (Avan Jogia) on his first night on the job which happens to be his last night as well. Hungover, Leon reports to the Raccoon City Police Department and gets his ass hilariously chewed out by Police Chief Brian Irons (a hilariously hammy Donal Logue) as all Hell is on the verge of breaking loose.

On the other side of town, runaway drifter Claire Redfield (Kaya Scodelario) is coming to town for the first time since she was a child to warn her brother Chris, a member of the S.T.A.R.S. police force, that the pharmaceutical giant Umbrella, who raised and built Raccoon City, is up to some pretty nefarious stuff.

When an incident at the Umbrella Mansion in the forest prompts the S.T.A.R.S. team to investigate, the sickly citizens of Raccoon City begin turning into zombies and our cast of characters must survive on hell of a night if they want to live to see tomorrow.

WELCOME TO RACCOON CITY treats the titular city as a character itself so much more than it ever has been. Boarded up shop windows, desolate stretches of once-thriving city streets, rundown houses, poverty-stricken locals who have no other life outside of town, all collapsing and in various states of literal and metaphorical decay as we’re told Umbrella is packing up their operations and moving to a new location.

When it comes to the characters and the action, this “Resident Evil” owes more to the violent and entertaining films of John Carpenter such as “Assault on Precinct 13”, James Cameron’s “The Terminator”, and even shades of Walter Hill’s “The Warriors”.

Our heroes are plucky and conflicted, but still have time for smirking witticisms, which contrasts brilliantly with the dire situations they find themselves in.

Leon’s character is not the “cool and badass” Leon of the games, but owes more to reluctant loser “everyman” protagonists played by Kurt Russel or Bruce Willis. Wesker, as many know as the sunglasses-wearing and hilariously vile series antagonist is given a new (and frankly far more interesting) turn as a conflicted anti-hero with shades of genuine morality and humanity.

The women of Resident Evil, Claire Redfield and Jill Valentine steal the show of course as no-nonsense ladies that shoot, fight, and bleed like (and more than) their male counterparts.

An unexpected addition to the film was the character of Lisa Trevor, a mangled experiment of a woman that serves as a boss battle in the first game. Here, she is given the role of the “protector monsters” similar to a King Kong figure. Her big scene towards the end is honestly cheer-worthy.

WELCOME TO RACCOON CITY feels like a film from the late 80’s and early 90’s in terms of visuals and direction, and the camera work here from Roberts is pulpy and rich. You honestly can almost see the film-grain, like this is a badass action flick you found on VHS in the rental store.

There's the aforementioned monster-mash of Lisa battling a Licker that takes the cake as far as creature-feature smackdowns go, but Roberts uses his gritty chops from his 2017 "The Strangers" flick to expert results here with a particularly terrifying and action-packed scene in the dark Spencer Mansion where bits of gore and snarling glimpses of zombie teeth flash across the screen, illuminated only by frantic muzzle flashes from the S.T.A.R.S. team.

Roberts loves to play with lighting and perspective, and that is on full display during the mansion segment while there are moments of sheer hilarity, such as Chief Irons giving Wesker a speech on "getting laid" to Journey and, subsequently, getting shot at by Umbrella special forces while "Any Way You Want It" by the band plays on his cassette player.

While it is a far cry from Paul W.S. Anderson’s literary and more surreal take on the franchise in 2002’s debut RESIDENT EVIL film, this new iteration is different enough to justify it’s existence from that franchise and, more importantly, does not present itself as a slave to the hokey video-game franchise it is based on.

The film was made on a modest $25 mil budget and is on track to make that back and then some, meaning hopefully our adventures with this hot new cast are far from over.