Regurgitative reboot news: Resident Evil returns from the already living

By Michelle Welch | September 9, 2009 | 8:22pm

Aux Features Film

According to the goreheads at BloodyDisgusting.com, the studio behind the Resident Evil series has confirmed with the website their intentions to give the flesh-eater franchise starring Milla Jovovich a solid Etch A Sketch shake, rebooting with a “fresh” take on crack military special ops teams battling a supercomputer and the lab coat-wearing undead. Potentially titled Resident Evil Begins (original!), this fifth—or first?—film will follow next summer’s Resident Evil: Afterlife, and will most likely not feature Milla Jovovich in her role as Alice. This does, however, offer the studio an opportunity to make a film—or a whole new franchise—that bears a closer resemblance to the videogame series’ original story, with several memorable characters on hand to lock and load as our new heroes.

Be that as it may, we must ask Sony Screen Gems one simple question: Isn’t this too soon? This is a franchise begun in 2002 that is still alive and kicking, though formulaic as fuck. Are new characters in a well-worn plot able to breathe life into a series that hasn’t even made it into the ground to rot yet? Seriously. You have to wait for the dead to be dead before you can raise them.