George Romero's Resident Evil (2024)

This is going to be an odd place to start but there is a moment in George A. Romero’s Resident Evil, A Documentary that I started to sob because in that moment I connected to the story that was being told on screen so much that even though the person on screen caught them self and didn’t cry as their voice cracked with emotion I simply let the water works go. The moment was when director George Demick  spoke about  how when he was still a kid they met with George Romero  we was so over come with emotion that he couldn’t speak and his mother spoke for him, and he was so embarrassed that he walked into a wall.  Romero  checked on him and then told the future director to write down his questions and then come spend an afternoon with him. It was a moment that changed one young man’s life – and in it I saw also the moments of my life when I got to meet the people who are important to me

Now while that is a minor moment, and probably one you would never notice, in a film about a film that never happened, but it is a moment that shows you why I like this film so much. I like it because while the film is nominally about a film, it never loses sight of the fact that the film is actually about the director who changed movies and whose life and work changed everyone around him or ever saw his movies. We care about what would have Romero's version of Resident Evil, because of the man and not because of what the property was.

Backing up, the film is nominally the story of how George Romero was tapped in the late 1990’s to try and turn the video game Resident Evil into a movie. The film charts the history of the video game, how filmmakers came calling and why they turned to the man who changed the zombie genre into what we know today to make a film. And while the film largely is the story of the attempt to make the film as well as an explanation of what that film would have been, the film is also a love letter to George. It’s a film that shows us why people loved him and still love his films today and why people want to know what he would have done. It’s a film that shows us what might have been and why it never was.

This is a really wonderful film. While it isn't going to connect to some people, horror movie fans, fans of films about films or films about lost works are going to love this.

Recommended.