Zombie Jam!!!

I'm just going to jump right to the chase people...I watched Resident Evil: Extinction last night and, put your fingers in your assholes or you are going to SHIT YOURSELVES...it was actually pretty good.

HERE'S WHY!!!

• The attention to detail with regards to making the neverending army of undead look horrifying is BACK! And mostly practical make-up, or so it would seem.
• The huge, over-the-top characters were turned down from a I'd-rather-eat-the-contents-of-a-zombie's-lower-intestine-than-listen-to-you-deliver-your-horrible-tired-dialogue 11 to a nice, intense 4.5. Yes, there was some really awful dialogue here and there but that's to be forgiven...especially in light of the previous entry.
• Fucking EVERYONE DIED. Or, at least, it seemed that way. No one got special treatment, and I find that is important in a horror movie.

Still some shitty CG, a score that tried to mimic the amazing work Manson did on the first film (with results just as one would expect from such an endeavor), some bad writing and the main character randomly developing telekinesis AND pyrokinesis, but that's sort of to be expected in the third movie in a series like this...right? Pyrokinesis? Yeah?

Plus, I think whoever told Paul W.S.A.D. Anderson to "shit up" the script for the second movie told him to "shit down" the script for the third, because, guys, it was a lot less shitty. The director (Russell Mulcahy) got rid of the weird, throwback video effects from the second film (which was directed shat by a monster called Alexander Witt (more like Alexander "Witt The Fick Were You Thinking?")) and just made a pretty solid looking action/horror movie.

I'll nutshell it for you: Anderson and this new director managed to make a ten minute scene in which people are fighting a huge murder of zombie crows NOT CORNY. I say well met, gentlemen.
Also, the intro was pretty brilliantly mindfucking as well.

The really bad news arrives tonight...with the fourth movie in the series...Resident Evil: Afterlife.
I had actually watched this one (illegally downloaded, not purchased or even Netflixed, thank you) around the time it came out and...well...it's like someone told Anderson that Extinction was way too good and that he'd have to make this new one make the second one look like the first one.
If you followed that you are laughing.
Because it was clever.
Dick.

And, speaking of Clever Dick*...I picked up the Silent Hill HD Collection yesterday, which contains HD remakes of Silent Hill 2 (the best SH game in the series) and Silent Hill 3 (the second best game in the series). I'd been wanting to get them, but used my upcoming session with Jen as a catalyst. She has told me she might cry, but, if she does, we have an NES ready to go with Super Mario Bros. 3...just in case. I'm also tossing around the idea of having people over the night of July 3rd for a sleepover but I'm not solid on that yet...

Bouncing back to the movies for a moment, after watching the trailer for the final (bless you, Big Baby Jesus) Resident Evil movie (which seems to have borrowed...everything...from the fifth RE game), I dug up the trailer for the second Silent Hill movie, Silent Hill: Revelations**, and it's pretty awful. Yes, there are some scenes of the protagonist (the chick from the third SH game, based on her appearance and the settings from the trailer) looking terrified while lights go out and the trademark utterly bone-chilling siren wails on and on, but it also features the same protagonist answering a phone (always a bad idea in any Silent Hill situation) and hearing, not any number of nightmares on the other end, but rather someone that sounds a lot like the whiny offspring of Woody Allen and Steve Urkel singing "Happy Birthday". To (somehow) make  this worse, the voice, instead of singing the girl's name, says, "Oh, uh, I forgot your name!" The only thing missing was an "oy" and a "did III doooo thaaaaat?" Anything, literally anything else on the other end of that phone could have made that more creepy. Silence, "Walkin' On Sunshine", a dog farting...anything.
Ugh.

Here, just watch it yourself.

However, as Woody Urkel as it seems, I'll be there Day One (September 26th, 2012) just as I was for the first Silent Hill movie, which Phil and I have discussed at length. They didn't do a bad job, they just needed less dialogue, more indescribable horrors and less awful cultist acting.
I'll guess we'll see soon enough...

Anyway, I'll be back tomorrow with more of my idiot journey through the Resident Evil "films".









*The much loved/feared British childrens' performer from the early 70's

** "Revelations" will always be a horrible subtitle for a movie...especially the second in a series, and superespecially if it's for a movie series like Silent Hill, where explanations aren't really what the series is about. Silent Hill should be about experiencing a nightmare and then, like a nightmare, being unable to describe the logic of it. Jacob's Ladder is a pretty great example of a slightly less stylized Silent Hill movie.