The problem with the Resident Evil films from the fans point of view, is that they made a concious decision to abandon the games story line and let them go in their own direction with Alice and that whole plot line. As reflected by Jill's exclaiming in the second film of, "Who the fuck are you!" when she first meets Alice, which was obviously put in there because that was exactly what fans were thinking when they were first introduced to Alice in the first film. I actually enjoyed them well enough as crappy zombie flicks. I wasn't that into RE when the first two movies came out, though I was familiar with them and had played them some. It was RE4 that really got me invested in the series, which to most RE fans would place me in the category of "not a true fan" since the hardcore RE guys tend to say RE4 and RE5 such as REs.
I think the movies would have been more interesting had they stuck closer to the original story. The "haunted mansion" that turns out to be more than meets the eye, the hidden laboratory build underneath it and all that were really cool ideas. The first two games (haven't played much of 3 or Code:V) were very claustrophobic, which really added to the tension. I think this could have been translated well to screen. Instead, we have a very nice and clean spacious mansion, and a huge laboratory with plenty of room to move around in.
Like I said, I didn't find the movies to be as awful as most people do. I guess I tolerate them for what they are. But I dream of what could have been, had they chosen to follow the games even to a slight degree. Ideally the first three films would have been adaptions of the first and second game, followed by Code: Veronica.
I think the reason video game films always stray so far from their source is because film makers feel that they don't what to show the fans something they have already seen. Which is crazy, because that is EXACTLY what the fans are looking for. We have no problem showing readers stories they have already read in books with book to film adaptions, and no problem remaking old films that people have seen hundreds of times before. So I am not sure why this kind of thinking persists with video games movies.
Especially today, when games are incredibly cinematic to begin with, just makes sense that should much more easily be adapted to film.