Rating (from metacritic.com): 35/100
Storyline (from IMDB.com):
Alice awakes in Raccoon City, only to find it has become infested with zombies and monsters. With the help of Jill Valentine and Carlos Olivera, Alice must find a way out of the city before it is destroyed by a nuclear missile.
Source: My personal collection
Review:
First thing first; I’m a fan of the Resident Evil games. I played the first two and loved them. It was because of them that I really understood why people liked zombies, and helped me catch the zombie bug. So, when I heard there were movies coming out, I had a faint feeling of hope, before I remembered this was coming from Hollywood, who seems to be unable to transfer things to the Big Screen without fucking something up.
Before you get all bent out of shape, I do enjoy some comic book or video game movies. But, I think everyone out there can agree that not all of them are well done. For example, you have Alone In The Dark and the Super Mario Bros. Two movies that had almost nothing to do with the games they shared titles with. And, it took two viewings and my friend explaining that The Hive in the first Resident Evil movie was suppose to be the lab we see in the second game.
If you’re wondering why I’m reviewing this movie instead of the first one, it’s because I only own this one, and don’t really feel the need to watch the first one again. I also plan on watching and reviewing the 4th one, and I would rather swallow a running chainsaw than watch the third one again. My review of the 3rd one would be this: This Movie Sucks. And, since I’m watching the 4th one, I figured I should refresh my memory of the series.
This was, so far, the best movie in the Resident Evil series. It’s the Aliens to the Resident Evil’s Alien, as in an action/horror sequel to a horror movie. It also expands the universe by quite a bit, showing just how big, bad, and nasty Umbrella is… Hmm, very much like Weyland-Yunati corporation in Aliens. To follow this thread a bit, both Alien and Resident Evil have strong female leads, in which she’s the sole survivor (or so it appears), and is the only character to make it into the next movie. In the sequels, the female lead must lead a group to survive a disaster caused by the evil corporation, and they end up saving a little girl. Okay, maybe I stretched it a bit, but there are quite a few parallels between the two franchises, including having the third movie that almost killed the franchise…
Okay, okay, let’s do a real review now. The movie picks up shortly after the first one, we don’t know how long, but I guess it’s less than a year. We see The Hive being reopened and things going to merry hell in a handbag. We see that in less than a day, the infection has spread to critical levels. How does this happen? I have no idea, they don’t give us anything to go on. Somehow, Umbrella manages to put up a wall around the city, without any explanation about how they did it, or how they got the approval to do so. Then, they seal the city and everyone inside is left to die. Okay… That’s kinda… Not possible, but it’s a video game movie, so I let it slide the first time I saw it. The really good parts are when Jill and Carlos get introduced, making the people who played the games cheer. I thought Jill was well played, but her character is overshadowed by Alice, played by Mila Jovovich. And, Mila Jovovich is in ‘warrior woman’ form, driving this movie. It’s not Resident Evil anymore; it’s Alice in Resident Evil land. We get the over-the-top video game plot, with Alice having to face-off against Nemesis, the Big Bad Evil Corporate Guy who pulls all the strings and gets his just desserts in the end, and the characters that exist only to die. It’s a zombie movie; we expect a high death toll.
But, there are some good things. The STARS team is well done, even if they don’t live long. I would love to see maybe a short film about how they got from the bridge to the theatre. LJ brought some much needed ‘normal guy in bad situation’ to the cast along with, yes, the comic relief. I really enjoyed the zombies, they felt real, acted ‘real’ and the make-up was well done. They pull this movie up. Two scenes that made this for me was the ‘stairwell’ scene (during Carlos’ introduction) and the ‘last stand’ scene, where the surviving police and Umbrella teams fight to the last man. The stairwell really made you think about what it would be like to be in that situation, being chased by friends and coworkers, fleeing for your life, praying you’ll make it, then the continuing to struggle, even after you’ve been bitten. The last stand showed how we hope law enforcement would act, if it the scene didn’t make a lot of sense. You’d think they would pick a better spot to hold them off, but who knows why they picked that spot. Maybe the remaining civilians had holed up nearby or maybe there was a building full of puppies. Cute, adorable puppies. One other thing was, much like The Walking Dead TV show, they look very generic. No ‘cheerleader zombie.’ No ‘office drone zombie.’ No ‘nerd zombie.’ They all look like normal people that have risen from the dead to consume the flesh of the living. Sure, there’s some kid zombies (which I hate, and I despise baby zombies), and a pair of stripper zombies, these are the exception rather than the rule in the film. The kid zombies were absolutely terrifying, so I’m okay with that. The action scenes are also well done, really making the movie pop. And, the horror follows well with the action, making this a decent action/horror movie, fitting with the action/horror feeling of the game. They also did a good job of making it feel like Raccoon City is a real city; the small touches, like RPD on the uniforms and cop cars, and signs referencing locations from the game. They also showed how pervasive Umbrella is in the city, but it was over done when they put the Umbrella logo on the backs of the bullets in the church scene. (Umbrella is a biologics company, not an ammunition manufacturer.) I will admit they also showed how powerful Umbrella was throughout the film, if it was a bit unrealistic, but it’s a video game movie.
There were a few things that just threw me out of the movie. To start with, we have the ‘graveyard’ scene, where the dead and buried are somehow brought back by the T-virus. No, just no. I’ll accept a virus bringing people back from the dead, provided the people were infected while they’re alive. It may not be good science, but its science. Bringing the dead back to life, when they’ve been dead for a long time, and embalmed, is complete bullshit. It just doesn’t jive with how a virus works, even a pseudo-science one like the T-virus.
Then we have the Umbrella Corporation. I’ll accept a company working on bio-weapons. It’s not realistic; however, with the military-industrial complex beginning to have the weird mix of company and government, I could see a company get involved in bio-weapons. But, companies do not get access to nuclear weapons. Companies do not get the right to seal off a city. And, there’s no way in hell a company is going to get people to believe a video is a fake. I could see the company having elements in the government that are willing to do things for them, but the movie makes it seem like it’s all them. And, it just doesn’t suspend my disbelief.
The ending also just dragged on and on. After watching the very forced battle between Alice and Nemesis, I was ready for the movie to end, and I think the writers were, too. But, then they had to cram the helicopter crash in, and set up for a sequel. Okay, cool. Then, if feels like someone at the studio said ‘no, you need to keep up the whole thing about how powerful Umbrella is thing’ and we have to sit through a bunch of fake news reports. This movie was done as soon as the bomb went off, why did we have to sit through so much extra bullshit? And, someone please explain to me how Alice gets mind popping powers, because that was just lame. (So, so lame.) If you can kill a man with the power of your mind, how the hell can you be controlled or monitored by a computer? I just don’t get it.
Final Thoughts: A good sequel. A decent video game movie. A decent action/horror movie. Not, however, a good movie. Just an enjoyable one at most.
It was a BAD movie.
Coming Soon: Resident Evil: Afterlife
(If you scroll down to the bottom of the page, you'll see a poll to see what terrible movie I review for Halloween. Vote for your favorite!)
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