The Claustrophobic Cinema of Paul (W.S.) Anderson

In defense of the arguably worst-reviewed director of the past decade.

After “Soldier” flopped, Anderson went back to his basics, a video game adaptation set in the tight quarters of an underground biological warfare lab. The result was “Resident Evil” (2002), for which he wrote his first screenplay since “Shopping.” He received a modest $30 million budget from the German company Constantin Films (a relationship that has continued through “Pandorum”), and he churned out a beautifully controlled piece of zombie mayhem.

An amnesiac Alice (Milla Jovovich) goes down a corporate rabbit hole to a facility that produces the T-Virus, an experimental weapon that happens to turn dour government types into drooling brain eaters. Aided by a brusque security team and an enigmatic artificial intelligence named the Red Queen, Alice tries to lead the troops back to the surface. Anderson told Collider that “I’ve always liked strong women characters in films. When I first came to Hollywood, there was this kind of rule that was expounded by several people within the industry that I heard many times that female led action movies don’t work.” He continues to prove them wrong.

The casting of Jovovich was especially fortuitous. Her piercing blue-green eyes open the film, while her brusque line readings and lithe athleticism carry it to its close. You can’t blame W.S. (this is where he adopts the initials, the same year as that other Paul Anderson’s “Punch-Drunk Love”) for falling in love with her. (They were married in real life this past August.) Successful enough to inspire two sequels, the “Resident Evil” trilogy is a bloody, oozing love letter to Ms. Jovovich, keeping the camera close to her expressively stony face as she dropkicks zombie dogs, incinerates mutated crows and slices through the rest. She bottles her desperation up into a twinge at the side of her mouth, and grows increasingly jaded in each iteration of the series as the world edges closer to dissolution. It’s a profoundly pessimistic franchise.

Anderson wrote all three entries, but handed off directing duties to the sequels as the landscapes expanded beyond his favored darkened corridors. He carefully matched locales with genres, so 2004′s “Resident Evil: Apocalypse”‘s action-film ethos is set in the teeming urban warfare of Raccoon City, handled with speed and aplomb by Alexander Witt, a second unit director for “The Bourne Identity” and “Casino Royale.” For the third film, 2007′s “Extinction,” Anderson pairs the wide-open desert spaces surrounding Las Vegas with a spaghetti western element (as well as a thrilling “Birds” homage), outfitting Jovovich in a duster and leather boots, and bringing back “Mortal Kombat”‘s Linden Ashby to play a sharpshooting cowboy. Russell Mulcahy (“Highlander”) was tapped as the director, and his visual scheme of airy long shots, subordinating the characters to the emptied out horizon lines, is very effective in conveying the debilitating spread of the virus.

The “Resident Evil” trilogy is Anderson’s greatest accomplishment, and appropriately for his aims, it’s a modest one. They are nasty, brutish and short pieces of genre business, infused with lively character performances, resourceful production design and a bracingly downbeat worldview, all anchored by the unfussy bulldozer performances of Jovovich. His other directorial project in this period, 2004′s “Alien vs. Predator,” brought in more money than any of the “Evils,” but it’s a muddle in comparison, a joyless exercise in geometrical gore. “The Dark,” a ghost story he produced in ’05, is a far superior slice of Andersonian claustrophobia. Directed by John Fawcett, it’s a classically structured horror film that moves with sinuous tracking shots around a collapsing family, constructing a vision of hell out of candle wax and unlit rooms.

He found himself on solid footing again with “Death Race” (2008). With a small budget, dour stars (a superb Jason Statham and Joan Allen), a minimum of CGI and a maximum of twisted steel, it’s as fleet footed as “AvP” is sluggish. The booby-trapped race track might be his most sadistic work in a confined space yet, centering on a demolition derby with video game inspired power-ups to juice the carnage. Allen is especially menacing as another of Anderson’s fascistic overlords, leaning in to intimidate her prey with a low, gruff whisper before flipping the switch that snaps their necks. This is also what Mr. Paul W. S. Anderson does best. He keeps it close, keeps it moving, and then something goes boom.

[Additional photos: Jude Law in "Shopping," New Horizons, 1994; Kurt Russell in "Soldier," Warner Bros., 1998; Maria Bello in "The Dark," Constantin Film, 2005]

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