Hollywood really has to stop trying too hard.

Just because a movie has lots of bangs, blood and babes doesn't mean that it is good. The latest in this cycle-of-suck is Resident Evil, another film written by video game producers.

Hollywood hottie Milla Jovovich stars as Alice, who wakes up naked with amnesia in the shower right before a futile and quick boob shot. Throughout the movie, she is trying to figure out what is going on. Funny, I was thinking the same thing too -- especially when I saw a train station in her basement.

In sum, Alice is the whistle blower of the Umbrella Corporation, the politically influential bioengineering conglomerate whose top-secret research into the deadly T-virus has gone too far. After a special forces team drags her into a vast underground lair of zombies, Alice ends up dragging them out of there.

Just about every five seconds someone screams "Oh my God, We're all gonna die!" or "What's going on?" But the latter question is never really explained until 30 minutes into the 75-minute movie. And it's not just those lines that torch the movie's promising plot. Dialogue between characters is short and monotonic, like talking robots. Jovovich's acting stands tall over that of her co-stars, Michelle Rodriguez and everyone else, but that doesn't say much and neither does Jovovich in the movie.

One thing I would like to know is why the moviemakers decide that Jovovich should wear a red, satin, string-strap dress and high black leather boots into combat with flesh-famished zombies. But I won't question director Paul W.S. Anderson's busy camera work and lighting schemes, which keep viewers on the edges of their seats much better than the predictable scares and redundant echoing metallic sound effects.

Since I'm as unoriginal as Resident Evil, here's my David Spade imitation: I liked this movie the first time I saw it, when it was called Night of the Living Dead.

-- Reviewed by Mike Caggeso