The first season of the brand new Resident Evil series has just landed on Netflix. And as much to say that the reviews are far from being laudatory. The show also records a catastrophic score on Rotten Tomatoes, the famous aggregator of ratings and opinions on films and series.
Except for rare cases like Christophe Gans’ Silent Hill or the Arkane series, adaptations of video games on the small/big screen have never really been happy. Despite everything, more and more streaming platforms are entering this dangerous territory. We are still waiting for HBO’s The Last of Us series for 2023, while a Bioshock film is in preparation at Netflix.
As for Resident Evil, it is one of the most suitable video game licenses for the screen, especially with the saga initiated by Paul WS Anderson. However, Netflix launched this July 14, 2022 a brand new series inspired by the horrifying universe of Capcom.
Available in full for a few days so, the first opinions on the show begin to multiply on the web. And as much to say that the reviews are far from rave generally. However, there was hope as Netflix’s proposal seemed to move away from the usual shackles. Indeed, the streaming service had announced that it wanted propose an “original” scenario centered on the two daughters of Albert Wesker, the iconic villain of the saga.
The Netflix series Resident Evil crashes in style
But it is clear that the bet is far from being held, as evidenced by the scores of the Resident Evil series on the famous aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. In effect, the show obtains the average score of 51% regarding press reviews. As for the opinions of the public, the disavowal is even stronger, with a disastrous score of 25% so far.
Critics mostly point fingers the weakness of the scenario, hollow characters and clichéd situations as possible, without forgetting references to games bombarded for no real reasonexcept that of pleasing the hardcore fans of the license (to the detriment of any scriptwriting logic).
“I consider this another failed Umbrella experiment.” shouts Brian Tallerico of RogerEbert.com. “Set in the present and the future, the series isn’t particularly engaging in either time frame, and feels less like an evolution and more like an uninspired variation on what came before it. assures Brian Lowry of CNN.
On the public side, the opinions are just as radical : “No RE characters, no RE lore. Basically, a teen drama with zombies. The characters they gave us are boring and stupid. The script for this series is poorly written. It’s hard to watch…” summarizes a user. Faced with this avalanche of devastating criticism, it is difficult to envisage the production of a season 2. We will have to wait for an official statement from Netflix to find out more.