Resident Evil is a great stress test for my unified transmedia theory! That’s redundant, but I’d like to emphasize my concern here. In any given entry in the long-running zombie series, you’ll see inappropriate martial arts, superpowers, pretty boys, meme-making dialogue, boulder-punching, and a bestiary of such zoological scope it’s breathtaking. In that regard, it’s far closer to Pokémon than most movies of its ilk and their galdern, premature satisfaction with the simple zombo. So much to say, Resident Evil is weird. The seventh mainline installment was framed as a soft reboot, stripping the franchise of its outsized and iconic elements for a renewed horror experience. In the meanwhile, we’ve had a string of remakes, concerted attempts to shape the amorphous form toward a singular vision. With Resident Evil Village, it seems like my fears are unfounded, that the true roots of the game remain important to its producers — the reckless strangeness. No aesthetic is out of place — every disjointed outfit is prom-ready — no plot requires a straight line. Of course, I’m a dreaming man, and not all those dreams are about nine-foot-tall ladies. No, the height varies.
Recently, I raised this point with Stella on her vidcast Batgirl to Oracle as part of a wide-ranging Resident Evil Village discussion. I may out myself as a fake fan, but Stella rolls with it. I can only ask of you a similar mercy. Check out part one of our talk below:
With Eyes East 