The Resident Evil movies are not good movies. And yet, I’ve seen every one of them, and by choice. I think it started with being such a fan of the video games. But how is this fourth zombie/bio weapon go round. It’s the best one yet. I know, that’s crazy. But there it is.
The Resident Evil movies are not good movies. And yet, I’ve seen every one of them, and by choice. I think it started with being such a fan of the video games. But how is this fourth zombie/bio weapon go round. It’s the best one yet. I know, that’s crazy. But there it is.
Paul W.S. Anderson returns to the franchise to join his wife, Milla Jovovich for Resident Evil: Afterlife. Yes, they are really married. But a few minutes in it is clear that Anderson did not set out to make a bad movie. Oddly, it seemed like he returned to the franchise with something to prove, and against the odds I think he actually did.
Oh, and I did the four star treatment. 3-D, baby and it’s one of the few times it was not wasted. It was actually done well with crazy zombie blood and bullets coming at ya, along with sweeping Alaskan landscapes .
Anderson shook some shit up. Thankfully. There are very few zombies in the first half of the movie, and it’s never boring. The opening sequence with Milla’s character “Alice” and her clones get things going right out of the gate. And yes, I said clones. They go after Wesker and the Umbrella facility in Japan. It’s a great opening and it pretty much sets the tone and pace for the movie. It is so campily stylized that you can’t help but appreciate the balls this movie seems to have. Add a thumping bass line in the score you can’t help but go “YEAH!” as the crazy action unfolds on screen.
The actors are filled with “I’ve seen that guy before” casting and no one does a great or horrible job with the exception of Shawn Roberts who plays Albert Wesker, who is abysmal, and is experienced enough to know better. He’s trying to channel Hugo Weaving as Agent Smith from the Matrix and fails. In a series of games and movies not known for their acting, it kinda hurts a bit when the bar gets lowered even further.
There are some characters and creatures from the games, including Chris and Claire Redfield and that really creepy giant executioner from the fifth game. Definitely some cool fan service. Stay for the middle of the ending credits as the next movie gets setup and see another game character revealed.
The movies are their own animals and now always end with a cliffhanger. They are more serials than anything else, but this latest entry into the franchise was far more entertaining than it had any right to be. But it was a complete story and still left me satisfied.
The screenplay is nothing special, and the last movies had whole sections that made absolutely no sense so you had to suspend all higher brain function to even watch parts of it, and Anderson did a bit of cleanup here. He did one very smart thing. At the beginning of the film, Milla’s “Alice” loses her superpowers she got from the T-Virus. She’s vulnerable again, and has also run out of clones. She’s a person now. Well done.
Not a lot of social commentary in the RE movies. And what’s there is quite transparent. The fifth game actually had a little as we see how the Japanese game developers view America. Set in South Africa, One of the protagonists, Chris Redfield complains to his new partner about how capitalism is a failed system and doesn’t really work for everyone. Then they shoot some zombies. Now that’s some commentary.
But back to the movie. You have to really suspend disbelief in a few instances. I mean, more than for a normal post apocalyptic zombie movie. Like the fact that Milla Jovovich always seems to have a steady supply of makeup in a post apocalyptic zombie future. Thank goodness she was a Maybelline cover model, because you certainly want to look your best when you’re trying to not get eaten by zombies. But the main one being that if the world has been destroyed in a zombie apocalypse, what’s the point of still running a corporation? Umbrella keeps surviving with fully functional worldwide offices. Exactly who is going to buy your products, big corporation, after the world has ended? Unless you’re making zombie repellent I don’t think there’s much of a market for anything else anymore.
So for a FOURTH entry into a franchise, RE should be losing steam and people should be tired of these movies and they should be terrible by now. That’s usually the way these things work, right? But the opposite has happened: It’s just getting warmed up. Is it technically a great movie? No. Was I entertained? Yes. Actually, I was REALLY entertained. Was the 3-D used effectively? Yes. The bottom line is that this movie will excite the 12 year old video game playing comic book loving zombie killing batman tattoo getting nerd in you. So will I see the next one with more Milla Jovovich and that chick from Heroes ass kicking the undead and other monsters in slow motion, and quite often while wet? Hell yeah.
—Chris Mancini
