Last week, I watched latest Resident Evil movie: Afterlife. And the only possible explanation for it is that director Paul W. S. Anderson just saw that cool new Matrix film everyone’s been talking about and thought it was totally, like, rad!

This movie doesn’t just borrow bullet time – it has a permanently-sunglassed character doing a bad impression of Hugo Weaving’s Agent Smith. It also steals liberally from Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead remake, and Del Toro’s Blade 2, and maybe even a little Akira for good measure.

It’s like Anderson is making fan-fiction versions of his favourite scenes from others’ films. But unlike the “movie as bingo card” self-aware bravura of Tarantino, the Resident Evil series seems to take itself absolutely, stone-faced seriously…

…and that’s why I so enjoyed the company of the two strangers sitting next to me.

As a critic, you get used to media screenings. There’s only ever a handful of you in the cinema, you’re barely forced to sit through previews, and it’s hard to get a real, rousing wave of crowd reaction. This screening, though, was filled with competition winners. That meant there were people attending who’d never usually find themselves watching a sort-of-zombie film. But hey, it’s free! And in 3D!

Sitting to my left were two women, mid-50s if I had to guess, chatting blithely through the film’s first ten minutes. I was getting ready to respond to this with the usual Hulk-like rage when their interactions shifted into three neat categories:

One: asking questions. Not of each other, but of the film itself. “Who is that?” “What is she doing?” I kept expecting the movie to quietly achieve sentience, Skynet-style, and respond from the front of the theatre. “I intend to answer your questions,” it would say, “using the unfolding narrative of the film itself!”

Two: making vague, obvious predictions. How vague and obvious? “Something’s going to happen!” one whispered to the other. When something did, indeed, happen, she added: “Told you.”

Three: clutching each other in absolute freaking make-it-stop terror every single time the movie offered up a sudden shock. I’m not as much of a hardcore horror-buff as some, but like most fans of the genre, I’m usually fairly unscareable. Resident Evil: Afterlife is barely a horror film; it’s more an action / sci-fi with ‘boo!’ moments throughout. Soon enough, though, every time they jumped out of their skin I found myself doing the same.

I’d forgotten that fear is contagious, just like laughter.