One thing I do not like in cinema is open-ended conclusions. I am also not a fan of zombie movies, which is essentially what Resident Evil (2002) is, with some action genre and video game influences. My Faith speaks directly against these kinds of stories. After all, in God’s wisdom He gave us only one life to live, and our resurrection will not turn us into the undead hungry for brains. Further, by the time this film was released in 2002, had we not seen every iteration possible of this type of story? What I am saying is that it is unoriginal, and since I was never a fan of the video games on which this is based, the cinematic version fell flat for me. And yet they went on to five more of these, and there is a reboot coming out this year. Before we get to any of that, let me tell you about this first installment.

That first installment of Resident Evil begins beneath Raccoon City, where the Umbrella Corporation operates the Hive, a massive underground laboratory devoted to genetic and biological research. An unidentified employee steals samples of the experimental T-virus and its antidote, then deliberately releases the virus into the facility. The Hive’s artificial intelligence, the Red Queen (voiced by Michaela Dicker), responds by sealing the complex and killing everyone inside, an extreme bit of computer logic that becomes more understandable once the dead refuse to remain dead. Above ground, Alice (Milla Jovovich) awakens in a mansion with no memory of who she is. Before she can learn much, a commando team led by James “One” Shade (Colin Salmon) bursts into the house. They also capture Matt Addison (Eric Mabius), who claims to be a police officer, and take both through a hidden entrance beneath the mansion. An underground train carries the group toward the Hive, where they discover another amnesiac passenger, Spence Parks (James Purefoy). One explains that Alice and Spence are Umbrella security operatives who posed as a married couple while guarding the entrance, and that nerve gas caused their memory loss. The team is to enter the Hive and shut down the Red Queen, which Umbrella believes murdered the facility’s employees. Reaching the computer chamber proves costly. One and several commandos enter a corridor protected by a laser defense system, only to be sliced apart when the Red Queen activates it. Chad Kaplan (Martin Crewes), the team’s computer specialist, nevertheless disables her, despite a holographic little girl representing the Red Queen warning that everyone will die if he does. Turning her off also unlocks the Hive, releasing the danger she had contained. Rain Ocampo (Michelle Rodriguez) encounters what appears to be a surviving employee, only to be bitten when the woman attacks her. Soon the corridors fill with reanimated workers infected by the T-virus. Apparently even in a fictional universe, attempting to manufacture a way around death produces consequences that should make one appreciate God’s original arrangement. The undead overwhelm the group, killing commando J.D. Salinas (Pasquale Aleardi) and biting Rain several more times. Alice’s memory gradually returns along with her formidable fighting skills, which she demonstrates against infected humans and genetically altered Dobermans. She has also become separated from the others along with Matt, who discovers his sister Lisa (Heike Makatsch) among the undead. Alice remembers that Lisa had infiltrated Umbrella because she and Matt wanted evidence of the corporation’s illegal experiments. Alice had agreed to help Lisa obtain a sample of the T-virus so its existence could be exposed, proving to Matt that Alice had not betrayed his sister. With escape routes disappearing, the survivors reactivate the Red Queen and demand her help. She explains that the T-virus was designed to reanimate dead cells and that those infected return with an appetite for living flesh. Anyone bitten will eventually join them, leaving Rain little time. The Red Queen directs the group through utility tunnels, but zombies attack there as well, separating Chad from the others. Alice remembers that an antidote exists and leads Rain, Matt, and Spence toward the laboratory where it should be stored. The containers are missing, and Spence’s returning memory supplies the reason. He overheard Alice’s plan with Lisa, stole the virus, released it in the Hive to cover his theft, and hid both the virus and antidote aboard the train. Spence turns a gun on the others and escapes, only to encounter the Licker, a grotesque Umbrella experiment freed when the Red Queen was shut down. It kills him before he can use the antidote. The Red Queen then offers Alice a bargain: she will open the exit if Alice kills the infected Rain. Alice refuses and attacks the computer instead, but Chad unexpectedly returns and disables the Red Queen. The survivors race back to the train, where Alice retrieves the antidote and kills the now-reanimated Spence with an axe. She injects Rain, but the Licker attacks the moving train, kills Chad, and wounds Matt. Rain appears to recover, only to become a zombie moments later, forcing Matt to shoot her. Her body falls against a release mechanism that opens a hatch beneath the Licker, allowing the creature to be dragged under the train and killed. Alice and Matt reach the mansion just before the Hive seals itself, seemingly making them the only survivors. Matt’s wound, however, begins mutating rapidly. Before Alice can help him, Umbrella scientists storm the mansion, separate the pair, and order Matt placed in the “Nemesis Program.” Alice is sedated and later awakens alone in a Raccoon City hospital. She tears away the tubes attached to her, finds the building deserted, and walks outside to discover streets filled with wrecked vehicles, abandoned emergency equipment, and signs of widespread destruction. A newspaper reports that the dead are walking, meaning the disaster the Red Queen killed hundreds of people to contain has escaped anyway. Alice takes a shotgun from an abandoned police car and stands amid the ruined city as the film ends.

After all the killing, infection, corporate secrecy, and efforts to cheat death, Resident Evil arrives at precisely the sort of open-ended conclusion promised by its premise: the evil is not defeated, the dead are still getting up, and anyone wanting an actual resolution will have to come back for another movie. In short, evil has taken residence, and I do not mean simply the fact that it exists solely to set up a sequel. As discussed in the synopsis, the notion of messing with our deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) in order to cheat death is a particularly abhorrent one from a Catholic perspective. Please understand that this is not a diatribe against doing any kind of genetic research. As I have said too many times to count over the years of writing reviews for The Legionnaire, the Church is not anti-science. What She does take a stance against is modifying human life in ways that violate the dignity of the person or treat human beings merely as material for experimentation. According to the movie, the Umbrella Corporation is doing these experiments in order to improve humanity. In some respects, this excuse is more insidious. It is good to want to protect life, and every measure should be taken to do so. This is why Catholicism preaches against abortion, and sometimes tissue from aborted children is used for the sake of scientific advancement. The Church says that such practices can violate our dignity as humans, and we can see the results in today’s film. Let us pray that it never comes to such disastrous results.

Actually, the real disaster is Resident Evil as a film because, thankfully, such stories remain science fiction, not scientific reality. As a story, it is a silly action film with zombies thrown in for some undefinable measure. The result is pretty bad, and I recommend something else.