George Romero's Resident Evil is available on Digital and On Demand
What I got was a boring, touching love letter about Romero done in about the most lame and unexciting way possible. I was having trouble staying awake in the middle of this one.
To easily save you some social media browsing or something else to stream, the film takes it's sweet time going over who Romero was and his passing at the cost of going over what his version of Resident Evil might have been and why it didn't get made. We do get a break down of his vision of the film, albeit in a very boring manner of narration. We also learn that the producing studio, kind of screwed over Romero and he was bitter about it.
Documentaries can be exciting with unseen footage or interviews with fascinating people or even analysis by the talking heads it gathers, but this didn't.
The film had meaningless scenes of people waking around a similar looking mansion from the first game. They could have had those cosplayers doing scenes from Romero's script or animation or even puppets, really, anything engaging would have been nice.
When we do finally get to Romero's version, I'm also half a sleep. But, I perk up to the narration of violence and something that would have be fun to see on repeat on cable. A bloody over-the-top action horror movie with many awe-inspiring deaths from various in-game monsters. It seemed much more in tone with the game then the released movie; set at the mansion and Racoon City. No killer A.I., just a haunted mansion with hidden passage-ways to get through and a lab to explore underneath. And oodles of bullets being shot at Umbrella's undead monsters.
The oddest bit to gleam, when the doc finally got into the subject matter, was how the studio that owned the rights, didn't want blood or violence in the film, but funny enough a shower scene with the lead actress. So Romero's script could never be produced by them. If you check out what Resident Evil became, the Paul W.S. Anderson version, which does have a shower scene. It's no where as bloody and gross as the master Romero's. They pretty much cut away after someone's demise when you think about it and that was the intent.
Two other horror docs come to mind, The Spirit of Halloweentown & Scream, Queen! My Nightmare On Elm Street though having their own problems of why they were bad, they were at least shot and edited way that was enough to keep me awake.
This needed to be cut way down to just what Romero's vision could have been and why it didn't get made. Have a scene where their reading the script to little kids and their in awe of it or fan of the film hearing how the other would have gone. Nothing clicks. There's loving admiration for Romero, but that's not what I was sold on. Even if the budget was nothing, there were ways to make it more poignant.
I would recommend finding a thoughtful essay/ article online of the breakdown of Romero’s final draft of the Resident Evil script instead of this slow moving zombie slog. Or just skipping way ahead if you get it.
