Walking spunk-magnet Ali Larter has signed on to star in Resident Evil 3: Eck Stink Shun, the next movie in the series that has consistently lowered the bar for video game adaptations to the point that I ended up giving Doom a good review last year.
Larter plays Claire, a character who I read was introduced in the second game. I couldn’t tell you; I’ve played the RE games, but their shitty storylines, based on excruciatingly dumb puzzles and unbelievably incomprehensible camera angles, never managed to take hold in my memory. In the movie Claire is leading a convoy through the desert and ends up fighting the evil Umbrella Corporation, aided by Alice, who I thought died at the end of the last one, but I was so punch drunk by that point I couldn’t tell you what was really happening on screen versus what was my mind creating a false reality to save its own sanity.
I was going to say that maybe I’m being too judgmental about RE3, but then I looked at the IMDB and saw that Russell Mulcahy is directing – yes, the man behind Highlander 2: The Quickening, the movie that Human Rights Watch sued to have removed from the screening schedule at Guantanamo Bay’s Camp X-Ray.
The Russell Mulcahy story is really one of uplift – every time I make a horrific mistake in real life, like pushing an old lady in front of the 4 train, or I think that if Mulcahey could come back from Highlander 2 and still get hired to make movies, there’s hope of redemption for all of us.
But don’t cry for me, Paul WS Anderson fans. Before the men in white coats come to round you up, take comfort in the fact that while the hack will not be helming this one himself, he did write the screenplay. This collision of "talents" could make Resident Evil 3 the kind of movie that could tempt the Mystery Science Theater 3000 crew out of retirement.