Alicia: Hey, just a quick heads up.

The episode you're about
to listen to resident evil.

Welcome to Raccoon City, directed by
Johannes Roberts, is an episode that

contains descriptions of blood and
gore child abuse, animal attacks and

animal death, zombies and ableism.

Our hosts ranked this movie as incredibly
violent, but mostly not that scary.

After the spooky music, we will talk about
the movie in full, so expect spoilers.

Oh, and now it seems like a good time to
remind you that you can become a patron

of our show by stopping in at Patreon
at ProgressivelyHorrified.Patreon.com.

As a patron, you'll get extra
episodes, all episodes a week early,

and most importantly, you'll get
to help us keep the lights on.

Now let's get onto the show.

Emily: Whenever I have one of
these lot of question marks.

I know it's been a wild ride.

Jeremy: A lot of question
marks in my notes too.

There's a lot of like declarative
statements with question marks at the end.

Emily: I have so many.

Ben: Should we just dive in?

I want all of this to be fresh
because there's so many emotions

and thoughts and questions.

Jeremy: All right.

Good evening.

And welcome to Progressively Horrified
the podcast where we hold horror to

progressive standards it never agreed to.

Tonight: we're talking about what is
the 13th movie based on Resident Evil?

Not including the 28 games
that are also Resident Evil.

That's right.

It's time for Resident Evil:
Welcome to Raccoon City.

The title that just keeps on giving.

I am your host, Jeremy Whitley.

And with me tonight, I have a
panel of cinephiles and Cenobites.

First: they're here to invade your
house and find queer content in all

of your favorite movies my co-host
and comic book writer, Ben Kahn.

Ben, how are you tonight?

Ben: Hey, quick question.

What is it about this franchise that
makes every filmmaker and myself

just completely fucking insane?

Emily: t-Virus.

Jeremy: And also we picked her up
at the spooky crossroads of anime

and sexy monster media it's co-host
and comic book artist, Emily Martin.

How are you tonight, Emily?

Emily: Well, I hope wait, hold on.

There's a truck.

Are you sure exploded?

I didn't hear anything.

It must've been my Sony headphones.

Jeremy: And our special guest tonight,
filmmaker, educator, and activist.

Jay Joseph Jr.

How are you tonight, Jay?

Jay: I'm doing very well.

You say there's been 28 games.

I feel like a poser cause I've only
played something like 15 to 20-ish games.

Jeremy: Well a lot of them are
the, I'm going to say 10 remakes

of the first Resident Evil.

Jay: That's true.

That's fair.

Ben: Look, we can't count the
Resident Evil Three remake.

If you have basic knowledge of
the game series, you will go into

this movie knowing exactly who
will die and who will not die.

And there will not be a single
surprise, the entire film.

Jay: That's very true.

And, something else I wanted to point
out that's also very relevant to kind

of early two thousands, more kind of the
mid-ish 2000 super superhero film is that,

this film went for a fairly strange kind
of mimimalist realism approach to the

storyline, especially with the villains.

And if you play Resident Evil their
villains super over the top all the time.

Emily: Okay.

Jay: Even from the very first game and
in the movie, they weren't . They had

to be like these kind of down to earth.

Like Nolan and Iron Man, you
know, they pioneered like

down to earth a super-villain.

So that's what, we need to have.

Like Albert Wesker can't be
like this crazy super guy.

He has to be just a normal
guy and he's down on his luck.

The kids they're like one of us.

Ben: That's the biggest change
from the games is Wesker.

Emily: The biggest issue
I had with this film.

Since I have...

I haven't played Resident Evil.

I'm very sorry.

I've played Marvel vs Capcom 2.

I know Resident Evil stars, Jill,
and she is a member of STARS.

I know there's dogs or
zombies, there's a big house.

There's Umbrella Corporation.

There's a Raccoon City and " there's
no need to stay here longer than

necessary we should split up, look
for survivors and get out of here."

That's my extent of
Resident Evil knowledge.

But this movie didn't commit to
something that it could have committed to.

That was like The fact
that it was set in 1998.

Ben: So confusing.

Emily: Yeah!

Ben: Distracting.

Emily: Like why?

Why?!

Jay: I know the why I
think it's really bad.

Why is basically that's
when the first game is set.

The characters in the game
actually age in real time with us.

So like, Jill, Claire, all of
them are like, you know, middle

age right now in the video games.

And that's interesting.

So I think solely because the first
game is set in 1998 and the timeline

is- so firmly starts in 1998.

That's why they chose to do that.

But I agree that they
didn't commit to it at all.

There's nothing that
particularly screams 1998.

And when they do have elements that
are from 1998, it's all like CGI,

like they couldn't be bothered to
put anything into props or production

or vehicles or anything like that.

Ben: But, Jay.

Did you not see that fucking Palm Pilot?

And the entire shot of
Wesker being like "Holy Shit!

Texting!"

Jay: Yeah, Wesker did have a beeper.

Emily: Yeah.

Jeremy: A Palm Pilot, a beeper.

And then the Captain Irons is like, could
you just take your girl to Blockbuster?

And it's like,

Ben: Okay!

Captain Irons.

Captain Irons!

I need to talk about Captain Irons.

Jeremy: Hold on, hold on.

Let's do the basics here and get into it.

Cause I want to talk about
Captain Irons as well.

So it is written and
directed by Johannes Roberts.

You would think after the last
movies, and some of the issues they

had there, that they would look for
somebody who maybe had an established

record of like making hit movies.

Johannes Roberts on the other hand
made the second Strangers movie that

was- went direct to Netflix and a
couple of scary movies about sharks.

All of his stuff is rated on
the IMDb stuff is like the mid

threes, like 3.5 and stuff.

I was, I was looking for like the
one indie horror movie that this

guy directed that they were like, we
gotta snatch him up and put them on

Resident Evil, but I don't know how
they ended up with this assortment.

For the cast, we have everybody.

Uh, there's Kaya Scodelario is playing
Claire Redfield, who is the closest

thing to a main character this movie has.

Ben: What's the- what is the
emotional heart of this movie?

Jeremy: I don't know.

The dog?

Hannah John-Camen who plays Jill
Valentine, who, if you know Hannah Jo-

John-Camen, she's in lots of great TV.

And then, you know, she's in the
Ant-Man and the Wasp the movie as Ghost.

She's great.

Robbie Amell, who's Stephen Amell's
younger brother playing Chris Redfield.

Ben: I am going to make a concerted
effort to be nice to Robbie Amell

during this podcast, cause I don't
just like being unnecessarily mean.

So I'm going to give a really
faint compliment and just say,

was it wooden and stilted?

Sure!

Does that fit Chris
Redfield to a tee though?

Emily: That's where if I can just
interject real quick here, there

are two things that this film really
leans into in terms of accuracy to

the video game feeling and detail.

One of which is the line delivery
based on the one delivery I've

seen, which is, uh, no need to
stay here longer than necessary.

Let's split up, look for
survivors and get out of here.

And then there's the ammunition
situation, but continue.

Jeremy: All of that dialogue is
delivered by Tom Hopper who plays Wesker.

Now, if you know Tom Hopper it's
probably from Umbrella Academy, but

having watched Game of Thrones, I still
call him Dickon Tarly because that's

the worst character name in the world.

Ben: I really like Tom
Hopper in this movie.

It's really weird how likable
and charismatic his Wesker is.

Speaking of some
interesting line delivery.

I really enjoy all the times
his natural British accent is

just trying so hard to jump out.

Jeremy: Yeah.

We also have, uh, Avan Jogia who
is playing, uh, Leon, the most

incompetent goofball in history.

And we also have Donal Logue playing
Chief Irons, which if you needed to

know what kind of police department
this is, the fact that they cast

fucking Harvey Bullock from Gotham
is the police captain tells you

everything you need to know immediately.

Ben: Okay.

Can we talk about the insane
decision this movie makes to have

some weird ass needle drops, but
only when Donal Logue is involved?

There's fire zombie coming out of the
truck, and then there's a him running

away from like gas mask soldiers.

Those are the only two
needle drops in the movie.

They are super distracting and they only
happen when Donal Logue is involved.

Jeremy: Yeah.

And finally, the other, reasonably big
name is Neal McDonough who plays Birkin.

Who's the evil scientist in this.

For the most part, it's Neal McDonough
playing Neal McDonough at about 75%.

Until like the, the one scene
where he gets to be a straight up

super villain at which point he
is, doing it as hard as he can.

And the movie just does not support it.

Ben: I have to believe this movie's
flaw is combining one and two, because

otherwise I'm just left asking, Hey,
is Resident Evil, a bad franchise?

Once you take away the inner
activity and just like, ah, it's me,

that's being attacked by zombies.

Is there just nothing
fucking here in this story?

Jay: Yeah, I think so.

Look, I love Resident Evil.

A lot, I've been a fan since I've
been 14, 15 years old of the series.

I have so much obscure
Resident Evil shit in my house.

I have the Resident Evil Archives, which
is this super hard to get documentation

of all of Resident Evil 1 and 2 and 1.5.

I'm just like that big
of a Resident Evil nerd.

And if there's one thing I can say
about Resident Evil and its storylines,

is that it's consistently awful.

Jeremy: I didn't like this movie, I
think I enjoyed watching it at points.

I don't think it's a very good movie, but
I think as a writer it was instructive

because it feels so much like a
great example of what happens when

you just let fandom dictate a movie?

It's a hundred percent
Easter eggs and no substance.

There's all these things that you
might recognize from the movie, like

the bar, there's a typewriter for some
reason, because the typewriter is how

you save the game and , there's just-

Ben: I didn't see that either, fuck.

Jay: There's this one point that's
super weird where one of the zombies

tackles Claire and yells in her face.

"Itchy.

Tasty."

Emily: Yes.

The itchy tasty.

I immediately was like, what
the fuck is itchy, tasty?

Cause I know that this is an Easter egg
that is being telegraphed really hard.

And I have no context.

As someone who's not played the
games, it was just like, it's cool.

You're showing me this
thing with no context.

Yeah.

Thanks movie.

Jeremy: There were a lot of
moments that they, as fans of the

games felt like they had to have.

And the result is that the movie
is just a series of moments.

There's not really any character
arc, there's very little like plot.

It's just like, and
then this thing happens.

And then that thing happens and
it doesn't really make sense,

but it did happen in the game.

So we got to get it in there.

Ben: They make up all this new
backstory for Leon and then just

never fucking explain any of it.

Jay: Are you all telling me that
you didn't want more of the truck

driver that shows up at the very
beginning of Resident Evil 2?

You aren't glad he was playing a
full character now in the movie

Emily: I wanted more of the dog.

Ben: I want to say what the
process of the story is, is

you start with Resident Evil 1.

You have the mansion.

So it's like a Gothic
Horror kind of thing.

You really don't know what's going on.

And you're slowly uncovering the
mystery of Umbrella and what's going

on with this research and it's a
very insular, secluded experience.

And then you get Resident Evil
2 where, it's the Aliens to R.E.

1's Alien, and it's bigger.

It's in the city, it's
a wider environment.

It's more chaos, a whole city,
but you know, what's going on.

You have the answers from the first game.

But doing them together, it's like
you're given the answers before the

characters are and I, I feel like you
don't get the intimate experience,

or the feeling of the escalation.

Like it fails at delivering the
experiences of both stories.

That's my feeling having played
neither one or two, so I might

be talking super out my ass!

Jay: No, I, think you're right , and I
think you actually bring up a good point.

I hadn't thought about that.

Because what you're describing about
the first game, I think, as imperfect

as they were and as bad as they
were, they weren't, good films, but

I think they were more enjoyable,
entertaining films than this kind of was.

The Paul WS Anderson movies, right?

The first one, you get that experience
where you're like in this very weird

facility, you don't know what's going on.

You're uncovering the pieces as it, goes.

So I didn't like it at the time.

I think as I got older, I grew
a little softer towards it.

I'm like, I at least appreciate
what they were going for.

And they're trying to repeat the mood.

You know, the Resident Evil movies kind
of by default are just so cinematic.

That's so weird that it's hard
to translate them to cinema.

And especially, you know, the
interesting interplay between the Paul W.

S.

Anderson films as much shit as they get,
is that they were so popular, you know,

both in America and Japan, they actually
revamped the Resident Evil series and

they wanted to go more in that direction.

And that's why Resident Evil
4 ended up being what it was.

You know, the movies get a lot of
shit, but we also know Resident Evil,

as you know, today series probably
would've just died off and gone away.

I want to go back a little bit to, what
Jeremy was saying about this, just being

a series of references, because it's a
complete that itchy tasty thought it's a

huge meme in the Resident Evil community,
but in the context of the film, it

doesn't make any kind of remote sense.

It doesn't make sense.

Story-wise it doesn't make
sense as to why, some zombies

can talk and others can't.

But in at least the original
game the itchy tasty was part

of a document that you find.

It was a note, it was a diary being
written by someone and it showed the

slow mental breakdown of their brain.

So it had a purpose there.

It had context.

And it's gotten to be such a
meme that it's like, oh yeah.

Now we have to include
that meme in the movie.

So audiences'll recognized it.

Ha ha.

It's cute.

It's funny.

So.

Emily: Yeah.

Jeremy: It's like a movie made
of memes in a lot of ways.

What doesn't work I think to me about this
is sort of the combination of the games,

but also the fact that like Resident
Evil 1 itself doesn't make any sense.

In that it doesn't actually know
what kind of game it is yet.

Because when you're playing,
it's a survival horror game,

but then anytime there's a cut
scene, it's an action horror game.

You know, Wesker, doesn't
make any sense in that game.

Uh, you're part of this elite taskforce
STARS, uh, which is, you know, all

these gun toting giant people, and
then you're Jill, and then like you're

fighting off these zombies and like the
rest of the team is constantly gone.

They're just wandering off and leaving you
and dying and weird parts of the mansion.

So like you never actually have the
action scenes promised by the existence

of STARS until Resident Evil 2.

You know, Resident Evil 1, you spend
all this, like time conserving ammo

as you fight off zombies and you know,
wandering through graveyards and going

back through the same eight rooms in the
house over and over again, to find the

right key to unlock the right door, which
if there's anything that this movie got,

right it's for some reason, including
keys and secret passages in this that

are completely unnecessary to the plot.

Ben: Well I do like that Umbrella was more
implied to be what is in the games, which

is a weird, virus, cult, arms-race thing?

Versus the Paul WS Anderson movies
where it's just the stupidest

fucking company all time.

In the video game, it's like, the money
and being a company was just a side thing.

We got into it for the viruses.

Emily: And in the world, WS Anderson movie
at least it's like memorable, as dumb as

it is and the characters are memorable
because they're also kinda over the top.

There's so many elements that suggest
like if the movie just went in that

direction and committed to that
direction, like there's so many cool

movies that they could have made that
I see like seeds of in this movie.

And I'm like that's too bad.

Maybe some someday
those seeds will sprout.

Jeremy: Yeah.

Jay: It's definitely a movie with an
identity crisis, Like, I feel what

you're saying Jeremy about the games.

Not quite knowing what they want to be.

I think that identity ,crisis has kind
of stuck with Resident Evil throughout

the entire existence of the franchise.

It's always, it's going to
be some level of exploration.

It's going to be like your really
creepy room with stuff that's going to

pop out of the corners and scare you.

And at some point you're just going to
take up a giant automatic weapon and be

killing a giant, that's flying over a
castle, which is literally what happens at

one point in Village - spoilers, everyone.

It always shifts from this Survival
Horror to like the silly over the

top kind of Action Horror thing.

In the Resident Evil games, at least as
you progress through it, you understand

that early on, I'm going to be, I'm
going to be struggling to find items, to

keep my health up and find ammunition.

But at some point I'm going to find
some crazy secret, James Bond-ian

laboratory, where I'm going to be,
shooting up stuff like flame throwers

and rocket launchers and all that.

And so there's a progression to it.

But in the movie, it was like all over
the place from one minute to the next.

One second it's scary.

One second it was a small
town drama indie movie.

The next second giant action
movie was all over the place.

Jeremy: Yeah.

And I think that gets incredibly evident
as you go through it, is that it didn't

really know what it wanted to be, in
that it puts these constraints on itself

that actually make the movie worse.

Like flashing up the time and making
sure to like try and keep everything

happening at the same time, which
like in the movie means that there's

a moment where Chief Irons gets back
to the police station and says, he's

going to go call the helicopter.

And then 20 minutes pass before he
actually calls the helicopter in which the

helicopter pilot encounters a zombie dies.

And then question mark the
helicopter crashes into the house.

Ben: Okay.

I'm gonna talk about, I
have a lot to talk about.

I have a lot to talk about in this f-

Jeremy: Well, do you
wanna, just jump into the-

Emily: Let's- Let's do recap!

Jeremy: Jump into the recap.

Ben: We mentioned the time skipping, this
movie ma- is constantly making decisions

that take you out of the movie and are
distracting and the time and flashing the

time is one of them because it makes you
explicitly aware of how long it's been

since you've seen the l-, this character,
cause I'm supposed to believe Chris has

spent two and a half hours doing nothing
but aimlessly wandering around these

mansion halls, accomplishing nothing.

Jay: Do you want to know what
the time mechanic was about?

Cause it clicked for me at the
very, very end of the movie.

Jeremy: They were trying to
make it a ticking clock thing.

Jay: Exactly.

Exactly.

Emily: Yeah.

Jeremy: Everything was
going to blow up at six.

So they had to be out of the town
by six, but they don't really

do anything with that until the
last five minutes of the movie.

Jay: Until the last five minutes.

Because that's how it is in video games in
the video games, you always only have five

minutes to escape like, the last place.

So.

Ben: The movie is constantly making
me ask questions where it's like,

wait a minute, didn't it take
them an hour to get to the train?

Jeremy: The vibe of this movie is
somebody telling you a story about

a night out they had when they were
drunk, but they keep skipping things.

And then you ask questions,
they're like, don't, don't worry.

That's not important.

That's not important.

Jay: Everything was
exposition in this movie.

Everything I had to care about,
everything was tell don't show-

Emily: Yeah.

Jay: -in this damn film.

Emily: Like even that weird bit
with the text in the beginning,

it's like, we don't need this.

It's a small town!

It's Raccoon City.

You said Raccoon City, like five times.

Jeremy: Okay.

So that's a great place to start.

Let's start at the orphanarium uh,
where we're Raccoon City and Claire

and Chris Redfield are growing up
in this Orphanarium slash hospital,

uh, after their parents die.

Claire becomes friends with some sort of
goofy ghost girl who does not seem like

a, like an actual ghost at all just, keeps
popping up weird places and has clearly

some sort of thing going on with her skin.

And is also creepy and whispery.

And she starts wandering
the halls late at night.

She sees that this girl's name
on her bracelet is Lisa Trevor.

And then Dr.

Birkin finds Claire out wandering
around and there's a sinister

implication, him finding her.

And then Chris shows up and is
like, oh, well, no, she sleepwalks

sometimes since our parents died.

Birkin's like, all right, that's great.

Wait.

Redfield, right?

Claire and Chris Redfield.

That's your names?

And I was like, wrrrghhh.

Emily: Oh dear.

Ben: I was just so distracted by
Damien Darhk's wig in that scene.

Emily: The fact that the doctor still
called her little girl the whole time.

I mean, he couldn't give a fuck
to, I dunno, learn her name?

Consistently?

Ben: This movie had Lisa Trevor, like
as if this movie honestly needed one

more plot thread and character mystery
to add on top of it, but it just

needed like you- 'member Lisa Trevor?

Emily: No.

Ben: They did a really good job of taking
her design and adapting it in cinema.

Like she looks great, but it's
God, you so easily could have

cut her out of this movie.

And it affects nothing.

Emily: Yeah.

And nobody seems to know what to do.

Jeremy: Is she even in
the original, right?

Like she shows up in a remake of-

Jay: Yeah, she shows up in the remake.

Ben: Which again, I think it works when
it's like, what is this weird ass mansion

where everywhere I go, there's just deeper
mysteries and fucked up shit going on.

And this whole experience is me
discovering what the fuck is going on.

And instead of just like
creepy orphanage, here she is.

Emily: Yeah.

Ben: South park had those Memberberries
and this movie feels like it's

counting a lot on 'Memberberries.

"'Memba?"

Jeremy: Yeah.

Ben: "'Memba Leon?

'
Jeremy: After this scene we just jump
forward however many years to 1998,

when the rest of this film is set.

Claire is hitching a ride in a truck with
this really shitty dude with a cool dog.

Jay: Eating an egg sandwich.

Ben: Delivering so much exposition.

Jeremy: He goes on a five minute
rant about Raccoon City and

how much it sucks because...

Ben: What was honestly anyone ever
expecting from a town called Raccoon City?

Emily: Raccoons are fun.

, but I want to know somebody
who has high tolerance.

Can you please do some research for me?

Don't go over the top.

But like, I want to
know what this movie is.

Like if you take this scene and take
a sip of some sort of alcohol every

time he says the word raccoon, because
I feel like that may be like required.

I also want people to be safe
and not destroy their livers.

Jeremy: I want to point out at this
point: Resident Evil is a seroes made

by Capcom, which is a Japanese company.

And raccoons have very different
implications in Japan than they do here.

Raccoons are like tricksters and
like shape-shifters and stuff in, in

Japanese mythology, we call them trash
pandas and they're crazy and violent.

And they eat everything.

Emily: I mean so do raccoon dogs.

Ben: Like, they definitely
thought they were being so clever.

Like, oh, it's a town, but it's
full of mystery and tricksters.

And then we in America we're in
this American city, apparently.

Cool.

So it's like trash vermin town.

Jay: It's interesting because the Raccoon
City thing does actually work both ways

as long as you do it well, you know?

Ben: It does.

I'm just trying to imagine the town
council meeting, like this spirit

of these people that they're so bad
that there's like, yeah, fuck it.

That's our official name.

We're just Raccoon City.

That's us!

We're the Old Raccoonies.

Jay: Well, we're on the
subject of Raccoon City.

I want to, touch on a little
teeny, tiny lore thing and like

a little bit of a political thing
and see if anyone else caught this

about Raccoon City in the film.

So Raccoon City in the games,
it's I'll put it bluntly.

It's not important.

It's where, like a lot of shit goes
down, but in the grand scheme of

the games and sequels and all that,
it's just not an important place.

It's, you know, where you go do some crazy
puzzles and then escape two times over.

And it's supposed to be set
in the American Midwest you

know, that's, the canon.

But it's been in different places.

I think it was like Pennsylvania in
the books or something weird like that.

In the Paul WS Anderson movies, it
actually seemed to be a very rich

town because of the pharmaceutical
company Umbrella and they

pumped a lot of money into it.

And Umbrella had, I think their
little armed forces there, which

is true to the games and you get
a little bit of that in Welcome to

Raccoon City only, not really and-

Ben: Well we have to
fit the HUNK Easter egg

Jay: Ha.

Yeah, we gotta see HUNK.

But I think what's interesting is like, if
you watch like Resident Evil: Apocalypse,

which is the one that takes place in
Raccoon City, they have a whole P.

M.

C..

And I think that's very current to the
politics at the time where, you know,

we were just hearing about, the middle
east and Blackwater and all that.

And Halliburton and having all these like
corrupt private military contractors that

would shoot at civilians and all that.

I think what it felt like to
me, this is my read of it.

What they did with Welcome to Raccoon
City is they wanted this version of

Raccoon City to be Flint, Michigan.

That was my sense from the film.

Emily: It's interesting.

Since I didn't have the, like the
game context so much, I was making

parallels with other, uh, like small town
zombie movies, and also like Outbreak.

Which was filmed in Ferndale, California,
which might as well be Raccoon City.

I think mostly raccoons live there.

Jeremy: This truck driver speech
we were just talking about, he

is like, here's what happened?

Umbrella moved out.

They moved all their shit somewhere else.

And then everybody left behind
here is just too poor to leave.

There's nothing to like here.

Everything sucks.

Everybody's sick all the time.

And it's the worst.

Ben: It wants to be like also
a little bit of Pittsburgh.

Like it wants to be like a
dilapidated like factory town,

but, the factory is zombie viruses.

Jay: Yeah.

And, and, people are also
getting sick from like the water

supply, that's the other thing.

People who're drinking the
water are getting sick.

Ben: The Flint analogy
is a hundred percent.

I think you're right on the money.

Jeremy: Part of the problem, I think
with that is that they're trying

to set it in this Flint analogue
while at the same time, like they've

just made STARS, the police force.

They're, they're not a special operations
unit of some point they're just cops.

Which makes it really funny when the
fucking Marini and Dooley who are the

like useless cops that show up at the
beginning and then mostly die off screen

are referred to as taskforce, Bravo

Ben: Like, presumably, they just
drove to the- this mansion that alpha

team just uses a helicopter for.

Presumably to be extra.

Jeremy: What does this car, what did
these cops have a helicopter for?

This is what's wrong with America.

Ben: Yeah.

Talk about arguably the most distracting
thing that took me out of this movie.

So hard?

That the helicopter pilot
is Daryl from Letterkenny.

Emily: Oh, I did notice that.

Ben: Did not need to be
Daryl from Letterkenny.

Jeremy: And also, like we were
talking about where this seems like

it's set in the like, pine forest
that this mansion is in the middle

and looks like the wilds of Canada.

Wolverine is wandering around, out here
somewhere just north of Flint, Michigan.

Emily: Yeah.

That's sort of where I was going with the
Ferndale thing, because I'm like, okay.

It's redwoods.

And like when they're in the town,
they make it seem like small towny.

Like I thought that was nice, but the
super overwrought, like the police station

and then the weird urban scene with the,
uh, police commissioner or whatever, I

don't know what they call police chief.

There we go.

Big policeman, mustache Irons,
anyway, I'm off topic, but yeah,

like it was other than the weird
kind of spooky streets that very Twin

Peaks-y spooky streets that were cool.

Everything else was like,
where the fuck is anything.

Jay: Yeah.

There's no real sense of geography.

There's not even a real sense of the town.

In the games, it doesn't matter.

Cause it's just a bunch of Japanese
developers taking random pictures

of big Western cities and construct
it together to make a level.

But I think it's nice- this is how I write
-it's if you're going to have a location,

you need to make it an actual character.

Ben: I think this is where you get
another problem with trying to cram

one and two together is that it doesn't
let either the Spencer mansion or

Raccoon City have enough time and focus
to be memorable, iconic locations.

Jeremy: They got the blueprint
specifications for the RPD police

department and for the Spencer mansion
from the developers and like recreated

some of that stuff specifically.

So like that entryway in the police
department where like, Leon is

sitting at a desk with a giant
Gothic statue behind him, that's

straight out of Resident Evil 2.

And it makes no sense in this movie.

Ben: I mean, this movie feels like
such a weird case study with the first

one, because man, the first one had
had no, references almost nothing to

do with the games and drove me insane.

And this movie is just nothing but
references to the games and I don't

think it makes the movie any better.

Jay: Yeah I used to roll with
' another podcast before you guys, my

virgin podcast, called Enemy Slime.

And we would like, play video games,
talk about them, things like that.

So I told them I was watching this
movie to be in a horror podcast

and it felt like old times.

And one of the things our, chief editor
was like, he started watching some

of it and he's like, now we know the
problem wasn't adapting the source

material because this looks exactly like
the games and it's still really bad.

Ben: There's one sequence I really like.

And it's when the mansion, the
hallway is just like totally dark,

except for just like Chris getting
swarmed and the flash of the gun.

And I thought, wow, this would be
really tense if I didn't know he

has plot armor and is totally fine.

Emily: Yeah.

And at this point, that whole dynamic
with the light, like we've seen several

other movies do that really well.

And now I think it's something we're like.

It's starting to get a bit rote.

Jeremy: The trucker hits a girl walking
across the street and the body is laying

there and Claire goes out to examine her.

She dead.

But then as, Claire and the trucker
are talking she stands up and walks

off and it is not raining hard
enough out there for neither of them

notice this girl get up and walk off.

Emily: The dog notices though.

Jeremy: Yeah, the dog comes
out and licks up her blood.

And of course we're like, oh no,
it's time for zombie dog times.

Uh, because that's, that's
the thing you gotta do if you

make a Resident Evil movie.

Emily: Is that why it's itchy, tasty?

Because when you're a
zombie, your blood is tasty?

Jeremy: No sooner is this scene over
then we jump to another new character.

We jump to Leon.

He wakes up for at night for his cop
shift and drinks old beer from his

nightstand, like he's fucking Wolfcop.

I don't know where he's supposed to be
at this point, but he goes to the bar and

just goes to sleep at the cop bar, while
the other better cops hang out behind him

and uh, talk and throw a fake gun at him.

They're taking bets off of Jill shooting
something off of his head while he sleeps.

And Jill is ready to do it
with a full service revolver.

And Wesker's like, no, I
meant with this like toy gun.

Come on.

Ben: There's a weird running gag of Jill
is shoot first, ask questions later.

Always down with the gun.

Jeremy: I don't know if it's that
I like Hannah John Cayman, or I

liked Jill Valentine, but I was
like, oh, I enjoy this character.

She's charismatic and fun.

And that's never going to show up
in this movie again and never again,

she she's great for this one scene.

And then the rest of the time her
main line is "Wesker what's going on?"

Emily: Yeah.

This was like the indie nineties
movie seed that would have been cool.

This is the seed that was also
at the heart of The Dead Don't

Die, but also didn't like flower.

Like I would just love to
see this flower someday.

And you know, Resident Evil
would have been a great place for

that, plant to grow, so to speak.

Jeremy: So Jill's thing is, being
charismatic and shooting things.

Wesker has a real gift for being tall.

That's the only-

Ben: Uh, and he's buff.

Don't forget how buff he is.

Jeremy: Which everybody's in love
with Wesker as goofy looking as he is.

You still have Aiken who is also there.

Ben: Don't forget.

We have a weird Jill Chris
Wesker love triangle.

That goes-

Emily: Do we?!

Ben: -Nowhere.

Jay: It's just- they
do some weird flirting.

I don't want to call
it a love triangle, but

Jeremy: Leon immediately
like falls in love with Jill.

The first time he sees her.

And also everybody loves Wesker.

I don't know what the deal is.

They set up a love triangle and
just forgot to fill in the lines.

Emily: That's what I'm saying.

It's like usually a shape,
like a triangle has connection

between the different point.

But yeah, I mean-

Jeremy: A love rhombus?

. Ben: What is the emotional, is
it the Chris/Claire relationship?

Cause they have like two scenes together.

The whole movie.

Jeremy: Between the two of them, they
have as much charisma as a tin can.

Ben: It's wild how much more charismatic
Wesker was to the point where I

thought is the twist of this movie
going to be that Wesker is a good

guy and Chris is the secret traitor?

Emily: Even though I had no
idea, you know, I was thinking,

oh, it would be interesting.

Cause Chris is supposed to be
like the good boy, brother.

Jeremy: We also have Aiken whose thing
is having cool hair and obviously

going to be the one that gets killed.

Nobody even says his
name for half the movie.

Emily: It seems like Aiken also can
have long hair on the force while Leon

can't because he's not wide enough.

I don't know.

Jeremy: Yeah.

This is also where we introduced
the two other cops Marini and Dooley

who really seems like the Sully
and Hitchcock of this police force.

They're just the guys that don't
really do anything and they get killed

off screen just to be found later.

But this is the scene where they come
in and they all take a shit on Leon

because Leon is the new guy here.

He's a rookie who got reassigned from
another city because during training,

he shot his own partner in the ass.

But also his dad is a big time
police something or other.

None of it does make sense because
you can't reassign somebody

to an entirely different city.

Those are different.

Those are different organizations
like physical organization.

You can't just send somebody
to a different city.

They have to like transfer
or something like that.

We were talking about Flint
and about cops in this movie.

And like, honestly, this movie
doesn't understand how failing

upward works, because if it's the
guy, his dad is a police muckamuck

of some sort, he's going to get a
promotion not sent to Raccoon city.

Ben: As far as I can tell this and
to hire police force is eight people.

Emily: Yeah!

Jeremy: Yeah.

Emily: With a helicopter!

Ben: And Daryl from Letterkenny.

I don't get why you hired such a
comedic actor like that for a role

that had nothing comedic to do.

I could have done that role just
as effectively, and I'm not an

actor in any way, shape or form,
and that's not a reflection on him.

He is hilarious and wonderful.

That's reflection on what a, nothing
of a role that helicopter pilot was.

Jeremy: Having a helicopter and having
helicopter pilot for this police

force of like eight people is insane.

On top of the fact that, they're
talking about transferring him over

from another police station as if there
were another precinct in Raccoon City.

This is not Baltimore.

This is not The Wire where you
can be like, ah, he was shitty.

We're gonna make him go work on the docks
and police those guys, like, no, he's

just, you can't just send a cop to a
different city and they have to take him.

Ben: We also get a line being like,
oh, we lost that helicopter, but

then they have a helicopter still.

I don't know what the fuck's happening
in this movie, aside from everything's-

Jay: Yeah-

Ben: like the game.-

Jay: I feel like that's more of
that kind of Flint allusion that

remained underdeveloped where
it's like, we're going to have

an overextended police force.

So we're not going to have enough
people to respond to every situation.

But the helicopter still had to be in
there because the helicopter was in

Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3.

So, you know, we need to keep that part,
but also make this really small police

force that can't be everywhere at once.

So.

Jeremy: The real great end to
this scene is, uh, that we have.

It's just Leon and the waitress left
and uh, in the diner and the window

thumps and they walk over and they
see that there's like a giant Crow

that's flown into the window and broken
its neck in the most like ham-handed

foreshadowing of anything I've ever seen.

It's like elementary school foreshadowing.

Emily: And the missed
opportunity of the zom-birds.

Come on.

I dunno if the games have
zombie birds, but like.

Jeremy: This real Silent Hill Vibes.

Ben: No speaking of-

Jay: They have zombie-birds- they
may be busted into the police

station at some point, I forget.

Emily: Oh rad!!

Ben: Leon with the diner owner the most
realistic part of the whole movie is

when she is crying, blood uncontrollably
says she's been crying blood for

weeks and that it's probably nothing.

And I'm like, yeah, there's
that American healthcare system.

Emily: Right?

Yeah.

Like That whole bar scene felt
like it was in a better movie.

Jeremy: Yeah.

Leon is the, you know, rich kid
who's always had healthcare, I

guess it was like, I think you
should get that checked out.

And she's like, nah, that's fine.

Emily: it'll go away in a week.

Jeremy: So the trucker from the
beginning of the movie finally

drops Claire off at this point.

I don't know why we started so
far from Raccoon City with her.

And no sooner is she out of the
car, then, uh, the dog starts

slobbering massive amounts.

And, uh, the trucker's
like, what's up with you?

And so the dog takes a chunk out of him.

And we cut away as there's
some action starts to happen.

And Claire goes to her
brother Chris's house.

Sees his creepy and clearly sick
neighbors- who are not zombies yet,

but will be soon- and then she picks
a lock in the most improbable way.

Emily: I didn't even catch how.

Jeremy: The thing is locked with a
deadbolt, and she pulls out a knife

and unlocks the deadbolt with a knife.

I'm not an expert at lock picking,
but I know that like knives and credit

cards and these sorts of things that
are thin and you wedge in are great for

picking a normal lock when like a lock
is locked at the bottom or possibly

if you really want to, you could like
jam it into the deadbolt and you might

be able to get some leverage on that.

But she just like pops this
door with the knife in a way

that doesn't make any sense.

Chris will like shortly point
out specifically that it's a

dead bolt for no apparent reason.

Cause she'll be like, you
need a better security system.

And he's like, oh, it's a single
barrel deadbolt, but does it matter?

And it's like, but why would you
point that out after she clearly

just stabs the door and it pops open?

Like,

Emily: Well, he doesn't have
anything worth stealing.

All of his tech is from 1970.

See that fucking VCR that he had?

That thing was like an antique in 1998.

Jeremy: Also.

He just has an exposition house.

He just has his high school
football helmet sitting on

a shelf in his living room.

Um, I could see he was so good
at football that they just gave

him his helmet when he graduated?

Ben: Well,

maybe he just kept it.

Cause he's a freak.

Really long amount of time in that scene.

Jay: I couldn't see her face.

I couldn't identify with the character.

It was just, I don't
know why they did that.

Emily: I think it would have been more
fun if she wore the helmet more in like

the rest of the movie, like she's like
carried the helmet around and then when

zombies showed up, she put on the helmet
and she was like, "Fuck off, zombies!"

ka-tow!

ka-tow!

I don't know.

Jeremy: They also take great care to
show this picture of Birkin, and Chris

standing at what I guess is Chris's,
uh, police academy graduation in what

looks like a Photoshopped picture.

I don't know why they just really want
to drive through that Like Chris has

accepted that this guy is his new dad.

Whereas Claire has run away and, hates
Umbrella and everything to do with them.

And as they introduce Chris
he's a real dipshit man.

Emily: Yeah, no Chris is like
boring with boring sauce.

Like I just, I looked at him and I
fell asleep and I think that's why I

couldn't remember what the deal was
with him and the lockpicking cause like.

Ben: Which his alignment, moral
alignment, is lawful boring.

Jeremy: He's he's X-Men
animated series Cyclops.

Like he's just he's just
that level of meeehhhh.

Ben: This is all very true to
the character in the games.

Jay: Chris in the game, he's not like
the most in-depth character, but I think

he gets to be memorable through just
his actions and the way that you're

able to live with him through the games.

They at least communicate the emotion
that he's meant to be like bad-ass right.

Ben: For sure.

Jay: And there's some other weird things
that they did with his character, like

Claire's and Chris's relationship is very
different in the video games and it felt

like in the movies they put them on kind
of opposite sides of the law to create

some artificial tension between them
that never really gets resolved later on.

It's just all very bizarre.

Ben: And what you're saying is that
Chris needs to be punching a boulder

in an open volcano during this movie.

Jay: I think that's so accurate
because Chris, to me in Resident

Evil, he's like Superman.

He's like literally Clark Kent.

He's not particularly interesting,
but when he shows up, the

bad guy is fucked, right?

He has that crazy invincibility
or he's coming in with some kind

of insane weapon to save the day
or he's able to punch a boulder.

And, and it's really cool.

It's like when, when the the justice
league or the Avengers need to save

and Superman, or Thor's show up and
they're kind of a boring character,

but everyone around them that's a bad
guy is going to suffer and here, he's

just your average run of the mill, like
every, normal white boy in America.

Emily: Yeah.

Jeremy: Protagonist Jones.

Emily: He's barely a protagonist.

You know?

He doesn't really have any sort
of memorable character like

"Weskers" or whatever his name
is, is, much more memorable just

because he has a Palm Pilot.

Like, that's it.

You know, and the only thing that
was memorable that Chris said

was what the fuck is a chat room?

Ben: My brain didn't fully pick up that
was a reference to it being 1998, because

I just believed, yeah, this is a person
who doesn't know how the internet works.

My first thought was like, oh, it's 2021.

And we're so far away from like
chat rooms, being the norm that

he's forgotten what they are.

And then the Palm Pilot and
the beeper showed up and I'm

like, oh my God, that's right.

It's fucking 1998.

What the fuck is happening in this movie?

Jeremy: Yeah they- er, I guess
Claire met this guy on a chat room.

And then he sent her a VHS that I
guess he taped himself, in front of

a camera, of him rambling to her.

And she has brought this VHS
to show Chris on his vCR.

Jay: It looks like a YouTube video
or something you could pick up on

Tik TOK only it's on like a VHS tape
and that's not what we did back then.

Ben: My modern like brain
with modern standards.

Didn't even question why the, oh yeah.

He just sent her a video.

Yeah.

What the fuck?

He had to record this.

He had to put it on it
to go to the post office.

Emily: Yeah.

Ben: He had to pay- how many
stamps did it take him to mail

this crazy VHS, of like to Claire

Emily: There's analog horror
YouTubes that have better like screen

effects on them than this does.

Now, this guy, Ben also is very nineties
because of his clothes and that's it.

But I imagined-

Jeremy: He looks like a
character from the X-Files...

Ben: Oh, this man who is, do
I want to talk about this man?

Who has the stupidest
death in the whole movie?

Emily: Speaking of stupid deaths: hey
listeners, I'm sorry if you're coming

to this movie looking for cool deaths.

I dunno.

I dunno what to tell ya.

Ben: And by stupidest.

I mean, death most caused by the
character's stupidity, this guy,

knowing that there's a zombie virus
is going on, knowing he's locked

in a room with a zombie, having
a gun and not doing anything with

the gun to take care of the zombie.

Emily: There's a lot of it was
with characters trying to deliver

their exposition before they can
question what's going on around them.

Jay: I want to say
about the cool deaths...

This is what I mean by at least the
original movie franchise is fun.

If not very well made.

There's this dope death in the
first movie where they're facing

some kind of laser grid system and
they're doing all these acrobatics-

Ben: Yyyyyyeeeeaaahhhhh!

Laser grid!

Jay: It splits into like a thousand
different directions and slices, you

know, their commander, into cube steak.

That's bad ass.

Ben: Was fucking awesome.

Jeremy: That scene haunts my
nightmares, like to this day.

Yeah.

And this, doesn't have anything like that.

Unfortunately.

Ben: There's nothing as creative or
as viscerally fun and lasers in this.

Jeremy: What it does have is
yet another point of view.

Because now it's going to switch
us over to uh, Neal McDonough.

We're going to see Birkin's
house with his extremely white,

extremely straight family.

Ben: It has to exist just to remind you
that he's in the movie because after

this, he disappears for the next hour.

Jeremy: It feels like it's setting
him up to be the bad guy, because

in a normal movie you have two or
three point of views that you follow.

You don't follow every side character
when they're off screen and this movie

at some point, there will be scenes that
are filmed in which nobody is present,

except for at one point, Claire, Chris,
Leon, Jill, Wesker, Irons, Aiken,

Birkin, Vickers, all of these things.

Like all of these people are like
point of view characters at some

point in this movie, which is,
part of the problem with the movie.

Emily: Yeah.

Ben: Like it's weird that this movie
is only like an hour 47 and I can

still just find a lot of scenes
that could probably have been cut.

Jeremy: I was looking at a review
of the movie and they were talking

about like, oh, they had so much
to fit in in this short time.

And I was like, was it short?

It felt interminable.

Jay: It really did.

It really did.

Ben: I feel like we spent five entire
minutes just watching Daryl from

Letterkenny, play snake on this phone.

Emily: It was one of the most memorable
parts of the movie because it's like

something interesting was happening.

Ben: There was some legitimate
tension in that, I didn't know if

he would win that game of snake.

Jay: It was so badly paced that
we're being introduced to the very

concept of zombies just before
we break for the third act, it's

actually really, really poorly paced.

Jeremy: Yeah.

And so we were following, uh, Dr.

Birkin and, uh, he gets a mysterious phone
call as he's putting his daughter to bed.

And he is doing a real, "You don't say!

You don't say!"

To the phone, he gets off the phone and
tells us his wife that they need to go.

I guess his wife doesn't realize that
he is a mad scientist, even though

she will be ride or die for him later.

But like she's not into running
away until the sirens start.

And then she's like, oh, I guess the
Umbrella Corporation is telling him

to leave the city and everybody
else that they have to stay there.

Ben: It is kind of weird that one of
the only changes they make to the,

from the lore of the games is to just
take away all of Birkins wife's agency.

Jay: Yeah.

Yeah.

That's true.

And his daughter.

Ben: And his daughter.

Jay: Takes away agency from both of them.

Jeremy: That kid is going
to need so much therapy.

Emily: That poor poor child.

Jeremy: As soon as the sirens start and
we know that something else is going to,

we're going to switch to another place.

Now we're at the police station,
uh, where Chris, Jill Wesker

Aiken and Leon have all gone.

Uh, and their police chief is
Harvey Bullock as I mentioned-

Donal Logue, playing Irons.

He starts talking about Bravo
team and I was confused.

And then I remember that was
their Scully and Hitchcock.

Emily: That's totally like these people
trying to flex as they're a little

police station in their small town.

Like that's the only believable element
of that is that like, they're just trying

to sound cool by being like there's Alpha
team and Bravo team and, Xenon team,

Jay: I'm going to throw the ball, the
movie of bone here and say that if they

want it to make them a normal police
force, but call them Alpha team and call

them Bravo team and, give them helicopters
and all that for such a small town crew.

I could believe that under the PATRIOT
Act, but we're about four years

too early, given that it's 1998.

Emily: Yeah.

Yeah.

Also this town, what kind of
infrastructure does this town have

to have sirens and loudspeakers?

Cause when fucking Santa Rosa was on
fire, you were lucky if you got a text.

Ben: Um, well, was Santa Rosa
belts by a weird corrupt, evil

virus, cult pharmaceutical company?

Jeremy: And you notice they use
these sirens to tell people to go

into their houses, not to run away.

They're like, no, don't leave.

Definitely don't leave.

The sirens are to tell you to stay.

Emily: Yeah.

That's also counterintuitive.

Like the fact that they're like-

Ben: That sounds incredibly in
character for the umbrella corporation-

Emily: Like nothing is wrong.

So

Jeremy: They're going to send the
Alpha team out to the woods in a

helicopter to see what happened to
the two cops that haven't reported in.

Leon wants to ask questions
about what this mansion is that

they're supposed to be going to.

And he gets destroyed by the police
chief, who was like drops this chunk

of exposition that I was like, why
is this fuckin' here, at first?

And he was like, you know, it was
named after the founder of the

Umbrella Corporation who lived there
from this date, this date, and it's

important because blah, blah, blah.

And fuck you, Leon, why are you here?

Emily: This is a no Leon's club!

Ben: I'm like this is
the one instance where-

Jeremy: Front desk Leon!

Ben: The exposition
character like makes sense.

This is a character who would
not know things and would be,

and is prime to ask questions.

This is a more natural
vehicle for delivery.

And then it became "Get the fuck out!

Now as the rest of you know..."

Emily: Maybe Irons like did a project
on the Spencer mansion and he's just

been waiting to use this information
that he studied so hard at fourth grade.

Jeremy: He has to go sit at the,
uh, the front desk under this giant

Gothic statue, which as I understand
it, the explanation for this in the

game was that the police station used
to be an art museum of some sort.

But that is not in this movie.

Ben: No.

This Raccoon City does
not have art museums.

Emily: I mean, it could have one.

Maybe not that nice though.

It's definitely like somebody's house.

Jeremy: The front of the station is only
rivaled by the front of the police station

from The Flash where it's a fucking giant
tapestry in the, in the front of it.

Ben: Okay.

So I'm really glad you mentioned The Flash
because I feel like this movie had this

similar challenge of the Arrow Verse.

It tried to figure out how to deliver
definitive takes on characters while

still changing things enough to surprise
audiences and stay one step ahead of

people who already know the twists.

So, you know, that famous like, oh,
Harrison Wells is Reverse Flash is

probably the best way, like, you
know, Reverse Flash is coming, but

they changed just enough to like
give you some sense of surprise.

There's none of that.

There's no sense of this movie trying to
get ahead of a knowledgeable audience.

Emily: Yeah.

Jay: Not only is it not trying
to get ahead, but it's pretty far

behind because I would say, Resident
Evil the games, at least has like

extremely memorable characters.

And I do believe that's more of a feat of
character designed and character writing

although they get better as the service
title goes on you know, it starts to make

them a bit more distinct, but you know,
it it's, it's a product of its time.

It was born in the nineties and back
then it was more important to have

someone who was visually distinct and
have their personality be distinct.

Going back to what we were saying
about the casting about, you

know, here's, here's this white
boy and how kind of minimalistic

we're trying to play this film.

That's the only to detriment of a
world, like, Resident Evil where things

happen quickly and, you really do use a
visual language to tell you that, this

person is different from the other.

Chris is strongly associated with
green in the games and Jill is strongly

associated with blue and Claire is
strongly associated with red and you

don't have that copied over here.

It'd be have it, but only would that
minimalist approach where everything

has to be muted tones and de-saturated.

So, you know, there's nothing going
on visually or personality wise and

something that video and stand out.

And if you're a big fan of the
games, then, Bravo and Alpha

teams are really, really boring.

Uh, there is no Barry Burton.

There is no Rebecca Chambers, the
kind of people who like stand out

and had a little bit of charm,
you know, in those video games.

They're just absent for more white boys.

Literally no role in the games except
for you to find the reports later on.

Ben: Yeah,

We can't have Rebecca Chambers.

We need Scully and Hitchcock.

Jeremy: Somebody's got to die.

Ben: It just drives the line
between characters who are

franchise characters and characters
who are actually expendable.

it's a line in stone and this movie
does not deviate like characters

whose names, you know, will survive
characters who you don't know,

whose names you don't know will die.

Jeremy: Yeah.

Even if they do die, they won't die.

At this point we meet, Wesker's a
extremely nineties beeper, uh, where

he's got a message from, uh, some
mysterious person that he needs to go

find something in his locker that will
tell him every new thing he needs to know.

That it's it's time.

Um, which led me to question: did Ada
Wong in her creepy trenchcoat wander

into this police station and put
a Palm Pilot into Wesker's locker,

or has it been there for some time.

And he just didn't notice?

Emily: Oh yeah..

I forgot about that connection.

Like, I totally forgot, like
to ask the question, like

who put the Palm Pilot there?

Cause I was like, so just
uninterested in asking questions.

I'm like, all right, movie.

C'mon.

Jeremy: Yeah.

He finds a full on Palm Pilot,
which has everything you need

to know from your menu screen.

Just press select to
access your Palm Pilot.

And then that's the end of that scene.

We're back at home with Chris.

his sick neighbors.

First they write itchy,
tasty on the window.

And then this has made me the one, like
really tense scene in the movie because

the like little girls scurrying under
the table from the back and Claire goes.

Do you need help?

And the little girl answering
you need help is the spookiest

thing that happens in this movie.

Ben: Okay.

Now that spooky, what's not spooky
is old sick lady zombie throwing

herself through the plate glass
that made me laugh so hard.

The zombie going through the glass.

Maybe that was an incidence of
there being too much lead up

of seeing it in the background.

But, uh, I know as opposed to
maybe a frightening thing, but

man, like the kid under the table?

Creepy.

Throwing yourself through the glass?

I'm laughing.

Jeremy: This is the only part in the
movie where they're going to set something

up in the background because you will
see it at several points in here.

And it's in there a lot more where
somebody arrives off screen and fires a

gun to solve a situation several times.

Ben: That's this movie's like explosions
to end conversations from Aqua Man.

Jeremy: Before she can get killed,
uh, Claire's steels Chris's motorcycle

and drives it across town where she's
almost hit by Birkin going the other

way across town, because there's
one intersection in the middle of

Raccoon City where everybody goes,

Emily: Apparently they don't have the
money to show the like show wide shot

of the cars, almost hitting each other,
which was a really interesting choice.

Then it's just them stopped and

Jeremy: a meaningful look, Claire
opens the front of the helmet.

So that she could look at Birkin
and they look at each other for a

minute and then they both turn off.

Yeah.

Uh, it's real romantic.

Leon, meanwhile, this is the
best worst scene of the movie.

Leon is asleep at the front
desk, listening to the hit hot

new song "Crush" by the up and
coming artist, Jennifer Paige.

We all remember this song.

It's just a little crash.

He, therefore doesn't notice
that the truck driver from the

beginning of the movie is seemingly
being controlled by his dog.

That's how the looks to me,
blank guides very quick.

And it zooms to the side enough that
you can see the dog staring at the

truck driver from the background.

Emily: At the very beginning,
the dog was smarter than him.

Like the dog could have opened the door
and the dog could see the zombie leaving.

Well, meanwhile, he's
like, it's not my fault.

It's not my fault.

And I thought like at the time I wrote
let the dog drive and apparently they did.

Jeremy: It really looks like he's
playing Shadow king back here behind him.

Ben: It's so frustrating
and weird and hilarious.

Cause you got it.

The truck is just barreling towards you.

It gets framed within the doorway.

You're thinking like awww
shit, it's going to crash right

through this like police station.

It's going to be awesome.

it just tips over, over and over.

Jeremy: It jackknifes and barrel
rolls down the last part of the

hill and then like explodes in
front of the police station.

Ben: But not right away.

It just skids and stops.

Where it's just long enough
to be going, is that it?

And then it explodes.

Emily: Yeah.

And it's kind of a weak explosion.

Jeremy: This does not alert fucking Leon.

The car explodes like the whole
trailer truck of gasoline explodes

in front of the police office.

The police station is unaffected.

The police station does not catch fire.

There is no shrapnel.

Windows do not break.

Leon doesn't even look
up from the desk at this.

The truck driver, a man who is on fire,
like a fucking Inferno, not a little bit

on fire, but like trailing stunt fire into
this police station, walks up to her desk.

Leon doesn't notice it.

And then from off screen Irons
shoots one bullet from his gun

and Leon jumps to his feet.

As if he was *unintelligible*

Ben: Does Irons know that there's zombies
or is his response to a man on fire

"Guess I better shoot him in the head!"?

Jeremy: He does because then Leon
jumps up surprised by what's going on.

Doesn't ask too many questions at this
point, strangely and Irons says, there's

probably going to be more of them.

You should go lock the gate.

Like he's fucking Marc Maron.

That's the whole explanation.

And then Irons fucks off.

To go try and escape Raccoon
City in a later scene.

Ben: Listeners, I need you to know:
everything up until Donal Logue shoots

the fire trucker zombie from off screen.

Jennifer Paige's "Crush" is playing
very loudly this entire scene.

Emily: I listen listeners.

Two things, one:

Ben: This movies wild-ass bonkers,

Emily: First of all, I know, fuckin', the
song slaps hard, like the song does slap.

I don't know if it slaps hard enough
to cancel out the sound of a oil

tanker exploding on your front step.

There's that.

And also listeners: your suspension
of disbelief will continue to

be challenged very, very much.

Jeremy: The first of two times that
an entire ass vehicle will explode in

flames and it will not affect anything.

Jay: Yeah, I know.

There's three.

Yeah.

I noticed that at the very,

Ben: I have I requisite welp,
that's how Resident Evil 2 ends,

so this is how the movie ends.

Jay: Let me, say this, everything that
we've seen in the movie so far all that

serves like a function in the video games.

And I don't mean like
a mechanical function.

Like you need this for a puzzle,
which the helicopter does.

The helicopter, you need to
do that person puzzle shit.

But I'm talking about like an
actual narrative storyline function

that they totally discard just to
tell stories and just have it in.

It's like some kind of random order.

It's very, very strange.

Emily: Playing snake on your phone?

Was that a part of this?

Jay: No.

That's that's 100% original.

Jeremy: So I am so angry about this
oil tanker explosion because...

that I have not personally
witnessed on oil tanker explode,

say 20 feet in front of me, but-

Emily: Through an open door?.

Jeremy: -It is probably louder
than a gunshot from a revolver.

This whole thing explodes and a man
on fire walks through the door and it

doesn't affect Leon, which is maybe a
funny bit until a gunshot wakes him up.

Which it doesn't make any sense.

Like there's plenty of ways to do this
scene with the needle drop and everything

without like stupidity, you know.

There's no shortage of movies where
like somebody is listening to something

on headphones and the headphones
get pulled out and it starts playing

in the hole plays really loud.

"Crush" playing should be so fun and
enjoyable, but the scene is so such

cockamamie bullshit, that like, I can't

Ben: But also there's nothing
else like it in the whole movie.

Jeremy: It's two minutes of Shaun
of the Dead in the middle of you

know, Night of the Living Dead.

We find the police cruiser
flipped over from Bravo team.

They leave the pilot outside before
Wesker immediately splits the party.

As soon as they walk into the mansion,
he's like, Hey, let's go in two groups.

And Jill's like I'll go with Wesker?

And everybody else goes the other way.

Emily: Uh, no need to stay
there longer than necessary.

They have to split up, look for
survivors and get out of there.

Jeremy: Yeah.

How did they decide to go about this?

And if they have any
kind of plan is unclear.

Chris meanwhile goes with Aiken.

Who of course is there to die.

But before we advance the story any
further, we have to go back to the

police station where Irons is leaving.

He's packing his shit into his
car from the police station.

And, uh, Leon is following him,
trying to figure out what's going on.

And, uh, he's like, well, if
you're leaving, who's in charge.

And Irons is like, well, I
guess you are you're here.

And Irons tries to drive out of town,
but it stopped by Umbrella goons who are

stopping the cars at the edge of town.

Some other people try to, get through
the blockade and get shot down.

At which point he turns on Journey
and fucks off out of there.

And it goes back to the
police station again.

Ben: Our second and final
Donal Logue needle drop.

Emily: This scene is really
interesting because it's all

shot from the passenger seat.

And it's like a documentary like
you can see the movement of the

person's breathing behind the camera.

So I'm like, who's on the second.

And now I'm thinking like, oh, that,
and then they should have made this

movie a documentary style, like
what we do in the shadows though.

Cause that's,

Ben: Well, it seems like there's this
scene, there's the slow-mo zombie crushed

like scene it's like this movie keeps
making one-off stylistic decisions,

but it doesn't commit to anything.

None of it adds up to a cohesive
like style or like film language.

Jay: Establishing a visual language
and your film and the first 15

minutes, it's insanely important.

That's when an audience is
learning how to watch your movie.

And that's when you have
the effectively teach them.

And this movie has zero
interest in doing that.

They just want to mix as many
different styles as possible.

And one there is no
visual language at all.

Jeremy: I think this may be
the place where the, the pacing

goes the most haywire for me.

Because we saw all this stuff with
the truck of the police station.

We flash over to the mansion for
like two minutes for everybody

to go in there and split up.

Then we go back to the police
station where he leaves, he tries

to drive to the edge of the city.

You can't get out of the city.

People get shot.

He turns around and drives
back to the police station.

It comes out and then
we have the dog fight.

Emily: Yeah.

Ben: The truck exploding should
be where the movie really speeds

up and moves into its next phase.

And instead, it's bizarrely where
the movie slows to a fucking crawl.

Jeremy: We're in the parking garage
with, uh, with Irons and, uh, we hear

and sort of see bits of a zombie dog
who is apparently, jumped from the

cab of the car before it exploded.

And is now wandering around
here, uh, chasing him and then

walking slowly behind trucks.

Irons is the most killable person
I have ever seen in a horror movie.

He like bends down to look
under the car for a dog?

A dog that's trying to kill him,
that he knows is trying to kill him?

He runs back to his car to
grab his, I guess his service

revolver is a six shooter.

I don't understand that.

Emily: He hasn't gotten
very far in the game yet.

Jeremy: But this is not the old west.

Emily: Yeah.

Jeremy: Why would he have
a six shooter in his car?

Jay: That's video games.

Emily: Yeah.

He hasn't upgraded his weapons.

Jay: I don't know why they went with the
choice to make it just like the one dog.

That's some kind of super menace.

Cause in the game, it's
the entire K9 unit.

So it makes sense that they would
be all over the station and here

it's like, one unstoppable dog.

True villain of a movie.

Jeremy: Yeah, he gets shot several
times and it has no effect, but

apparently his one weakness is a
fucking fire extinguisher held by a

fairly average looking woman who just
like, beats the zombie dog to death

off screen with the fire extinguisher.

And as soon as he beats it did under
the fire extinguisher, Leon does,

what's going to be Leon signature.

It shows up after all the action is done.

The point his gun at people
Leon's like put down your weapon.

She's like, it's a fire extinguisher.

What the fuck's wrong with you?

Ben: I'm going to give
this movie a little credit.

It may not be deserved credit, but
I'm going to say in their franchise

brain this is the start of the
Resident Evil cinematic universe.

The thinking is like, oh, if we make Leon
really dopey and useless now, It'll be

even like a bigger transformation when
he's the one-liner spouting bad-ass.

And like when we do the
Resident Evil 4 movie.

Emily: Playing the long game.

Jeremy: Irons is like, I'm going to
go radio Alpha Team at the mansion.

He's going to say, he's going to do that.

And then we're not going to see him
do it for about another 20 minutes.

In between then everything
is going to go very badly.

Cause back at the mansion, Chris
finally finds a zombie and this is

another scene that they like literally
recreated the game shot for shot.

He sees a zombie eating one of
Bravo team on the floor and he's

like, Hey man, what are you doing?

Get up.

And like the zombie very slowly,
like turns around and looks at

them in the exact same way that
it happens in the first game.

Chris does not know what to do with this.

Cause as with everybody else
in this movie, he is unfamiliar

with the concept of zombies.

Emily: Yeah.

Although no one seems to
really be questioning it.

They don't, they don't react so much as
just stand silently and like math meme.

Jeremy: Uh, and apparently on Wesker's,
Palm Pilot is the game facts for this

movie because he sits down, he sits
down at the fucking piano and just

starts playing Moonlight Sonata, and
uh, a fuckin' secret door opens up.

Ben: If this was a whole movie
where you are exploring this weird,

mysterious, spooky mansion where
behind every corner is more secrets

and more fucked up shit, this all fits.

As is?

It's really fucking weird and random!

Jeremy: Yeah.

As this happens, where we get fucking
Vickers outside playing snake on his

uh, his phone and then a zombie just,
I guess, wanders up to the helicopter.

Busts his way through the window
of this police helicopter.

And I guess kills him because
what happens next is truly wild.

Jill notices, like in confusion, the
helicopter seems to be taking off outside.

All I can assume is that like Vickers
has got turned into a zombie and then

he was like, why don't I take off
in this helicopter and crash it into

the mansion instead of saying brains?

Ben: I think it would have been better if
he, as a zombie continued playing snake,

Jeremy: So Jill notices, the helicopter
is coming straight at the house.

Wesker does not, he is still too
busy trying to solve puzzles.

So she like tackles him you know, out
of the way of this crashing helicopter.

And there is an explosion that
engulfs the entire room in

flame that does not bother them.

It does not impact the stability of the
house outside of this one piece of wall.

They do not get burned.

They're not singed in the least.

They're not even cut by the
shrapnel of this helicopter.

Jay: Yeah.

No shrapnel, no nothing.

Jeremy: The helicopter explodes.

And then they leave the scene to
go back to the police station.

They jumped back to the RPD.

Claire...

Picks up a gun and Leon goes,
ah, you know, a lot about guns.

Huh?

Emily: She's just like, tchk tchk,
like anybody would do with a shotgun.

Like, oh, this is a shotgun.

I hear they do tchk tchk.

And then he's like, wow.

You're like a gun expert.

Ben: I think the implication then is that
Leon does not know how to use a shotgun.

Emily: Oh yeah.

That's how he hit his partner in the ass.

Cause he like, used it backwards.

Jeremy: This is the part where I
just wrote in the notes, I was like,

how dumb is Leon supposed to be?

It's unclear!

Ben: He's so dumb!

Jeremy: He's supposed to be a guy
who's a rookie on the police force

who has been through an academy.

But he seems like he's barely
putting words together.

Like, man, you sure are good at guns.

Emily: I don't know what he
literally says multiple times.

I don't know what I'm doing here.

Ben: It's like we gave
him a badge as a joke.

Jay: Watching Claire and Leon their
dynamic, it reminded me of Rick and Morty.

Like Claire is sitting there like Leon,
you're a dumb, stupid, weak, pathetic

milquetoast piece of human garbage.

Leon's all, like, geez, Claire,
that's a, you're pretty mean

to me, but that takes the cake.

I don't give a fuck.

Fucking

I know there are so many
Leon fans out there.

The most controversial choice
they made was to make Leon

this giant fucking doofus.

You know, I've seen people who,
cosplay is both like love both.

He wasn't like the crazy James
Bond-ian, but he's always kind

of like this effective bad-ass.

The first time you see Claire and Leon
interact, he tells Claire to duck and

he's head shotting a zombie and then he
goes on to save a fellow police officer.

Then he's hanging out with a super spy.

And Ada Wong.

He's always been like super kind of dope.

Ben: This Leon is on the level
of David Arquette in Scream.

Emily: Yeah.

Deputy Dewey?

Jeremy: It's going to be worse-

Emily: He should smile more.

Jeremy: Because Leon then just
like wanders to their downstairs

dungeon in the police precinct.

And he finds Conspiracy Guy Ben,
uh, locked up in a cell in the

dungeon with somebody who's growling,

Emily: Marilyn Manson It's 1998 y'all.

Jeremy: This is the guy that like
Claire came to town looking for because

he's the guy that meets in chat rooms
and ema- and mails people VHS's.

Emily: And for some reason he's in jail.

Jeremy: And he's like, I
want to get out of this cell.

There's clearly a guy turning
into a zombie next to me!

Steals Leon's gun very
easily and very quickly.

Ben: He's so bad at this-

Jeremy: And holds it on Leon-

Ben: Leon.

Bubula.

Jeremy: and he holds it on Leon to
make Leon go get the keys to the cell.

He does not first shoot the zombie next
to him, which is his fatal mistake.

And then like he gets, he gets
his fucking throat ripped out

before Claire can get there.

And Claire actually has some idea
of what's going on and how to fire

a gun and takes care of the zombie.

And now we see, Irons finally
call the fucking helicopter.

Like

Emily: He couldn't figure it out.

He's a Boomer,

Jeremy: It's Boomer technology!

Emily: I know, but he still
couldn't figure it out.

Jay: That's true.

Jeremy: He finally calls
the fucking helicopter.

Uh, of course the
helicopter is in pieces now.

If he had called it, when they went
back to the precinct and he said,

I'm going to call the helicopter,
they would have come already, but no.

Possibly the most wild of developments:
when he can't reach the helicopter.

Irons is like, all right,
guys, we gotta get outta here.

Let's take the secret path from the
police station to the orphanage.

Emily: Claire was like, what?

The selfsame orphanage that
I was in when I was young?

Surely you jest!

Jeremy: Like, OK.

They will later on find a secret passage
from the orphanage to the mansion, which

makes senseas sort of the lore of things
because they were transporting kids back

and forth doing horrible experiments.

They're not really going to
explain a lot of that, but

that's sort of what's implied.

No.

Why-

Emily: How did Irons know?

Jeremy: How did Irons know and why
is there a secret passageway to the

orphanage from the police station?!

Ben: Yeah.

So what's going on like Umbrella,
didn't tell Irons about the whole

zombie apocalypse, but they did
tell him about the secret tunnel

to the orphan- Like they told him
about the secret orphanage tunnel?

Jay: Irons is supposed to be
on the take in the video games.

He's directly bought out by
Umbrella and that doesn't make it

into the movie for some reason.

I have no clue why?

Because that would contextualize
everything in like a single line.

I mean, they love exposition so
much in the movie, you could have

been, it could have been something
like, you know Leon- Leon bumbles

his way through Irons's office and
finds Post-it Notes like holy shit.

You're on the take for Umbrella.

Ben: It's this movie going out
of its way to be more baffling.

Jeremy: All I can figure.

This is my "No-Prize"
explanation for this.

Is the people of Raccoon City don't
like to see the children of people

who've just died, walked from the
police station to the orphanage.

So they just transport all the orphans
through this secret underground tunnel

from the police station to the orphanage.

Emily: It goes all the way to the top!!!

Jay: I think It could have
made an interesting point.

This goes back to what Bee has been saying
a lot about how it's about exploring a

place and figuring out what makes it tick.

It relates back to why the police
station is supposed to look like how it

does, why it has all this ancient art.

So Umbrella basically
built everything right?

And in every game that you see either
Umbrella or some kind of offshoot

of Umbrella is heavily involved in
development of like the nearby town.

And, some kind of containment breach
happens and everything gets infected, but

they pour a lot of money into wherever
they're supposed to be, which is one of

the reasons that everyone being so poor in
this town and it be kind of being Flint,

Michigan, doesn't quite make as much sense
because if you do have someone that rich

has been around for that long pouring in
a lot of money, then you have something

like New York city where you have like
the Rockefellers, investing in everything.

What ends up happening is because
they're paying for everything.

They end up with all these secret
interconnected tunnels to pull off

all their crazy corrupt experiments.

And so in the game it's been awhile, like
there's the police station is connected

by trains to the secret Umbrella facility.

And I guess for some reason they
decided that instead of a secret

Umbrella lab, which the orphanarium
kind of is an Umbrella lab?

But also isn't that doesn't
exist in the video game.

Emily: They really put some weird
effort into very specific things.

I mean, they also had every creepy,
the most creepy toys ever in

this fucking orphanage, but okay.

Like whatever, it's a
horror movie, like cool.

Ben: What was with the dolls?

What was the point of the dolls was
the dolls, just a fucking Easter egg,

Emily: They're just creepy.

Jeremy: I was expecting some sort of
explanation for the dolls at some point,

because they are so, so fucking creepy.

Ben: Get fucked.

You want answers to questions?

What kind of movie you think that's is?

Emily: Yeah.

Go back to the front desk and sleep
there until the truck explodes.

Ben: If you can't answer it from the
Resident Evil, Wiki, Wikipedia you're

not getting the answers in this movie.

Jay: It's neat watching it,
as a fan of Resident Evil.

So I have all this trivia.

It doesn't make the movie makes
sense because none of it exists

in the world of the movie.

The movie's supposed to be
like a self-contained product.

But I, you know, where it came
from, I know what it's origin is.

And, in the context of an
origin, it makes sense.

So then I watch it like as a
filmmaker and I watched it as someone

who's done a lot of adaptation and
adaptation is like really difficult.

I don't know what it is about video games.

That's so hard to adapt, you know, we're,
doing good with comic books now we're

doing good with young adult novels.

There's some barrier still against video
games that we can't quite figure out.

But in this movie, It doesn't
feel like they even tried.

Yeah.

Jeremy: I like the counter argument
to me wanting answers is the next

scene, which is Wesker speech
to Jill about what's going on.

Cause Wesker is like Jill, I know things
about the mansion from this Palm Pilot.

And it was like, what?

The Wesker like, like Wesker,
the answer to what is, it was

just about the money, Jill.

I didn't need to betray you guys.

I didn't mean to do all this stuff.

Like just, it has a full scale
breakdown on her about like her

just being like, what's going on?

Ben: Yeah, like Jill's all
like "What's a Palm Pilot?"

Emily: Yeah and he's like,
I'm sorry, I blew it up.

Jeremy: The dialogue is like, from the,
it's like from The Room in this scene!

He's just, he's arguing with her.

And she's just like, huh?

And he's like,

Ben: I didn't mean to betra- I
didn't mean to betray you and

she's like, "You betrayed us???"

Jeremy: It's so wild!

Emily: And then he walks
into the atmospheric light

of the burning helicopter.

So moody...

Jeremy: Jill's like, I guess
I'm not falling for him anymore.

I guess he betrayed us.

I'm still not clear on how,
but uh, I guess I'm going to

go find the rest of my team.

Uh, meanwhile, the rest
of your team is dying.

Jill's like, all right, let me
go and find Chris and Aiken.

Ben: You're not finding Aiken..

Emily: Aiken?

Aiken is clever girled like to death.

And then Chris manages to
slap fight the zombies off.

Ben: It's preposterous
that Chris survives.

When it's all dark and it's just him with
like the flashing guns, that to me is

the most thrilling and exciting action
sequence but the movie does kind of ruin

it when it then goes to the lighter.

And it has the zombie getting
closer every time he lights the

lighter, like a cat, like a kitty
cat and one of those meme videos.

Emily: Yeah.

And it's Marine, or like Marini?

Or...

Or whatever, the guy is

Ben: You mean, Bravo team?

Yeah.

Jeremy: The other member of Bravo team.

Emily: Bravo Team!

*clap clap clap*

Jeremy: Uh, the secret path has led
Irons, Claire and Leon to the Orphanarium.

And then like, for some reason
Claire and Irons are like arguing

about shit and Leon's just-
he's just doing investigation.

He's just opening doors to see what's
going on and, uh, finds girl with

skin face mask hanging out there.

And-

Emily: Lisa Trevor.

Jeremy: His reaction is like, uh, guys,
guys, there's something weird here.

You should come check this out.

And of course, you know, they, come
to check it out and she's gone.

Just like she has uh, when
Claire is, is there as a child.

And then we get the introduction of,
uh, everybody's favorite Resident

Evil creature, The Lickers as a
tongue comes out of nowhere to

pull a fucking Irons off screen.

And the only part of him we'll see
from this point on this is head as

it comes rolling from the rafters.

I guess the licker is hanging out
up on top of the, uh, the lights in

the Orphanarium here, but then jumps
down to, uh, to come after them.

At which point, like they're in danger
for like two seconds before, Lisa

Trevor just like drops out of nowhere
to murder this fucking creature.

Just puts it in a headlock
and twist his head off.

And Claire's like, oh, it's
my old friend, Lisa Trevor.

She just chooses the "ask Lisa
Trevor how to get out of here"

option in the dialogue wheel.

Yeah.

Ben: What sort of zombie E T shit is
this supposed to be like, oh, good.

What pay off did I well-developed
and emotional Claire and Lisa Trevor

relationship, like fucking what?

Jeremy: Yeah.

And Lisa's like-

Jay: Yeah they have like one-

Jeremy: and I have it and here's the lock.

It's a secret passageway
to get to the mansion.

It was like, oh, All right.

That's like a full two hours of
Resident Evil gameplay right there!

Emily: Yeah and so they use the lock and
they go in the secret elevator unlock.

Yeah.

Use key on lock and then, you know, the
elevator opens up and they go through it.

And then they look at Lisa Trevor
and the door closes and Lisa Trevor's

like Claaaaaaaaiiiireeee and then
fucking Leon turns to Claire and

is like, your friends are weird.

Can I just

Jeremy: That's a well-delivered line.

Emily: I mean, it is a
well-delivered line, but there's

so much that I really like.

Okay.

First of all, I guess we just skipped.

Who is she?

Is she okay?

Why is she wearing skin on her head?

Do you know each other?

Thank you for saving my
life, weird skin girl.

Jeremy: And they just leave her here.

I mean, at this point, as far as
we know, they don't know that the

whole place is going to blow up yet.

They're just trying to get to the mansion,
but it seems like having the girl who

could just twist the head off with giant
mutans come with you might be useful.

Emily: Right?

Like what the fuck?

Hey girl, that it's has, you know,
obviously been traumatized by this

that I remember from my childhood.

I guess I'm just going to leave you here
in this fucked up orphanage in this town

full of zombies that is going to explode.

Maybe they don't know that yet, but like.

Ben: That's the thing like this movie
goes for Easter eggs, even instead of

like cheap, but fun, like fan service.

Like if you have Lisa Trevor fight
Birkin, that is cool fan service-y

stuff that sure maybe is mostly just
for fans of the game to enjoy, but at

least it's something different and new
than what the games alone could provide.

And it's not just an Easter egg.

Emily: And you could have Lisa Trevor,
oh, I don't know, give them some of

the wonderful exposition instead of
having another Easter egg with the

fucking Village of the Damned kids.

And you know, oh, we're fighting
for our life and we're trying

to get to the blah-blah-blah
and find our way out of here.

Jay: You, you know, you know, it's funny
to me about, all this stuff about, Lisa,

Trevor and the licker and all that.

there's been some crazy developments
around the silent hill video game lately

with the Silent Hill domain expiring.

And so some random fan grabbed it and
keep links to a very recent tweet by

one of the character designers from
Silent Hill - Masahiro Ito - and

he says, you know, I wish I hadn't
designed fucking permit head.

And he says in a, tweet, replying to it
that, he's not going to explain why, but a

lot of fans of Silent Hill think because,
Pyramid Head exists as this manifestation

of the main characters, guilt, and
it's vicious towards like women.

And it's there to torture a three
character over and over again.

And it's taking that, that pyramid
head has become like such a

commodity, like as such a product.

And you just see it in like,
movies for no reason at all.

And I just can't help, but think of
that while watching the Resident Evil

movie, because here's Lisa Trevor
without any kind of context whatsoever.

Here's William Birkin and at the very
end of the movie, and, and it's all

this recognizable shit, but it has
no meaning to anyone who's like a

real, actual fan of that franchise.

It's just a jumbled mess.

Emily: I mean it, and it has
no meaning to anybody outside.

Jay: I feel like they were trying
to build some kind of storyline.

okay.

So Here's this Orphanarium where
they would take the kids and

tell them they were adopted.

But they were like secretly experimented
on, which is also storyline to another

horror video game called Poppy's playtime.

And you know, they would convert them
into like kind of these horror monsters.

And that's also why you have
the Code: Veronica people there.

And that's why you have, Lisa Trevor
there and all these kooky monsters.

Umbrellas, like a little, little evil
organization that's so evil though

experiment on little children
that don't have parents.

But there's no connective tissue at
all at all at this point, but she damn

exposition that's in the freaking movie at
no point you don't feel like they have to

make umbrella of legitimate, super bill.

And you're just supposed
to infer a bunch of shit.

And then you're like, and then you have
to sit through 20 minutes explaining

the least important shit ever.

Yeah.

I'm sorry.

That's frustrating.

I believe it

Jeremy: Is, Claire and Liam.

I will find this like room with the
reel to reel projector in fucking 1998.

Um, and the coolest scrapbook about all
the children that Umbrella tortured.

Like it's not like it's not any
sort of like business document.

It's like literally a scrap
book about child torture, um,

Ben: Who was making the child torture?

Jeremy: Oh that's Birkin!

That's fucking Birkin all the
way- that's his craft project.

Emily: He was also like
an indie movie director.

You see?

And so that's why the eight
millimeter film was an eight

millimeter or whatever real, you know,

I love that where he have like these
twins and they were like doing fucked

up shit and they're like just standing
there and then it like pans to him.

And he's like, basically just
thumbs up, hang at the camera,

like, look at these fucked up kid.

Jeremy: And this feels so
like, uh, I don't know.

It feels like they're trying
to do an MCU thing here.

Like, we're going to get
another movie about these kids.

That's never going to happen,
especially after this disaster.

Ben: Um,

Jeremy: yeah, man, I don't know.

It's it's wild.

In between those two things of them going
down the elevator and them arriving at

the bottom, we have a Chris's fight in the
dark with , the last member of team Bravo.

And, uh, Aiken is killed
with uh, to little fanfare.

And then like Jill, again, arrives
shooting from off screen to

kill this Somby to save Chris.

And is like, hey Chris, we got to
go seems like Wesker betrayed us.

We should leave.

She says that Wesker was just
going to leave them to die, which

is not what the betrayal was.

I mean, we'll find out that he's supposed
to be getting these, these vials from

the lab downstairs, which I assume
was like, his plan was splitting up.

He was going to go get the vials and then
be like, oh God, I didn't find any people.

And then they were going to fly out and
he was just going to give it to Ada Wong.

That all that is unclear.

Wesker goes down to the lab to
find the vials he's supposed to

get for his mystery benefactor.

But Birkin is already there packing
up the vials with his wife and child.

Emily: Watching as he's like removed the
rib cage from some zombie tied to a table.

Ben: No me to tell you how to parent
Birkin, maybe leave him in the car.

Emily: Yeah.

Tell them to go into the safest room.

You already know like this
whole fucking lab, I'm sure

there's a room that's like safe.

So they don't have to watch you
and obviously be traumatized by you

like taking the organs out of some
person shaped thing on the table.

Jeremy: It seems to be a young
girl on the table with her

like stomach and chest open.

Ben: No.

Okay.

Best line reading in the entire
fucking movie is when the wife asks

Birkin and what he's doing, and
Neal McDonough just says God's work.

Emily: I don't even
remember him saying that!

Ben: Fucking amazing.

Emily: I don't even remember him.

I just remember being really cute.

Cute.

Ben: Oh my God.

I'm like you fucking
magnificent mother fucker.

Emily: He's just like my life's work well,
cause earlier when they were, driving

towards the mansion and then the wife is
like, aren't we supposed to be leaving?

And he's like, my life's work.

Like he's a fucking peek at you.

Like that's the only thing he can say.

Jay: It's showing him being really
creepy and doing this experiment

with a little girl's body in
front of his wife and daughter.

In the game, the William Birkin that we
meet, it's already transformed and he's

hunting down his daughter, Sherry Birkin.

As Claire you end up basically taking
care of her and protecting her because

as this entity, that's purely the
buyers now he recognizes biological

material that's similar to him.

And in very nineties Japan, hentai
fashion, he intends to put his

material once his daughter to keep
the virus growing or whatever.

And it's like really creepy
without a lot of storytelling.

And I feel like that's where a lot
of this comes from in the movie.

Emily: Yeah.

Jay: Again, it's like, this is just
so straight forward, an adaptation

that he decided not to roll with and
they develop it into this whole big

story with him, keeping his weird
storybook anyone can just stumble

upon a portrait kids and Orphanarium.

And I, I really don't understand at all.

Emily: The daughter thing, that's creepy
as fuck, but like the storytelling

of this does really remind me of
a lot of the Japanese adaptations

of, the nineties, Japanese cinema.

You're, given the, pieces in you're
supposed to put them together.

I mean, and I think Resident Evil,
that kind of storytelling is there too.

And it can work, but like
not in this case guys,

Jay: No.

Not in this case.

Jeremy: Is this scene with him in Wesker?

I don't know.

He tries to, like, Wesker already
has his gun polled and on him trying

to get him to hand over the vials.

And so Birkin decides he's going to
try and do a quick draw competition

with this guy who was already pointing
a gun at him and like tries to grab

the gun off the table and gets shot
in the chest and falls down, you

know, bleeding all over the place.

And is pleading with his wife to like,
get him his vials, which she does.

She stands up, gets the viles and Wesker
is like, don't do that, put those down.

And she doesn't.

So Wesker just shoots her in the face.

So...

Jay: He says, don't do anything stupid.

And she pulls the gun on him.

Emily: Yeah.

Jay: Yeah.

Emily: I'm going to immediately
shoots her in the head.

Jay: In the head.

And then the daughter pulls a gun.

Everyone's pulling a gun in this scene.

Emily: And the daughter's
like, I've got a gun.

Jeremy: This is my family gun.

Ben: I'm honestly still not a
hundred percent sure who shot Wesker.

Jeremy: It was Jill-

Emily: It was Jill.

Jeremy: -from off screen, because-

Ben: that's the Jill- I wasn't sure
because I thought Jill shot him, but

then Jill's reaction seemed to be,
oh no, Wesker has been shot or like,

Jeremy: Well, she, she tried to do it from
off screen to have deniability, you know?

Emily: She's just like, oh no, the guy
that betrayed us is now mortally wounded.

Jeremy: Yeah.

Cause Wesker grabs the vials.

And uh, then we see that like Birkin
has injected himself with one of them.

As he continues to bleed on the floor.

The daughter is hiding.

As Wesker starts to leave he hears
a sound behind him and whips around

and pulls the gun on the little girl.

When she happens to do justice,
Jill walks through the door and, uh,

shoots him from off screen again.

You gotta, you gotta keep an eye
on, off screen in this movie.

The fact that he gets shot and Wesker's
response is you and your fucking gun.

Like what,

Emily: Damn that gun gambit!

Ben: ...what passes for comedy.

Is this like aha!

We paid it off like, Jill likes
shooting things like three times now.

Emily: Yeah.

Cause like the first thing we know
about Jill is that she shoot well.

Ben: How am I supposed to feel
about Wesker dying, movie?

What emotion am I supposed to be feeling?

Jeremy: I lived at Wesker,
as he lies dying on the floor

is like, Hey, a little girl.

I never would have shot you.

Emily: And he's like, I'm supposed
to be redeemed to death somehow.

And I'm just going to think of the
most fucked up thing I did recently.

Jay: I feel like Wesker's, in this
movie, is supposed to feel very familiar

to us and very oh, he's just, it's
just a cool likable small town guy.

He's a guy that you can get a beer with
and he didn't want to shoot family.

They forced his hand, even
though he was very, very quick

to, shoot them gangland style.

And so I think they were trying
to build a sympathetic feeling.

Which that's cool for Wesker, it's
just they didn't do a good job.

Emily: Yeah.

Like they didn't develop him.

Like he had absolutely no development.

The only thing that he
had was a Palm Pilot.

And that Palm Pilot was more of a
pilot than he was in his own story.

Jeremy: In the true fashion,
this movie Wesker spends his

last breath on exposition.

He's like, you guys gotta get out of here.

They're going to nuke the
entire city at 6:00 AM.

Start the clock.

And as soon as they run off, Birkin
starts mutating and evolving and growing

eyes and places that eyes shouldn't be.

And immediately like, they introduced the
idea of him mutating and then immediately

in like the next scene he is after them.

And he is, he's calling out to Chris.

Jill is somehow gotten like through
this gap that Chris can't fit through.

And so like he's taunting Chris,
Ben was mentioning this, really

like unearned like you thought you
could be a member of my family.

You're just a dumb soldier.

How is it that your sister is so
smart and you're such a fucking idiot.

Ben: Oh man.

So we do get the fight where
Chris shoots for the eyeballs,

which do explode because yeah.

Maybe it's eyeballs everywhere,
not the best strategy, but look:,

it wouldn't be Resident Evil
without tentacles and eyeballs.

Jeremy: Yeah.

It's like, oh, flashy, weak points.

I got to hit that one and that one.

And then slowly but surely, this
is one of those boss fights.

It always ends with him beating you.

But Claire has learned Jill's
secret, hidden move of shooting

somebody from off screen.

She, she takes out Birkin or at least
they think they've taken down Birkin.

And again Claire takes Chris to the
underground train, which we just

learned about from, uh, from Wesker.

Ben: This train that it takes
them an hour and a half to get to.

It is 4:20 when Wesker dies.

They don't get to this
fucking train until 5:50.

Emily: Well that's because it was
4:20, and they need to take a break.

Do you know what I mean?

Jeremy: Claire and Chris on the
train with Joel Leon and Sherry

Birkin, tiny, tiny baby Sherry
Birkin, who they've adopted now.

Jay: She's just there.

She's just on the train now.

Emily: And she doesn't look very phased.

She's just, I mean, maybe she's in shock.

I don't know.

Like

Jay: These people just
kill both her parents.

Emily: Yeah.

But she's just like, um, we're going
to sit in this train near this wall.

That looks a lot like animal pens.

Ben: She walks out of that tunnel.

If the registrar was being like,
ah, yeah, bad-ass survivor team.

It's like, what the fuck are you
real traumatized six-year-old.

Emily: Maybe she shot fucking what's
his "Whiskers" or whatever his name is.

Ben: That's the zombie cat we didn't see!.

But yeah, no, she fucking
destroyed "Whiskers."

Emily: No!

Whiskers lives!

Jeremy: She doesn't have a long time
to miss her dad because her dad has

now mutated into a giant man creature.

Actually the one that she describes
in her dream at the beginning of the

movie, she wakes up from a nightmare
at the beginning of the movie, he's

turned the giant monster from that.

And he rips open the top of the
train, like it's a tin can and,

uh, just fucking grabs Clarence or
it's banking or against the walls.

Ben: So we get the ending.

We get the way the Monster's taken down.

Jeremy: Well, yeah, it's so clear stabs
him in the face so she can get loose.

And Leon wanders into
the fight from the next-

Ben: That's all Leon does
is wander into things!

Jeremy: Well Leon wanders in
with a fucking rocket launcher.

Cool.

I found this in first class.

Jay: Oh, geez.

Jeremy: Fucking rocket launches
this guy from 10 feet away.

Emily: I love how Chris doesn't
throw himself on the ground.

He's not like every other explosion
in the world, in any movie ever.

Like the hero will throw themselves
like Swan dive across the screen,

but Chris fucking just goes, whoa,
like there's a duck flying over

Ben: That's some real Chris Redfield shit.

Jay: Claire, and Chris are like so
close to the blast point of that rocket.

And they're inside a train car.

You have the fuel sucking
the air out of there.

You have the backdraft from the explosion.

You have the shrapnel,
you have the Sonic boom.

You have like a million things that are
going to severely damaged these people.

And no one gets a scratch
except for William Birkin.

Jeremy: Correct me if I'm
wrong, but Birkin's body just

disintegrates at the post.

Ben: It was gone.

It rocket launches causes integration.

It's another Easter egg.

The climax of the movie is an Easter egg.

It's like, Hey, member, the end of
Resident Evil 2 when you used the rocket

launcher, it's here in this movie!

It's an Easter egg.

It's like, this is the
climax of the movie.

And it's just more winking
and nodding to the fans.

It's ridiculous and crazy.

And over the top.

And there's no other way to
end the movie, but it just.

Goddamn.

This is all there was,
it was just references.

Emily: But it's not-

Ben: It's just an hour
fourty of references.

Emily: If they cut everything
out, if they just had that

explosion, then people ducking.

Like we didn't need anything after that.

Ben: Leon fires, the missile,
and then it cuts to like all

the records just collapsing.

Emily: Like that would have been funnier.

The same amount of like question
marks, you know, per capita,

just would have been funnier.

And then they walk out like...

Ben: Did I do that?

Freeze frame, couple credits roll.

Jeremy: They would have six o'clock.

They're like, oh shit.

And there's a big explosion at the
center of town, which we get this

like not a real thing in the frame.

CGI S scene of Raccoon City exploding
and one single cow in the foreground

of being blown in the distance
is one CGI cow in particular.

They're just like-

Ben: Not a zombie cow, mind you.

Just a normal-ass cow.

Emily: Regular innocent cow.

The town implodes.

It's basically like Raccoon City,
like just disappeared or something.

Jeremy: I'm at the center of
all of these hidden tunnels and.

Everything imploded into that

Ben: town planning in advance.

Oh, the whole thing up.

Emily: They built that city
on rock and roll, I guess.

Jeremy: And they built
that city on rocket fuel.

Emily: On rocket fuel.

Yeah.

Jeremy: A short distance from this
explosion, they come out fine.

Tunnel doesn't really
collapse around them.

They just walk out like fucking
Reservoir Dogs at the end.

Yeah.

Jay: Yeah.

And then you get another text,
another text crawl there to.

Ben: Another stylistic element
that this movie does once.

Yeah.

And never again.

Emily: Like they could have did the
fucking green CRT monitor shit for the

timecards that would have been rad.

Jeremy: Maybe my favorite thing about
this movie is the post credit sequence.

Ben: Yeah!

The post credits!

*laughing*

Jeremy: We see a body bag sit up and then
fucking Wesker wriggle out of it and fall

on the floor and crawl across the floor.

And he's like, what?

I can't see what's going on.

I thought I was dead.

And this woman, like, it was like, oh,
you were, and we've, we've done some

stuff to bring you back, but not being
able to see is a it's it's part of that.

I'm not going to elaborate on that at all.

She hands him sunglasses like
it's the fucking master sword.

Like this is the most important shit.

Like she is handing him Excalibur.

She's like here Wesker sunglasses.

If you play the game, you're
like, oh yeah, where's skirt.

He wears sunglasses a lot.

Jay: Did we mention the woman that gives
me the sunglasses is supposed to be....

Jeremy: She likes, she has him
sunglasses and fucking turns

dramatically to the camera.

He's like, who are you?

I don't even know your name.

And she's like, my name is Ada Wong,

Emily: Fade to credits.

Ben: As if if that means anything, 90%
of the people watching this movie, um,

Emily: There needs to be like a cut
of this film that whenever there's a

scene that doesn't make sense, so most
of them, then the camera just pans to

fucking Neal McDonough and is like wig.

And he's like,

I did this.

Jeremy: That's how I feel
about the Avengers Project!

Ben: Yeah, it is with the same level
of irreverence as Nick fury being

like, I'm here to talk to you about the
Avengers and it's like, I'm Ada Wong!

Jay: Finally the Sunday I saw a Spider-Man
No Way Home and really fucking mild

spoiler there, here at the very like
the post credit scene in that one

you see Tom Hardy as venom arguing,
with the spar keepers, trying to find

out what's going on in the world.

He's been teleporter soon.

And my mom and brother had come
to see that will be with me.

And you know, my mom's doesn't
watch anything outside of the MCU.

My brother's not caught up
outside of the Spider-Man movies.

And they were like, just so confused.

And they were like, well, why did
we sit through the credits for that?

It's like baffling.

So this, comes around to something that
I am dying to talk about with this film.

Any way you kind of like slice it,
whether it's as a fanboy adaptation

or as a screenwriter, any way you
slice it's, it's r eally confusing

as to why they have added this.

And so I think Ada Wong and Leon, they go
on to be, you know, Leon goes on to become

this James Bond-ian type and Ada can be
kind of considered like his Bond girl.

She shows up to antagonize him
and manipulate him, but then they

participate as allies and oh, maybe
they really do care about each other.

Maybe they really do have
this romantic relationship.

And it's really nice.

Y'know, Resident Evil, I'm not
going to a claim for a second

that is some kind of master of
storytelling because it really isn't.

But something nice that you get
out of it is that they're really

good at making these kinds of
character pairs that you care about.

In the original Resident Evil 2, Claire
goes to Raccoon City actually to find

Chris cause she's worried about him.

She hasn't heard from him since the
mansion, they're actually a really

close brother-sister pair in that movie.

And you find what kinda little sister
she is to Chris, because later on

when she finds Sherry Birkin, she
becomes a real big sister towards her.

And I would say that's consistent
from all the games and this movie

totally abandons that and create
their own character relationships

that they never built on ever.

I can understand abandoning, kind
of, this roadmap as to who these

characters are if you want to do
your own thing as a filmmaker.

But they weren't interested in
doing their own thing as filmmakers.

They weren't interested in giving us any
kind of context, any kind of relationship.

I thought Jill and Wesker were meant to
be an item, but then they also weren't?

There's just nothing there.

Nothing there to hold on to.

Ben: It's like, there's this, the
movie could have done, but really

built on the Leon Claire dynamic.

It could have given us this Wesker
Jill, Chris dynamic of betrayal and love

triangle to explore, but it also then
had to go through the extra hurdle of

connecting those groups for an Act III.

Like thing, like all the problems in
this movie that just stemmed from trying

to do one and two at the same time.

Jeremy: And so many plot points,
they don't have time for any

character moments for the
characters that they've introduced.

They're just there to hit the plot points.

Jay: Yeah.

even a relationship, which I
also thought it was going between

like Chief Irons and Leon, like,
oh, this guy's a super fuck up.

And Chief Irons doesn't care about
his job and oh, just be like a

silly little buddy cop movie.

It's just not interested
in doing anything at all.

Emily: Yeah.

Jeremy: Yeah.

Uh, this movie bad.

I'm afraid this movie might be bad guys.

Emily: Yeah.

Jay: Yeah, it might be bad.

Ben: What if this movie isn't good?

Emily: I think we're
past what ifs my friend.

Jay: So when I was in college,
I did my college thesis actually

on Resident Evil apocalypse.

You were supposed to talk
about the anima and the animus

and how it manifests in film.

And so my thing was Mila
Jovovich's character of Alice.

She ends up fighting Nemesis
and the end of the movie and

I just totally broke down.

Oh, here's how you know, this
manifests anima and animus and how

they combat each other and all that
in terms of an action sequence.

And I got flying colors
on that thesis somehow.

But I haven't seen it since
I did that presentation.

So I started rewatching it right
after Welcome to Raccoon City.

And it wasn't a particularly good
movie, but it was a fun movie.

It made me care about the
characters at least somewhat

even without a lot going on.

So it doesn't seem hard, but it was
hard for the creators of this movie.

Emily: Yeah.

That's funny.

You mentioned that because that's
sort of the Alien Three for me.

Like I did a big paper on Alien Three.

But I think that movie is, is a little bit
less fun than Resident Evil apocalypse.

So

Jeremy: Alien Three is like
trying to do a post-mortem.

It's just like what happened here?

Emily: Yeah.

Jay: Yeah.

Emily: Alien autopsy

.
Jeremy: I had some fun watching it, but
like, we were talking about, it felt

weirdly long, like, I think I had more
fun trying to take notes and figure

out like piece together what the fuck
was going on and how it related than

I did actually watching the movie.

It seemed like they had a chance to have
some cool action scenes, but all of the

stuff that could have been like really
big set pieces is over very quickly.

And every, almost every time, like
ended with a very CGI explosion.

Like the helicopter explosion is
raw, like for a scene that should be

really extreme and really intense.

It's just like the moment that
helicopter actually like hits the

ground, everything is, complete CG.

There's no feeling of like
stakes for the characters at all.

I feel like that kind of is my,
my thesis on this whole movie is

that it so busy trying to hit like
points and show big explosions

that like nothing really connects.

Jay: Yeah.

It also feels like a lot of that.

I think it only had a budget of
21 million, which is like nothing.

And, and so it feels like they just
defaulted to TGI for like a lot of things.

And it's really hard to be at about stuff
like, physics and blocking your actors.

I think to a degree, a lot of that
stuff is forgivable so long as you're

emotionally attached to the story.

Right.

Like-

Emily: Yeah.

Jay: Not everything has to be
thorough, you just have to be

emotionally invested and it completely
fails to do there's a few points.

I think, early on that
kind of piqued my interest.

It's oh, here's STARS hanging out,
small town bar doing normal, small

town bar people, things and having bets
and just like be, I felt that there

was like, maybe some kind of sparks
flying between different members.

And they just take all that
Goodwill and squander it and

so that you just don't care.

And I think that's why he feels so long.

Jeremy: Yeah.

I think that scene in the
bar might be the best.

It's certainly the most
acting of the whole movie.

Cause it builds like this dynamic and
these relationships between the characters

that they'll immediately just blow up
like both literally and figuratively.

And yeah, I dunno it doesn't,
it doesn't do much for me.

And I think moving over to our
like theme section, it doesn't

do a whole lot for me with any of
our progressive politics either.

Emily: Well let's, let's go
over the actual talking points.

Cause I have Husky banks to
say specifically about those.

Jeremy: Yeah, do you think it's feminist?

Emily: No!

Ben: No.

Jeremy: Specifically,
they kind of Nerf Jill.

Like they establish her as a bad-ass
in her first scene and then she

doesn't do anything for the rest
of the movie, not onscreen anyway.

She shoots people from
off screen several times.

Ben: I mean, another kind of thing
that about combining one and two is

that you closed the door on doing
Nemesis, the most notable Jill chapter

of the Resident Evil franchise.

Jay: They actually, not only did
they combine movies, it did something

really bizarre here where they
combine characters because a lot of

shows character is now in Claire.

Um, a lot of those skills that
she shows a lot of those talents,

all that supposed to be like Jill
kind of stuff that clear now has.

And so Jill is a, non-entity.

Reminds me a little bit very vaguely
of Michelle Rodriguez, this character

in the first Resident Evil movie.

Emily: Oh yeah.

Jay: I think that's just due
to like the vague bad-ass and

nothing significant dramatically.

Emily: Yeah.

I mean, Michelle Rodriguez was
emoting and had a lot better lines

and it was a lot more memorable,

Jeremy: Yeah.

I feel like every time I saw a gel on
screen, I was like, oh, Joe's back.

Oh no, she's not going to do anything.

Okay.

Nevermind.

Like, I, I like Hannah, John
came in and like, I was excited

to see her in this role.

You know, as far as Resident
Evil characters go, I like Jill.

But there's not, this is not
anything happened in there.

They make her uninteresting, Claire
maybe takes a little bit more of the,

like, bad ass leader role, but then she
doesn't do a whole lot with that either.

The one place where she has an
opportunity to shine and fight

something, she beats a dog to death
fight with a fire extinguisher.

Jay: Again.

Off screen?

Emily: Yeah.

There's also like, oh wow.

You can use a gun a little
bit, which is not great.

Jeremy: Do ladies use guns to?

Maybe the biggest problem with
Jill is that she's one of very few

characters of color in this movie.

And they make her kind of not
interesting, like she could

do, she couldn't do something.

And the first thing she has the potential
to be a cool likable, exciting character.

And then she just doesn't deliver on that.

Ben: Jeremy, are you saying that
character traits of thirsty for

Wesker and likes guns isn't enough
for a compelling protagonist?

Emily: I think it is.

I think that's what he's saying.

Jay: I was actually going to give us
a really hot take here too, since you

mentioned the thing about Juul being
when there's the few characters of

color with exception of like the first
game and, uh, zero, which is kind of

a people to the first game, I feel
like Resident Evil is a franchise

that's very aware of of diversity.

Let me put it that way.

Because even in village, which was
all European, you had different

European ethnicities, right?

You have Italian, you have German.

And I feel like part of that is
it's, a Japanese culture trying to

close the emulate American culture.

So you're interacting with
a bunch of different people.

And I remember this as a little kid,
because even though I was playing a

video game where the main characters
that you played as were white people,

are, you remember as Leon, he was
entirely interacting with minorities.

Isn't used interacting with like,
the black cop who is guiding him

through, despite his injuries,
he's interacting with Ada Wong.

And they just stopped all the
air out of that for this movie.

so that's disappointing as well.

Emily: And it's, it's rare that,
Japanese media really gets that too.

Because especially when you have
Japanese adaptations, like film

adaptations, they don't have as
many, um, diverse actors yeah.

To pull from.

Jay: As far as casting goes.

I, think, you know, when you cast a
lot of the same looking person and

that doesn't, that doesn't necessarily
mean that they have to be a different

ethnicity, but you know, if you have
a series of pretty white boys that all

are similar, in build perfect teeth,
you know, all that, it's really hard

for the audience to distinguish them,
especially when you don't do anything

else in terms of knowing whether that's,
manipulating color tone, or putting them

in certain wardrobe or whatever, you're
making it really hard on the audience.

Emily: Yeah.

I remember having that problem
with Starship troopers.

Jeremy: That presented a real problem
with the first Resident Evil 2,

because you had a, what Eric May
be us and another very like similar

looking white guy in the thick group.

And it's like, oh wait, hold on.

No, that's the other guy.

Emily: I couldn't keep track.

Jay: Yeah.

It's like, I just saw Birdman on a
plane come back from Los Angeles and

that's the cast that's, you know,
predominantly white and that's fine.

But you have Michael Keaton who's
older, you have Edward Norton, who's

younger, you know, you have Emma Stone.

So you have this really diverse looking
cast that stands out and your memory.

And then you come to a movie like
this and everyone looks fucking same.

And I think that's why we also want to see
more from Jill and Leon, because they're

two of the few standouts that we get
among the cast for the rest of the film.

Emily: Yeah.

Jeremy: And looking at our other stuff
here, I mean, we talked a little bit

about race in this movie where they, I
think it does less with race than you

know, resonate with apocalypse, which you
were talking about resident apocalypse.

Not really like a deaf canned
it rates, but no, there, there

are a variety of people at it.

Yeah.

Jay: Yeah, for sure.

Jeremy: Guys, we find any
LGBTQ themes in this movie?

Jay: It is

Jeremy: so straight for a
movie that came out in 20 22.

It's bizarre.

Right?

there's not even an implication of
any sort of like affection between

any two characters as the same gender.

It's just,

Jay: no, no, this has that one line
I want to be, in Wesker's arms.

Ben: There you go.

We got, yeah.

That's that's

Jeremy: where

Jay: he wants to die.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Emily: Yeah.

Okay.

All

Jay: right.

Jeremy: I also don't think this movie has
anything to say about mental health or

Jay: disability.

Emily: I do have something to say
on that because the way that a lot

of these zombies are depicted are
that, that there's this illness

that begins the process of the
T virus now, usually in Movies.

It just is like somebody
is dying and then they die.

And then they come back as a zombie
rather than being like falling sick,

the same kind of way that these RVs
become straight from sickness to zombie.

And then there's a certain way that
the behaviors and the depictions of

this illness is made monstrous by the
zombie newness of these characters.

And I was reminded actually of this
clip that I saw a while back that was

like some kids that I put together,
an animation project of iZombie and

like showed it to hire me as AKI
and be like, look at our animation.

He's like, yeah, my best friend
has neurological problems

and he can't move properly.

And this is like basically trivializing
that kind of neurological problem,

because he spent all this time animating
something that a sick person would

struggle with to make it monstrous.

And there's a whole, I mean, I could go
on a deep dive about how that divergence

was different movies, but this movie
in particular, especially with the like

kid crawling around and the people,
the kid neighbor and his mother and

how they were like the way that they
were losing their hair and everything.

And they were just from the, get-go
supposed to be monstrous bothered

me a little bit because like, there
were obviously people suffering.

And then, Claire was just
like, well fuck them.

There was no Real discussion
about what the fuck was going on

with the what's her name again?

Taylor, what's her name?

Liz?

Jay: Oh, Lisa Trevor?

Emily: Lisa Trevor!

Lisa, Trevor had something going
on and like also she had a single

word vocabulary and stuff like that.

And then she was also like
a magical killing machine.

They also, when they showed her file,
it had like a figure said dangerous and

then it showed her and then it showed
her spine that was like scoliosis.

And I'm like, all right.

You know, those little things did
hit me as, particularly abelist

when we talk about neurological
divisions being seen as monstrous.

And we talked about that a little
bit when we talked about us and the

usage of her particular condition
to make a character sound monstrous.

You know, I feel like that was
going on in this movie a little bit.

Yeah.

So that's, that's that on that.

Jay: I, I feel that's
a, that's a good point.

And it's interesting because
that is a license of the movie.

That's not something that really exists
in the games . It's always something

different that you're dealing with, like
a virus or fungus or something like that.

Emily: The comparisons that horror movies
can make when talking about mental illness

or something like that, when it's I'm, you
know, I'm becoming a zombie, I'm losing

my mind, and then you can actually have
something meaningful come out of that as

a discussion about, losing your yourself.

But yeah, I, I did want to mention
that because I felt like that was

that, that was an important kind
of problematic bit of this movie.

It just, how they show their zombies.

And something that a lot of
other zombie movies dance around.

Jay: I think that falls back into
whether and lap this movie has any

other political message to talk about
because when you do zombie fiction,

well, it actually works really well.

It's political allegory.

I mean, that's how that starts as a genre.

Emily: Yeah, for sure.

You know, and I did like the idea of
the Flint, Michigan the expendable

being an element in the movie.

I mean, they didn't really sport
how they should have, but they did

very plainly expose that particular
bit of a reasoning in the plot.

Jeremy: Yeah, the movie introduces
and doesn't have a lot of time for it.

Unfortunately, I feel like there could
be something to be said politically.

But this movie is too busy
blowing up helicopters to say it.

So I guess going from all of
that overall, do you guys think

this is we're seeing, would you
recommend people go check it out?

It's going to be a no, for me to
it is, somewhat enjoyable to watch.

It is in some respects, a good
bad movie, but the dialogue is not

fun enough to make it, I think,
worth worth the price of admission.

Emily: Yeah.

The bitch movie is a lot more fun to watch

Jay: much better, but
sometime our fun, I agree.

If there were anything of value to get
from this, like at all, even if it was

just like a fun ride for all its other
failings and I could be down for that.

it's funny because I'm not
very particular or picky when

it comes to horror, you know?

Uh, I might have snobbish tastes
elsewhere, you know, like with, Japanese

animation or in the character films,
but in terms of horror, it's like just

whatever, giving me something good and
mindless and fun for, hour, two hours.

And I'm good.

And I did not get this from this
movie, but more like goodbye

back from city saying, well,

Jeremy: well with that said what would
you recommend people go check out?

Is there something you think along
the same lines or better that people

should be keeping an eye out for?

Jay: I had a lot of fun.

You watching Resident Evil
apocalypse, as a pure mine was stuff.

And then if people want more serious
a zombie film, there is of course

there's 20 days later, which I
watched recently, which is good.

And then there's the, of course the
original zombie movie, which I'm

embarrassingly drawing a blank on
right now, night of the living dead,

which is definitely worth checking out.

It's just, I think it's, I think
it's a fine a horror movie.

I think it has way more to say than
Resident Evil does, especially as a

product of kind of like the 1960s.

Jeremy: Good Georgia Mira business.

Ben, what have you got?

Ben: Shit.

I was going to say 28 days later.

Fuck.

I guess play some horror games.

I don't know.

The Resident Evil two remake
didn't come out too long ago.

Hunt that down.

I've never played it,
but it's probably good.

Emily: I'm going to go
pretty sideways here.

And I am going to recommend the series
that is currently coming out on the, uh,

last podcast on the left about MK ultra.

There's a few episodes of it.

Now, if you have, if you're not
familiar with the last podcast on the

left, these are very rowdy white boys.

be warned.

There's a lot of yelling but,
it's actually really funny and it

is a very, very well researched.

And I think they're coming out
with their fifth episode this

week on the MK ultra series.

And I mentioned that specifically
because a lot of this weird shit with

like laboratories under crazy mansion.

Is rooted in reality.

You know, for instance, there was like
a castle grave Raven or some shit like

that real place that was used as a real
lab where they were trying to figure

out my in control and basically dosing
people with LSD and figuring out whether

or not it would, mind control a person.

a lot of this stuff comes from the whole
idea of the try to make the ultimate

soldier and, secret government labs or
secret corporate labs underneath some,

uh, otherwise I guess, I mean, spooky
castle is not, uh, a very it's not in

conspicuous, but anyway some of that
did happen in Marino and San Francisco

where they did experiment on civilians.

Yeah, a little bit of history of the
zombie apocalypse real life inspiration.

Jay: That sounds really dope.

Actually.

I'll check that out.

Jeremy: What I want to recommend, what
this made me think of is the first

thing that I really remember seeing
Neal McDonough in as a regular, which

is the third season of justified,

Jay: uh,

Jeremy: an extremely over the top Kentucky
ass criminal, which like justified,

Jay: like eating.

I don't want to interrupt you,
but did you hear the coming

out with the new justified.

No, I didn't.

Ben: I tried to watch justified, but
then the Walter Goggins character

that everyone says is so charismatic
and fun and wonderful at a whole

speech about how Jews are dirt people.

And I decided I didn't really want
to watch any more of justified

Jay: hadn't Goggins

Jeremy: character is that first, the
first season, he starts off as a like

the bad guy of the show and slowly has a
longterm turn, but I can understand being

turned off by basically neo-Nazis in the

Jay: first season.

I can understand that I can
understand not wanting to be

exposed to that and hear that.

But, there's an arc there, and it's
something that they do the, each

season, the way I think of G of
justified as they're like grand theft

auto bosses, you, you get to a boss
of an island and kill them and arrest

them and move on to the next time.

And that's kind of how
justified plays out.

So it's going to move past that,
but it can be a kind of rough watch.

Jeremy: Yeah.

Yeah.

I think particularly see that I
haven't seen the last couple of

seasons, but seasons three and four
three is the one that, you know,

Neal McDonough's shows up as this.

I, I think he's a, like a gunfighter
and assassin among other things.

But he is absolutely like playing the
whole thing at the level that like

he's playing for the five minutes
that he's new data in this movie.

And like get a season after that, which
is the season to deal with, like race

in Kentucky is really interesting.

But yeah, definitely check out justified.

It's got a great cast of folks and
some really interesting stories in,

the south and I always love, that's
the reason I always get excited when

I see Neal McDonough and things is
that series introduced me to him.

Jay: And , I think seasons two, three,
and four kind of peak justified.

That's like the very best,
even if she's just come in for

either season two or three.

Cause that's how I saw it.

I saw season three, went
back to, to watch for,

Jeremy: It's good stuff.

I'm going to see the rest of it
at some point in some of the list.

to, to go ahead and wrap up here, Jay,
can you let people know where they can

find you and more about your work online?

Jay: Yes, absolutely.

You can find me on Twitter.

You can find my personal
Twitter at @CynicalAngst where.

I talk about general early stuff or
whatever it is on my mind, and I have

a more official one per political
takes that's at Panther uh, uh, shit.

Uh, I completely drew a
blank on my own Twitter.

Uh, or are you gonna just ask me
any time at JJC zero at columbia.com

about film inquiries, educational
inquiries, anything else.

Jeremy: And as for the rest of us, you
can find emily @megamoth on twitter and

mega_moth on instagram and megamall.net.

Ben is on Twitter at @benthekahn, and
you can find them on their website at

Ben Kahn comics, where you can pick
up the brand new immortals, Phoenix,

rising graphic novel, and they're
glad award nominated renegade rule.

And of course the podcast is on
patrion@progressivelyhorrified

on our website and
progressivelyhorrified.Transistor.fm

and on Twitter at @ProgHorrorPod.

We would love to hear from you
please come rate and review the

podcast wherever you listen to it,
we would love a five star review.

It helps us get more listeners, and thanks
again very much to Jay for joining us.

It was great talking to you.

I mean the movie wasn't great, but
the conversation was a lot of fun.

Jay: Thank you for having me.

It was lot of fun.

I don't get to nerd out on Resident
Evil often, so this was a chance for it,

Emily: for sure.

Jeremy: And thanks so much to-
to Ben and Emily as always.

And thank you to all of you for listening
and until next time stay horrified.

Alicia: Progressively horrified
as created by Jeremy Whitley

and produced by Alicia Whitley.

This episode features Jeremy Ben, Emily,
and special guest, Jay Joseph, Jr.

All opinions expressed by the
commentators are solely their own

and do not represent the intent or
opinion of the filmmakers, nor do they

represent the employers, institutions,
or publishers of the commentators.

Our theme music is epic darkness
by Mario Cole of six and was

provided royalty free from Pixabay.

Thanks for listening.