With overall quality up for spirited debate, the single most resilient video game movie franchise is the Paul W. S. Anderson Resident Evil series. Spanning two decades, with six movies, Resident Evil became the little Umbrella Corporation engine that could with its own brand of cheese-tastic action and horror.
Representing the entire run — and even the more recent Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City reboot in 2021 and the separate Netflix series in 2022 — is the 2002 original, featuring The Fifth Element’s Milla Jovovich as amnesiac heroine Alice, who joins up with a band of warriors to battle the sinister Umbrella Corporation and the scourge of the zombie-creating T-virus.
Mixing up various parts of the first two Resident Evil games, this first movie nicely set the stage for 25 more years of RE films. With 28 Days Later and the Dawn of the Dead reboot helping popularize zombie horror at the start of this century, Resident Evil found itself in a sweet spot being able to pull from games filled with undead monsters and tons of dystopian lore.
Oh, and the franchise isn’t done reinventing itself either, as a brand new version from Barbarian’s Zach Cregger is slated for 2026.
VIA: ign.com
