I’m trying to understand why anyone wouldn’t like Resident Evil – my companion didn’t, the people next to us on the escalators didn’t, the critics gave it a firm thumbs down. Admittedly, in spite of all that, it was the first time since Episode 1 that I was in an audience that clapped during a movie (and it wasn’t for Milla’s nude scene).

Could the distaste be for want of a plot? RE has a plot. It’s thin, but it’s not as thin as, say, “terrorists take a bunch of hostages and this one guy has to save everyone else”. The film opens with an introduction to Umbrella Corporation, basically a MegaCorp of cyperpunk proportions. In a massive hidden laboratory beneath Raccoon City, the deadly T-virus is stolen, and the AI in charge of the complex, the Red Queen, kills everyone, simply because it’s the only way to contain the virus. Enter the commando style guys who pick up Milla Jovovich, this-other-guy, and this-other-other-guy. Now, Milla and this-other-guy have lost their memories, putting an additional kink in the plan of the commandos, who, certain only that the Red Queen has gone postal with no way of knowing why, has to enter the complex and shut her mainframe down. See? That’s a plot, and the whole memory loss thing even provides for convoluted non-linearity in a bid for the borderline artistic.

Perhaps it’s the lack of an Action Hero. Possibly, possibly; but Milla is twenty-seven shades of babe in a slinky red dress (now selling on eBay). Besides, ever since the Matrix, fight scenes are more about style than substance, and the movie has got loads of style along with loads of zombies, with superb pacing keeping the blood splattered across the walls.

As best as I can figure, the sole justifiable complaint could be disappointed expectations. Possibly they thought it was a horror flick (as the title implies), or possibly a thriller (as the trailer proposes). Possibly they didn’t realise Resident Evil is based on a video game series – the Asian versions of the series use the name Biohazard, which would probably have been a better title for the movie.

Take the following; Milla’s character is named Alice, the Red Queen is going “off with her head”. The reference is obvious, isn’t it? Therein lies the elegance of the movie; it is a simple, direct experience. You check your brain in at the door and go for a visceral ride of bloody gore. The thrills may be cheap and predictable, but so what? It’s fun watching the cast drop like flies.

An added thrill is for those gamers who actually enjoy the series, with a handful of references to the storyline of the games themselves – something quite notably absent in games-to-movies and comics-to-movies, which usually possess nothing more familiar to the original audience than the main characters. (Surely I cannot be the only one who’s mildly irked when Hollywood takes a license for its branding and proceeds to ignore the people who made the brand worth licensing in the first place.) RE the movie actually fits in as a prequel to RE the game series.

Unlike the last evil MegaCorp movie I saw, Rollerball, Resident Evil provides all the classic B-grade horror goodness with an adrenaline shot of action, sleek sfx and cool monsters, and Milla looking much better than you’ve ever seen her before.