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The first Resident Evil movie was released on March 15, 2022, and it was a great small horror movie, although it wasn’t anything like the video game, other than just having similar monsters. That said, it was a solid, scary movie that morphed into a completely over-the-top movie franchise that at some points paid homage to the game, and at others, went completely off the rails.
Resident Evil Became a Success Despite Bad Reviews
Released on March 15, 2022, the first Resident Evil movie had almost nothing to do with the video games, as it featured an original character named Alice (Milla Jovovich) who woke up to find the outbreak of zombies and monsters from the powerful Umbrella Corporation. The only connection was the Umbrella Corporation and the monsters, but the film made Alice the new face of the movie, and it somehow worked. The movie had some gory and inventive kills, and both Jovovich and co-star Michelle Rodriguez as Rain were fantastic in their roles as the leads fighting and killing the monsters.
However, critics hated the movie, and it sits with a 36% score on Rotten Tomatoes. Looking at the critical score made it look like another video game movie was dead in the water. That said, the audience score was 67%, and while that wasn’t very high, it was a lot higher than the critical score, as many audience members appreciated the horror aspects of the film. This first film made $103 million worldwide on a $33 million budget. While not big by today’s standards, it led the studio to attempt a franchise.
That worked perfectly. By the end, there were six movies in the main Resident Evil franchise with Milla Jovovich as the lead star from the beginning to the end in Resident Evil: The Final Chapter in 2017. The last movie was even the highest-grossing of the franchise, with $314 million worldwide, with the budget remaining low at $40 million. Not one single movie had positive critical reviews, with the first the second highest and the last the highest rating, at only 37% rotten. However, there is a chance that things could turn around critically in 2026.
