My advice: If you have Netflix and you’re into zombie films, skip the new Resident Evil series and watch the Spanish zombie flick Valley of the Dead.

That’s right: Spain!  It seems America ain’t doing so well with zombie films lately.  Army of the Dead was so-so at best.  World War Z was at least fun enough to be rewatchable, and the zombie towers were kind of cool.  But the Japanese are the ones making the good Resident Evil television; the last great zombie movie was probably Train to Busan out of South Korea (a country of 52 million punching well above its weight in cultural influence); and the last good zombie movie is Valley of the Dead from Spain.

Not that I’m an expert or anything–there are probably a zillion zombie movies I haven’t seen, and we should probably keep it that way.

Speaking of keeping it that way, let’s get back to Resident Evil.

Oh, and be warned: Various spoilers follow!

The New Resident Evil Series

Zombies are jerks.

It’s live-action.  It’s on Netflix.  It’s eight episodes so far.

First things first: From what I can gather (as one who’s never played the games and hasn’t seen all the films and tv shows), there are at least three different Resident Evil fictional universes.  There’s Resident Evil Storyline 1, portrayed in the games, in a Japanese animated film series, and in the Japanese Netflix show Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness.  Then there’s Resident Evil Storyline 2, the story in a six-film series featuring the zombiepocalypse, superpowered zombie slayer Alice, and her war against the Umbrella Corporation.  Then there’s Resident Evil Storyline 3, the story in the new Netflix series Resident Evil.

Oh, and then there’s Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, the new movie I haven’t seen–and we should probably keep it that way.  I don’t even know if it’s in one of the other storylines.  Maybe there are four different storylines. Sheesh.

Second things second: The new Netflix series is not without its merits, chief of which is Lance Reddick, a very respectable actor who does what he can to make a fairly lousy series as good as possible.  Reddick earned our undying respect in Fringe if he didn’t already have it from Lost.  And if we wanted to mine the darkness for light, we could probably find some very sensible reflections about cloning, surrogate motherhood, and technologies that alter human nature for the benefit of the powers that be.

And third things third: I think I hate the new series. I’m quitting after the third episode, probably permanently.  The term “torture porn” comes to mind, but it’s not exactly torture porn.  It’s something else–despair porn, maybe.  It’s just so dark, with very little of anything else.

By contrast, Stranger Things can be dark–oh, so dark!  But at least there are friends and family you can fight for in that world, and maybe you can even hope to win!  Characters grow, with hope for it being worth it in the end.  And Stranger Things is also one thing the Resident Evil series just isn’t: a good story well told.

It’s hard to explain why I don’t think Resident Evil is a good story.  It’s hard to point out aspects of the story that are bad; I just don’t notice a lot of aspects that are good–unlike Stranger Things.  It leaves me with the impression that someone wanted to take a basic Resident Evil premise–the Umbrella Corporation makes zombies in Raccoon City!–and squeeze as much darkness as possible out of it.

Let’s try two comparisons.  The six-film saga of Alice in the film series was incredibly ridiculous, not fully coherent, and actually pretty fun.  Don’t ask the makers of Resident Evil: Apocalypse how exactly Alice knew to drive her motorcycle into the church through the stained-glass window so she could acrobat her way off of it and shoot its fuel tanks to rescue the other characters who were in the church at the time.

But don’t tell me that rescue wasn’t fun.

At the end of the most grueling semester of my entire undergraduate career, a movie like that was perfect.  This was a thoroughly ridiculous film series where one felt like exciting zombie fights with rock music were waiting around every corner!

Our new Netflix Resident Evil doesn’t bother with fun zombie fights with rock music.  Instead we get to see horrible monsters–or Umbrella, but I repeat myself–gruesomely kill off all the side-characters while heroine Jade runs and survives somehow, rarely even fighting.  And the music that sticks in one’s memory is some ridiculous pop-music wrapped around teen-girl drama exaggerated by a dark origin story about cloning.

Compare this to the Japanese film series and its companion animated series Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness, which should switch names with the new live-action series.  The Japanese animated films are very dark, but there is hope.  If I’m not mistaken, nothing from Resident Evil Storyline 1 tells us of Umbrella actually destroying the world, or of a global zombiepocalypse.  Zombie outbreaks happen, human-altering biotech makes various monsters, good guys fight it, and threat after threat is actually contained.

And the good guys are heroes.  Leon Kennedy is a light shining in a dark place. So are his allies Chris Redfield, Claire Redfield, and Rebecca Chambers.  In Resident Evil: Damnation, after losing an unlikely friend to the monsters, Leon makes a new friend out of an enemy, shooting a parasite right out of his body.  Leon’s action leaves the guy paralyzed, but saves his life and his soul.  The guy’s last appearance shows his return to a peaceful, edifying life teaching kids in his war-torn corner of Europe.  Building a future.

Jade is sort of a hero in Resident Evil, but does not display the nobility of Leon, Claire, Chris, and Rebecca.  And then there’s the fun.  In Resident Evil: Vendetta, Leon and Chris Redfield work together to shoot up a small army of zombies, and watching them work is all the pleasure of watching a perfectly choreographed swordfight or kung fu battle–not any less fun because it’s animated. I didn’t find that kind of fun in the new series.

Valley of the Dead

Little jerks!

Valley of the Dead also has fun.  A nun takes out zombies with a shotgun.  That’s fun.

Two guys from opposite sides of the Spanish Civil War are locked in a truck waiting for the zombies to break in.  Finding they have a box of explosives behind them, a stick of dynamite in one guy’s pocket, and a live cigarette in the other guy’s mouth, they go down in a blaze of glory, taking a small zombie army with them.

That’s fun.  And it’s hopeful, too: Their last words are, as I recall:

First guy: Long live Spain!

Second guy: Which one? Yours or mine?

First guy: Whichever one survives all this!

Indeed.

It turns out that the Communist team was in league with the Soviets, who were developing a zombie formula even as the Nazis, working with the Fascist team, perfected the formula first.  Which side did survive?  Our present moment in the real world provides some perspective on the fictional deaths of people who, through fighting a common enemy in zombies, found a common love of their homeland.  Apparently neither side survived, but Spain did, and it has a better government now–without any zombies!

Now I won’t say Valley of the Dead is a great movie.  Nor was it trying to be.  It doesn’t take itself too seriously, unlike the new Resident Evil show.  Its only goal was to imagine the Nazis making zombies during the Spanish Civil War and having some people from both sides team up to fight them.  A movie like that could easily go full Sharknado–or full Zombie Tidal Wave, which was also kind of fun.  Or it could be just be a semi-serious drama/action movie that’s actually pretty fun.

They made it fun by not taking themselves too seriously, and instead taking storytelling seriously using tried-and-true methods.  They make good use of the grizzled Sergeant, of the unlikely-allies-team-up-to-destroy-a-common-enemy motif, and of the loveable rogue who steps up to the challenge and becomes a hero.  They make good use of a bit of playful romance with kissing, but no sex (at least not on-screen).  There’s a good use of natural location–a valley in Spain, a river, trees, sunlight.

And that’s a final contrast to draw with the new Resident Evil: Like some other dark, fancy shows that try too hard, Resident Evil just doesn’t do natural light.  It’s mostly darkened zombiepocalypse rubblescapes and tunnels, or ridiculously clean glass walls and white rooms uncomfortably bathed in fluorescent lighting.

I suppose there’s a lesson in that, one where both of our new zombie film projects come together:

When people get a G-d complex and try to remake the world, they start with banishing the world made by the actual G-d, and they end up with their own manmade hellscape.  As the nun in Valley of the Dead observes, this isn’t a biblical resurrection; the only thing the walking dead have to do with G-d is that someone is trying to be him.  Valley of the Dead respects both Muslims and Catholics, and it honors Spain and the beauty of the world we have.  It shows humans and the world for what they are–flawed, cussing, and in dire need of improvement.  While Resident Evil portrays a nightmarish and largely hopeless portrayal of the use of technology to redesign humanity according to the whims of the most selfish among us, Valley of the Dead portrays a better way. It suggests we’d do better to stick with the G-d we have, enjoy the world we’ve been given by G-d and by our ancestors, and try to make it better through the more reliable means of love, courage, and self-sacrifice.