Resident Evil. Released in 1996, the original Resident Evil survival horror video game has gone on to become one of the most iconic titles of all time. The series first came to movie screens in 2002 with Milla Jovovich in the lead, and since then there have been a total of five more big-screen Resident Evil films.
Unlike the Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, left the door open for still more sequels but by all appearances the original Jovovich-led series is now dead and buried, though a reboot is still a possibility.
Though Resident Evil would not be at the top of very many people’s lists when it comes to great horror films, the movie does have one unlikely fan in Cameron. Speaking to survival horror film to be perfect viewing while he’s stuck at home in quarantine unable to continue work on the sequel to his 2009 blockbuster:
“One of my guilty-pleasure films that I actually think is quite beautifully made is Resident Evil. Watching Michelle Rodriguez in that film, moving like this feral creature, is joyful.”
That Cameron would single out Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Indeed, the female characters in Resident Evil seem to have been inspired by Cameron’s on-screen women, so it’s probably not entirely shocking that he has a particular fondness for that franchise.
What is maybe a little surprising is Cameron’s assertion that the original Resident Evil is “beautifully made.” By and large, critics dismiss all the Resident Evil films as at best entertaining schlock movies and at worst terrible disasters, with the original Resident Evil carrying just a 36% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Cameron’s revelation that he actually enjoys the widely panned Resident Evil only creates curiosity about what other bad movie gems the filmmaker has in his movie library. Cameron himself of course is responsible for one such terrible movie, 1981’s Piranha II: The Spawning, his first film as a director. Perhaps the schlockiness of Resident Evil takes Cameron back in time to his own early days as a maker of terrible B-level monster movies.
Source: Empire
