Featured Image Credit: Netflix
Topics: Film and TV, Netflix
Joe Harker
The reviews for Netflix's new Resident Evil show are in, and it's not good news at all.
Times are pretty tough for Netflix at the moment, what with the streaming service losing a chunk of subscribers and expected to lose even more.
In response to the hot water it's in, the platform is going to introduce a cheaper tier of subscription where viewers have to sit through adverts.
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To convince people to keep watching they're going to have to keep a strong roster of shows that draw in audiences from far and wide, but sadly it seems like Resident Evil isn't going to be one of those.
The show has been attracting lukewarm reviews from critics and taken an absolute battering from audiences, who aren't happy with what they're seeing.
On Rotten Tomatoes the series currently has a 'rotten' rating with just 51 percent of critics giving the Netflix show a positive review.
Meanwhile, on Metacritic the aggregate score of critic reviews puts the show at 53 out of 100, suggesting Resident Evil is a middling show that is probably not going to be the next big thing.
Even worse than the critic reviews is the reception Resident Evil has received from audiences, with almost universally low scores for the series.
The Rotten Tomatoes audience score indicates that only 25 percent of viewers liked it, while the aggregate viewer score on Metacritic has it at a miserable 1.9 out of 10.
That is really bad news for the Netflix adaptation of the popular video games and some of the viewers are slating the series for deviating from the plots laid down in the games to tell a different story.
One of the reasons behind these perilously low scores is that Resident Evil has been review bombed by fans of the long-running video game series.
However, the lukewarm response from critics suggests that there are plenty of legitimate reasons to stay away from Resident Evil when flicking through the streaming service looking for something to fill that Stranger Things-shaped hole in your life.
It's one thing for a show or film to be attacked by a vocal minority of people watching it who take to the internet to give it a bad score, but if praise from professional critics is faint that's often a bad sign.
While there is a vocal part of the viewership that has taken against Resident Evil, what determines whether it gets renewed for a second season by Netflix will be the number of viewers it pulls in.
Whether it gets renewed to continue the story for future seasons is something only time, and Netflix bosses, will tell.
Resident Evil is streaming now on Netflix.
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