These two pieces that I’m talking about today have nothing to do with one another, besides the fact I experienced both of them recently. I suppose seeing / reading both so close to one another is a little fortuitous, because just the titles sound somewhat related. And I suppose it would be natural for Evil to Reside in a Dead Zone (*sardonic chuckle*).
But, truthfully, The Dead Zone would be an odd pairing for Resident Evil if I hadn’t just read it. It isn’t really a horror book, more like a supernatural thriller. Protagonist Johnny Smith (no, really) has shown latent psychic abilities since an ice skating accident when he was 6 years old, but it isn’t until years later when adult Johnny suffers a head injury in a car crash that his ability to see the future through psychometry develops. Of course, he gains fame, well, notoriety once his abilities are proven to be true and he ends up involved in a political assassination plot and the hunt for a serial killer. Honestly, not a bad plot, landing somewhere between John Hinckley Jr., the Silence of the Lambs and Psych, with the massive exception that Johnny Smith’s powers are real, unlike Shawn Spencer.
According to Stephen King, the impetus for the book was the question “what if Lee Harvey Oswald was the good guy?” You might wonder then when I compared the protagonist to John Hinkley Jr. then, since the book was published three years before his attempt on Reagan, and my answer would actually spoil the book if you’re interested in reading it. If you have read it, you’ll understand why. And no, the answer is not that Johnny Smith had an obsession with Jodie Foster, or any other woman for that matter (his one relationship ended satisfactorily, and the woman he loved was merely a good friend and had nothing to do with the murder, per my reading.) No, he just had a terrifying vision of the future where an up and coming populist, independent but leaning right politician gaining the presidency and igniting the nuclear apocalypse. The more things change.
You might ask yourself, outside of the eerie parallels to real life, does this book have any value? Well, yeah as it happens. The first notable thing for me is that this book has one of the best endings in the Stephen King canon. I put that down to the fact that he knew exactly where the story was going instead of just pantsing it as he usually does. The second thing for me is the very human story that runs underneath the plot. Johnny’s abilities are born through trauma, and are therefore manifestations of his pain. The book’s thesis that living with those abilities isn’t pleasant is ... fairly realistic to me. I don’t imagine it would be pleasant to get never-ending fan mail from people you’ve never heard of demanding a psychic explanation for some bullshit problem. I don’t think having your name dragged through the media mud is very pleasant, not to mention experiencing the pain and horror that a serial killer’s victim felt just by touching the ground they died on. Can you imagine the trauma of knowing what would happen if an insane man took the highest office in the country? (OK that one might be more relatable.)
It’s not a perfect book. if I had to nitpick one issue, I think this story is a prime candidate for King’s inconsistent approach to religion. If you’re at all familiar with his body of work, you know Stephen King has the tendency to dunk on fundamentalism quite a bit, and I think we can all agree with that. However, he is also a religious man and whenever he writes a ‘good’ religious person, they tend to have a connection to the supernatural that isn’t obvious to all characters, the most notable example being John Coffey in the Green Mile. The problem for me is that it’s hard time tell his cranks from his earnest believers. The Dead Zone features a significant character who believes Johnny Smith’s gift means that God has a plan for him, some great work that Johnny must do. As it happens, this character is correct... but they’re written like a complete nutcase and, well, they are. It’s hard to see where King is coming from is my point. Another gripe is that the obvious answer to King’s “what if Lee Harvey Oswald was the good guy” question is to make the target of the assassination the bad guy and while that’s the obvious answer, I was hoping we’d get a little bit more nuance.
Issues aside, The Dead Zone is a fantastic read. King’s great talent as a writer has always resided in sharing his fears and hope through through his characters and pain through his monsters. Here, his monsters are ordinary humans, his heroes also somewhat resemble monsters, at least from the outside. It’s a thematically rich novel and, I think, one of King’s best.
Resident Evil then. Good movie about all sums it up.
I know you’re hoping for more, but really, I’m having a hard time saying anything else. Like Mad Max Fury Road, its a very simple “get to the place” plot, and the story isn’t all that complex. The main character, medical courier Bryan (Austin Abrams in a fantastic performance) is your ordinary guy in a tight spot. He’s in the middle of a complicated fight with his newly pregnant girlfriend, he doesn’t make a lot of money, and his car clearly needs replaced. So of course he jumps at the opportunity to make double his usual commission transporting a mysterious bio-hazard to the mountain secluded Raccoon City, and from there he runs deeper and deeper into a nightmarish odyssey where he cannot possibly be paid enough to cover the shit he deals with.
If you’re familiar with the videogames this movie is based off you might have some issues. The movie’s story is set concurrently with the second game, yet there are continuity snarls. It wasn’t snowing for one, none the game’s major characters appear, and the people that Bryan works with are the villains of the entire game series. Is this a problem?
No, absolutely not. The movie was never billed as a direct adaptation, just a story set in the Resident Evil universe. Hell, more often than not previous adaptions of the RE franchise have failed because they focused on looking good and trying to add more to the game’s lore (and because they gave the directorial / story writing reins to notable failure Paul W.S. Anderson {Legally distinct from Paul Thomas Anderson [I’m shitting on the previous movies, but they are kind of fun in the ‘so-bad-they’re-good-way.]})
The new movie’s first priority is being a horror movie and it’s really damn good that. Zach Cregger and Shay Hatten’s script is focused on emulating the survival horror spirit of the games, taking appropriate influence, and some visual references, but never just repeating or adding ideas as previous movies had done. It’s a taught, 90 minutes horror-thriller without an ounce of fat on the story, and one of the best horror soundtracks of the year (seriously, the main title theme is AMAZING. Reminiscent of Ennio Morricone’s soundtrack for The Thing, but also being it’s own creature.)
I haven’t wanted to talk too much about director Zach Cregger because, while he’s 3/3 movies so far, I don’t want this movie to be framed as a ‘Cregger’ discussion if that makes sense. It should, and I think it will, stand on it’s own. Obviously, Zach Cregger’s style and skill as a director has a lot to do with the movie’s success and you can’t separate him from it. Hell, I think Cregger and his movie Barbarian are probably one of the reasons horror films are having a bit of a renaissance right now. But I hope it’s understood that the highest compliment I can pay this movie is that it stands out from Cregger’s filmography as its own thing. Barbarian and Weapons were fantastic movies, and Resident Evil is great too, I wish Cregger all the best in his next endeavors.
If I do have any criticisms of the movie, I'd say it could have pushed the game's anti-corporate subtext a bit more. The games have always had cartoony, over-the-top villains who engage in corporate villainy so absurd it could only work in a video game (well, it seemed that way until the last couple of years. Or if you know some of the things Nestle has done.) Here, the villainous corporation seems to be made up mostly of scientists who we don't know well enough to determine their level of responsibility. I feel like Cregger could have made more of the game's anti-corporate subtext, but given that this is an action horror movie, I'll let it slide. I also wish Cregger had reined in some of his comedy instincts. Most of his jokes land, but one scene in particular goes on too long.
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| I do not own either image, just used for illustrations |
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