A sequel to Resident Evil was greenlit the very instant it proved even minorly successful. As such, Resident Evil: Apocalypse is an automatic sequel. They had a property name to begin with, and the inclination to franchise into movies at the first possible moment, so it was destined to be. There’s nothing more to it.
Writer/director (auteur?) Paul W.S. Anderson stuck on to write the sequel’s screenplay, even though that’s the least of his meager skills. For Anderson is a hack with vision, and he was too busy fouling up two franchises at once with Alien vs. Predator to be bothered with directing some mere other video game sequel adaptation…or video game adaptation sequel…or whatever. Resident Evil: Apocalypse references more Resident Evil games than Resident Evil, even while it steadfastly refuses to have anything to do with them. It must be really easy for Anderson, though, to take the good ideas of other people, and use them to fashion his own unique brand of unimaginative action sequence.
Taking Anderson’s place as director is Alexander Witt, who is a genuinely good second-unit director, having done Gladiator, The Bourne Identity, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Casino Royale. Sadly, in his one outing as director, Witt directs like he’s still in second-unit. It’s all just a totally endless series of grandstanding set pieces and markedly unclear action sequences – all so Matrix-happy, the Wachowski, er, Siblings ought to receive co-director credit. Of course, he’s really just following the path set down by the original Resident Evil, while upping the ante, as sequels do.
Take, for instance, how Apocalypse feels the need to rehash the events of the first film – an unfortunate necessity for sequels scripted by Paul W.S. Anderson. Not only do we get a talking head (which would be bad enough), but we get a putrid mishmash of CGI elements which wouldn’t even be at home in a Brosnan Bond opening title sequence.
Filtering out all the distracting elements, superhero Alice (Milla Jovovich, paper-thin model) fills us in on the super-complex back story. The Umbrella Corporation created, in unspoken essence, a zombie virus, which got loose in a bunker. A bunch of inconsequential stuff happened, then Umbrella kidnapped Alice and lone fellow survivor Matt, experimentation in mind. Actually, that’s it. That’s really only the first and last 10 minutes of Resident Evil, then, that had any pertinence. And just who is all this narration being directed towards?
Now, the zombie T-virus was well and contained at the end of Resident Evil, sequel hooks or no. So in order to get things running, those morons operating the Umbrella are just gonna go right on down to that Hive (which lacks an airlock even, mind you), and release the damned virus all over again. In order to “learn” what happened before…Wait for Alice to lose whatever amnesia she’s almost certainly contracted this time, then just ask her. You nitwits!...Oh, by the way, they die.
Somehow, stupidity aside, Umbrella is also good and omniscient about these goings on – basically, they do whatever Paul W.S. Anderson wants ‘em to do. And for now, that involves sending a bunch of black-suited agents – like in The Matrix – to gather up Umbrella’s decision-makers – men like Dr. Charles Ashford (Jared Harris), who haven’t heard anything yet about this T-virus nonsense they’re intimately involved in…Sure.
They’re also sent to retrieve Ashford’s daughter, Angela, only their truck crashes before the job is done. Stranding Angela. For purely Anderson-convenient reasons. Once again (take a drink), we have a dumbass incident that overrides the entire plot.
THIRTEEN HOURS LATER…Chaos has spread throughout Opossum City – scuze me, Raccoon City. The T-virus has escaped out of the Hive by…by – Let me get this straight. In Resident Evil, this once-airborne virus mutated into a Romero homage, transmitted only by bite. So either these hazmat-suited Umbrellites had the cleverness to remove their helmets post-zombification, or it’s airborne again. Except we see no evidence that it is airborne. Though, Romero-style, everyone who dies instantly becomes a zombie – so maybe it is airborne, but is only affecting dead tissue – It makes buggerall sense, really, but the gist of this is Raccoon City is now beset with Zombie Movie Scenario #2A: what Max Brooks calls a Class-2 outbreak.
Okay, I trust all this is somewhat related to the games, because fan complaints never really cemented until the second sequel totally screwed the pooch. Anyway, here’s another character from the game, who may just as well be a costume and a name: Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory, another anemic model here in case Milla Jovovich ain’t your precise cup o’ tea). We first see her first-person POV earning headshots against the undead – yeah, video game adaptation! So Jill’s a badass, in the most generic and juvenile way possible, and a member of the Raccoon Cops, called S.T.A.R.S. here ‘cause this is the sorta movie where everyday notions like police forces gotta be jazzed up with oddball names – okay, it works better in games. My (primary) head sure doesn’t know what to make of Jill’s Lara Croft outfit. That seems illegal.
Then we zoom through a radio – like in The Matrix.
We are in a room far bluer than any we’ve seen so far, indicating this is footage from the original. Alice awakes from her latest round of slumber, clearly at the behest of Umbrella ubermensch Timothy Cain (Thomas Kretschmann) – ooh, “Cain,” subtle, man! We learn (later) that Alice is Umbrella’s most prized asset, meaning it makes absolutely no sense that they would let her roam free like this, then spend the majority of the film trying to get her back. Again, there’d be no movie without this choice, so…
(Don’t get me wrong. Resident Evil: Apocalypse is still a ridiculously blue-tinted movie.)
Here’s the citizenry of Lemur – Raccoon City trying to escape…from the only exit point in town. Umbrella, ever the nebulous overlord, has efficiently erected (huh huh) walls all around town to quarantine the infection...as you do. FEMA only wishes they were this competent and evil. Jill is here, along with her black sidekick who will die halfway through (Razaaq Adoti). (Methinks the filmmakers know it’s a cliché, but adhere to it out of sheer gutlessness.) Enacting a generic bit of villainy, the overseeing Cain orders private cosmetic company Umbrella’s faceless, helmeted soldiers open fire on the crowd, thus driving them back into the center. Need I mention the gore and horror factor, so essential in a zombie flick, is practically nil.
Meanwhile, in complete isolation to all other plots, more of Umbrella’s soldiers are in the alleyways, having a shootout against zombies that is – yup – generic. Not only is this as close to “watching a dude play a video game” as a movie gets (they’re literally copying video game cinematography), but it’s plagued by the same inability to shoot a coherent action sequence that has, er, plagued the entire past decade. I oughtn’t to single out Apocalypse.
We’ll go back to these soldiers on occasion when they’re wantin’ for an action sequence – in this film, that’s an every-two-minute requirement. It wasn’t until halfway through that one of these mooks took on a name and a central character role – Carlos Olivera (Oden Fehr, only one of many non-Hispanics – Israeli here – called upon to play a Hispanic).
Then the soldiers (and Carlos, I imagine – I ain’t watchin’ it again) rappel from a helicopter to a roof to save a woman – unsuccessfully. Why is this even in here? Ah yes – like in The Matrix.
Plot? What plot?
Meanwhile, Ashford (safe outside of Coati – er, Raccoon City) has learned his daughter is still inside. Thus begins his unauthorized quest to reference Escape from New York in an attempt to find someone on the inside who will save her. (All this has to play out for baddy Cain’s wicked Alice-catching scheme to work – even though he ought not to have let her out anyway.)
(And throughout all this, director Witt has barely granted us any face shots, let alone anything indicating, you know, acting or personality. Of course it’s “kewler” to avoid such things.)
Jill seeks shelter in an over-designed church, along with Black Sidekick and a Latina Newswoman (played by a French-Chinese actress – Sandrine Holt). Jill wanders off for a brief run-in with the deacon, who has been feeding his zombie sister other humans. This could be an interesting moment, but the film is far too ADD for anything resembling tension or suspense.
And all the jump scares are accompanied by very loud, non-diagetic clashes on the soundtrack. Because they wouldn’t even read as jump scares otherwise. (This movie is not frightening.)
Then throughout the church, CGI Lickers emerge – they had to, because they were in the first film, even if their (one scene) presence here makes no sense – Umbrella didn’t make any others! The movie is very dark, of course (black having replaced blue as the tone of choice), meaning we barely even get to see these beasties I’m sure the effects people put way too much effort into. And the usually-competent Jill seems to be in trouble for once, which is surely the signal for –
Somehow, I think strolling through the door would’ve worked just as well. So Alice is here, in basically her first real footage not culled from the former entry, one third through her own movie. She may have shown signs of dog-kicking wire-fuishness in the first, but here – here Anderson is struggling that much harder to make his then-girlfriend seem like Trinity (or Aeon Flux). Bullet time happens – because The Matrix used it – and Alice defeats the Lickers using the exact same techniques that somehow failed for Jill. Of course, if the movie insists she’s the most badass…
When the first Licker dies, it explodes (‘cause it’s kewl), and it’s consistent with the specific idiocies from before. The remaining Lickers, however, do not explode – the effects guys ran out of budget, methinks, like the deteriorating vampire deaths in Blade.
And now – You think we need another random side character? Sure, why the hell not. It’s not like there’s a narrative here. Black comic relief (read: the black guy who’ll survive) L.J. sees naked zombie strippers. Finally, something exploitative in this R-rated horror series! Oh, and L.J. is played by Mike Epps (a funny, funny man). His casting is, I think, an insidious attempt to reach another “market.”
Insert another soldier vs. zombie scene, to no effect.
Now Alice leads Jill and the soon-to-dies through a cemetery, when zombie hands burst from the soil. So…is the T-virus earthborne too?! I guess this discontinuity was essential, though, for this one scene, thrown in simply because it’s a zombie movie cliché. Eh, Anderson once saw Return of the Living Dead. And did you know zombies can be defeated by kicking their torsos? So much for the “headshot” nonsense – maybe these zombies are different. By the way, the image below is verily the only frame from a whole two minute section that is not blurry.
It’s time for the next phase of Operation Release Then Capture Alice: Cain activates Umbrella’s latest experiment, Nemesis (a great, hulking, practical effect), upon Panda – sorry, Raccoon City. This is what happened to Matt (from the first). Nemesis, a bizarre level boss mutation of the T-virus, is a bazooka-toting zombie (yup, action’s more important than horror here) who looks precisely like the Chatterer from Hellraiser. But Resident Evil’s audience couldn’t be arsed to know about a movie made before 2000!
Then we’re introduced to yet another completely independent new character – a cowboy cop sniper. Who isn’t 1/80th as cool as Tallahassee in Zombieland. He snipes zombies, nearly snipes L.J. because he’s black, and then is himself sniped by Nemesis. Then the giant half-wrestler, half-zit turns to execute another twelve S.T.A.R.S. officers (here’s where it would’ve helped to just call ‘em PD). It has a blood-red POV scan, like Terminator meets Predator (yes, Paul, you’ve seen mainstream genre movies, congrats). Thus it knows L.J. is the comic relief, and thus not worth killing. (Good thing Nemesis isn’t a genre racial profiler.)
Back to Alice. She’s walking along with Jill (and two more) when a phone starts ringing. Pick it up, Alice, it’s the plot calling! No, I’m serious, it’s Dr. Ashford, with an offer for them to rescue his daughter, in exchange for a way out of Kangaroo City. And with a Return of the Living Dead nuking due at sunup, we have our video game time limit for this next “mission.” Well then!, I guess it’s a simple matter of going over to –
Ker-splat! I guess that’s it for Black Sidekick. Okay, who here had money on minute 42? Taking all bets on when Latina Newswoman will cack it!
Nemesis snarls is Cenobitish teeth, as it readies to face Alice (I mean, it’s been a whole 90 seconds since its last appearance). Alice wire fu’s her ass all over the place, and even jumps away from a rocket. (As a justification for her increasingly Matrix-y skills, Umbrella has experimented on her – that’s also why they want her alive, which is exactly why they’ve sent the Nemesis to go kill her. Oy!) The action sequence that follows is almost legible, because that guy can barely move in the Nemesis suit. Then Alice goes all Femme Nikita reference on us (okay, check that one off the list, Paul), escaping down a laundry chute.
Meanwhile, Jill kills Black Sidekick Zombie, gaining a new humorous black man subordinate for her trouble – L.J.
Now everyone is at Wolverine City Junior High – Alice, Jill, L.J., Latina Newswoman, Carlos (the Israeli-played soldier). Playing the horror cliché handbook, Jill suggests everyone split up, which in due time spells the end for Latina Newswoman – at the maws of middle school zombies, for all schoolchildren yearn for brains. Okay, who had the 51st minute?
Downstairs, L.J. sneaks about, and is scared by – a rubber skeleton. Seriously? A skeleton scared a black man? I thought this stuff went out of style with the 1940s!
Alice is the one who finds their quarry, Angela Ashford. Of course she did, ‘cause she’s the lead! In the film’s “cleverest” touch, Angela is played by Sophie Vavasseur, who was also the hologram child in the first. And Angela ingratiates herself to the audience by making a snarky joke about the gruesome demise of Latina Newswoman.
Oh whoops, Alice and Angela exchanged a couple words of dialogue! Guess that means another action sequence! This time it’s skinless dogs in the cafeteria (mutated school lunches, maybe), who run through a plagiaristic homage to – let’s break out the Wheel o’ References – the kitchen scene in Jurassic Park. No one but Alice can defeat them, ‘cause she’s Alice, and schtupping the screenwriter. So she blows the kitchen up, and transforms herself into a motionless mannequin as she hides underneath a fire tarp that is suddenly there.
(It’s amazing, the sort of murky, dark filmmaking that exemplifies the Resident Evil series cannot visually distinguish a school cafeteria from an underground bunker from a hospital.)
This stage complete, a Dr. Ashford cut scene informs us where the next level (er, the evacuation point) is: Wolverine City Hall’s roof. Where a helicopter and action sequence await.
Angela also has a power-up for our heroes – she keeps the zombie anti-virus in her lunchbox. Mmm, delicious cure… This means Anderson could toy with us a tad, and have Carlos get bit, even while he’s white and will therefore survive the movie.
What the?!...Oh right, The Matrix Reloaded (and – cough – Revolutions) also happened since the last entry. So let’s have Alice do something random that’ll dominate all the trailers, and –
Okay, who’s the villain in this series? Umbrella is, naturally. You just hear that name and – giggle, actually. Meaning the great, fearsome enemy in this zombie movie’s climax is…humans. (Man – the most dangerous game!) Of course for reasons of “morality” (the movie’d like you to forget) these punchable bodies are human – hence the helmets (it also lets ‘em reuse the same stuntmen). And, okay, they work for Umbrella, hence they’re themselves eeeee-vil, only…Wasn’t Carlos one of these guys’ buddies and coworkers until an hour ago?! Arrrrghh!
When was Equilibrium released? Ah, 2002! That means the similarities to that one are intentional as well. (I’d almost go so far as to say Resident Evil: Apocalypse tries to piggyback off of Jason X!) So everyone’s fighting a bunch of faceless mooks over a helicopter on a rooftop and – yeah yeah, Matrix rip-off…
Then Cain is there. He’s the main bad guy, so everyone stops fighting and surrenders. Er? And this is the great fruition of the Capture Alice Project – to capture her on this rooftop that she only went to for unrelated reasons, when you could’ve just not released that silly T-virus in the first place and avoided all of this. Of course, I’m not a villainous mastermind, so what the f*#% do I know? But you see, there’s a point here. Alice is going to fight Nemesis…just like she already did.
Only this time it’s hand-to-hand, no penis-compensating bazookas. This fight is basically like all the others – unclear and pointless, with an unseen shot-clock running down until the victor can be declared arbitrarily…And Alice wins, ‘cause she’s the heroine, Nemesis impaled on a bit of public art (I knew it was good for something).
“Finish him!” Cain commander her, suddenly thinking he’s in a Mortal Kombat adaptation. But Alice will not, ‘cause she’s having memory flashes (oh right, they’re using that trick from the original again, to far less effect). She looks into Nemesis’ eyes and – Oh holy Buddha! – his heart melts and he sides with her. [Damnit damnit damnit!]
Meaning…action sequence!
Also, suddenly Alice’s stuntwoman is indoors, so she can outrun two other helicopters’ miniguns, in another moment that was made purely for the trailer:
Blah blah blah, all the good guys escape on the helicopter, while rampaging hoards of zombies (remember those guys?) surround Cain on the rooftop for a bloodless feeding.
BA-BA-BOOM! Ocelot City is nuked back to the 8-bit era!
Our heroes’ helicopter crashes into Game Reference Mountains, as Alice protects Angela from a bit of nuclear shrapnel at the cost of her own impaling. And…fade out. Okay then.
Now, I said Resident Evil had the horror equivalent of the Return of the King ending. That’s because I hadn’t seen Apocalypse yet! This thing is goddamned endless! First up, expectedly, is a news montage covering the incident at Pokémon City. All the talk about zombies and nuclear bombs is passed off as a hoax, while everyone goes with Umbrella’s cover – meltdown. Just like [reference to real world conspiracy theory omitted].
THREE WEEKS AFTER THE RACCOON CITY INCIDENT – Noooo! Alice awakes, her naked tits on display (you thought they’d forget about that?), in yet another antiseptic medical facility – Paul W.S. Anderson sure has himself a fetish. Dr. Isaacs (Iain Glen) studies her, and – Ain’t it a bit late to be adding more characters? Anyway, Alice’s memory is gone (again), and she’s having more flashes (again). She’s also beating up faceless henchmen (again), as she escapes from Umbrella’s clutches (again) – which Isaacs assures us is just what they wanted. Sure, guys.
Also, Alice somehow causes a security man in the TV room to bleed from his eyeballs at a distance, which is something totally new. If it’d happened in any Matrix movies, I’d at least have something to say.
Heading outside now (even the epilogue has action sequences), Alice is confronted by the extras from a Kurt Wimmer movie. Then a black SUV pulls up, Jill and Carlos (and L.J. and Angela) pretending as Umbrella superiors, as they whisk Alice away in their clutches. All seems well, as Isaacs in his lab announces “Program Alice activated.” Alice’s eyes glow with the Umbrella Corporation logo. Sequel hook! Damn it!
You know what? If Resident Evil was the same script as Alien vs. Predator (elite team descends into a maze-like underground complex to release body horror monsters, then escape and face a larger final boss), then Resident Evil: Apocalypse is Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (city besieged by monsters is quarantined by the armed forces, as five unrelated plot strands converge and our heroes seek a rooftop helicopter to escape a dawn nuking, only for the monsters’ secret to be stolen by an evil conglomeration). The same downtick in quality applies.
But one silly thing keeps on happening with this franchise: It keeps on doing marginally better at the box office, earning about $25 million more than Resident Evil on a similarly increased budget. Maybe people really did prefer the juvenile actioning to anything resembling horror. Maybe it was just riding the wave of our decade’s zombie renaissance. No matter, that sequel hook at the end says everything: “We know this’ll do well enough to justify more entries.” It also says “We’re making up the story as we go along.”
Related posts:
• No. 1 Resident Evil (2002)
• No. 3 Resident Evil: Extinction (2007)
• No. 4 Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010)
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