'Resident Evil' Review: Netflix Reboot Is A Wobbly Mess, Until Its Crazy Final Chapters - Spoilers

When I think of zombies – or should I say, when a zombie show is either meticulously convincing or totally unconvincing in its portrayal of the undead – I often think of their transformation. Whether long or short, the process of losing your humanity and becoming a corpse that walks, growls, and eats flesh tends to end in sudden change; a moment when the multi-faceted human disappears and a single-minded (zero-minded?) creature takes over - like a flipped light switch or, predictably, like going from life to death . There is no choice in the matter. Once bitten or otherwise infected, the bitten is doomed. Surrender is the only option.

“Resident Evil,” over its first six episodes, provides plenty of time to dwell on zombie symbolism and verisimilitude. Looking into the eyes surrounded by a clear, recessed division between real skin and latex breaks the spell of a fictional horror adventure. The same goes for the bad zombie game, where deviations in movement, speed, and ferocity invite other unwanted distractions. (For example, some zombies fall victim to a dive bomb, piercing through armor and skin in one bite, while others politely step aside when the hero's only shield is a garbage can lid.) /p> Related Related

Building a compelling world isn't the only obvious conflict in the Netflix series. The episodes are split into two timelines, one set in the apocalyptic "present" of 2036, and the other set in 2022, months before the end of the world. Each centers on Jade, played by Ella Balinska as an adult and Tamara Smart as a teenager. In the future, Jade studies zombies - or "zeros" as they're called here - in hopes of finding a way to tame them, if not cure them completely. In the past, she and her sister, Billie (Siena Agudong), moved with their father to New Raccoon City, a city-sized campus set up for Umbrella Pharmaceuticals employees and their families. Bouncing between the two timelines doesn't just present mysteries to solve – what caused the zombie outbreak? What happened to Billy? — but also duels of tones and even genres. The future is almost all action, filled with the franchise's mutant zombie reveals and plenty of gruesome battles. The past is akin to a teen soap opera, where the reveals are drawn out and predictable, and the only fights are emotional. The earnestness and gravity of the dark timeline of 2036 (ignited with red and yellow imagery fighting a dark night) is hard to maintain alongside the half-hearted arguments and love stories in the other (which are captured in icy blues and grays, in the sterile white decor of the suburbs).

For the majority of the eight-episode first season, "Resident Evil" is a hodgepodge of ambitions, likely to satisfy very few fans of the franchise (be they fond of video games, movies, or both). He is stubbornly torn between the human concerns of a world already doomed to obliteration and the undead urgency of a landscape that still prioritizes survival. Rather than telling one story well, it tells two stories poorly, and in response to Jade's quest to rob 6 billion zeros, it's clear that the living and the dead cannot co-exist.

But then, like the switch that inevitably flips up and down, "Resident Evil" surrenders to what it has become, and utter madness prevails. The last two episodes aren't perfect. They're not reason enough to recommend the entire series, though you could easily watch them without the previous six hours and have a good time. But what these last two hours do that the others don't is give in: give in to the absurdity of the premise, the frankness, the contradictory stories they've forced together. The ending is actually fun, in part because "Resident Evil" leaves its best comedian off-leash, but also because it's forced to serve the story it created, rather than any other idea of ​​what it is. she should be.

Chaos reigns, and it begins, like so many good things, with Lance Reddick.

[Editor's Note: The following part of the review contains spoilers for "Resident Evil" Season 1, including the ending.]