Resident Evil: Afterlife

RESIDENT EVIL AFTERLIFE is a film that does what no one would expect of a fourth installment: it actually improves the quality of the series. When I saw the original RESIDENT EVIL, I totally fell in love with the film's ability to mix creepy horror with pure shoot-'em-up-style action. While I thoroughly enjoyed the second and third installments' quality as pure action movies, I was frustrated by the loss of the creepiness that I had enjoyed so much in the first one. REA actually manages to bring back the spooky feeling of the first film, while upping the ante on the action. After having seen this movie in normal 2D and also in 3D, I have to admit that while it holds up well as a "normal" movie, it is undeniable that the 3D version adds a whole new dimension to the series (sorry I couldn't resist that one). Using the James Cameron / Vincent Pace Fusion Camera System, REA has a quality of 3D not seen in any other film except AVATAR. I have to admit that I had been slow to adopt 3D before seeing REA, but now I am a believer. Milla Jovovich (Resident Evil, Stone) is excellent as usual as Alice, and continues to build a rich history for the character. Ali Larter (Resident Evil: Extinction, Heroes) does an admirable job as Claire Redfield, as does Wentworth Miller as Claire's brother Chris. Shawn Roberts gives a great performance as Albert Wesker, and Paul W.S. Anderson's (Resident Evil, Death Race) writing and direction are flawless.

Resident Evil, No. 4 - Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010)

Resident Evil: Afterlife is the best movie in the franchise.

Resident Evil: Afterlife is to Resident Evil as Fast & Furious is to The Fast and the Furious. That is, it’s the fourth entry in a mediocre contemporary action franchise that benefits from a reunion of prime personnel absent since the first entry. In the case of Fast & Furious, that was Vin Diesel. Here, it’s terrible hack director Paul W.S. Anderson. Oh sure, he wrote the middle chapters, Apocalypse and Extinction, but his distinctive directorial voice was lacking. But now, his interim career having proven lackluster like Vin’s, Anderson has returned to the Milla Jovovich-shaped teat that most suits him. Balk as I did each time Anderson bitched about how the sequels were directed, but it turns out he was right. His writing sucks dwarf uteruses, or whatever, meaning it takes a particular alchemy to present it well on screen. Paul W.S. Anderson, bane of high-falutin’ film-goers everywhere, bless him, has that alchemy.

It’s a good thing he does, too, since his writing’s as derivative, plotless and awful as ever. It’s not as illogical as previous entries, and I only counted one egregious mistake. (The dating is all messed up, courtesy of a single “4 years later” title card.) But four entries in, any wise viewer understands the compromise at hand. One no longer seeks a George Romero epic from these movies, simply a mildly enjoyable restaging of classic bits from other mainstream genre movies of the past 30 years. It just needs to be fun. Somehow, I think this one is.

Anderson is helped greatly by Afterlife’s other great ace in the hole: 3-D. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but here me out. See, Afterlife is the first 3-D movie since Avatar to not be computer animated or converted to 3-D in post production. Yup, it uses the same exact camera technology as Avatar, but employs it towards an even more banal narrative. And as someone who embraces the gimmicky element of 3-D, the in-your-face ultra-stupidity, which Avatar sorely lacked, Afterlife fulfills that particular dumb-dumb niche.

Actually, it’s sort of a clip reel demonstrating just how this “new” technology could be employed in the future. Because what Afterlife is, as a Resident Evil film, is first and foremost a collection of movie references. Ever wanted to see what The Matrix would look like in 3-D? That’s Afterlife. How about Die Hard? That’s Afterlife. The Descent? Afterlife. The opening gun barrel from James Bond? You get the idea.

Honestly, this movie wouldn’t work in a mere two dimensions. Conversely, 3-D would greatly improve the other three Residents Evil. This all has to do with cinematography. There are images in Afterlife which are hideous as compositions, but which function on a spatial level. Reading the apparent distance between objects helps immensely in this kind of movie. Ironically, the 3-D actually diminishes my personal potential for headaches! All the weird angles and jumbled images appear clear in this new format. However, many composition-heavy films (Citizen Kane – yeah, I went there) would absolutely perish under this format. It is, quite possibly, an entirely new sort of cinematic language.

Also, 3-D forces longer shot length, meaning no incomprehensible sub-Bourne editing for us. This is also to Afterlife’s advantage.

So all that means Resident Evil: Afterlife functions on some sort of technical level. As a movie qua story, though, it dies on the vine.

*************************************************************

Jeepers. That incomprehensible diatribe up there is what happens when you try to type something in the middle of a Tetris marathon. It’s all a big mishmash of unrelated fleeting notions, which rather makes it appropriate for this franchise. But trying to speak of Resident Evil: Afterlife on its own terms is a silly thing, so rather let us consider, chronologically, the more obvious famous scenes that are recreated whole hog…

(Be warned, spoilers ahead. Not so much for Resident Evil: Afterlife, but for the movies it rips off.)


The Matrix (also Reloaded…and maybe Revolutions if you squint hard enough) – The first 15 minutes of Afterlife are the three-year delayed climax to Extinction. Why do long form franchises insist on these “Jabba’s Palace” sort of opening acts? No matter, for it’s here where Anderson cops to Resident Evil’s central compulsion: It is the world’s foremost Matrix homage artist. As such, this section is Anderson’s masterpiece, rendering the purest (and most anachronistic - it's 2010!) Matrix pastiche in history. Nothing greater can be imagined.

Alice (Jovovich, whom I previously called Mr. Anderson’s one-time girlfriend…that’s because she’s his now-time wife) makes her ultimate assault upon Umbrella Corp’s headquarters in the Shibuya district of Tokyo. That is to say, it’s the “lobby shootout.” The differences? It’s in 3-D, the rocktronica soundtrack is somewhat more contemporary, and it involves dozens of lithe Jovovich clones instead of one rapidly aging Carrie-Anne Moss.

Oh, those clones! They’re the latest part of Alice’s arsenal, along with super-speed, super-strength, super-healing, super-Spidey Sense, and psuper-psionics. She’s become ridiculously powered over three films, which makes for a fun opening sequence, but a tricky overall tale. Luckily, her foe today is Ultra Umbrella Ubermensch, Albert Wesker, who has been granted a similarly preposterous set of powers by the plot-friendly, zombie-making T-virus. Basically, he’s a fatter Agent Smith, with a little bit of Dracula for the hell of it. He also has the latest Umbrella brew, which quickly reverts Alice back to a run-of-the-mill bad-ass normal. This makes the rest of her exploits both easier to film, and easier to sympathize with.

Also, those clones are now dead too.

Anderson’s kind of blown his load on his wife a tad early. The rest of the flick is reasonable enough, but it never reaches the opening heights, as plagiaristic as they are.


I’m actually not sure what movie this is from – Alice flies a biplane out to Extinction’s Alaskan utopia, which is now revealed to be named “Arcadia.” Ooh, symbolic! Actually, it’s not Arcadia, but rather an abandoned airfield. I fooled my stupid ass into thinking this section was more suspenseful than it was, because I thought Anderson was stealing from movies he wasn’t stealing from (like Paranormal Activity). I know, I’m dumb.

Time passes, and Alice finally runs into someone: Clear Rivers – whoops!, that’s Ali Larter’s character in Final Destination. Here she’s Claire Redfield. Excuse the mistake.

Amnesia remains a franchise hallmark, a simple means of manhandling the plot. In a reversal, or something, this time it’s Claire who is the amnesiac, meaning she’s the one with the irritating memory flashes. Basically, to sum it up, she escaped from an Alaskan Umbrella ambush, in a development that makes less and less sense the more I think about Extinction. That is all, really.

Alice decides to spend the rest of the movie in Los Angeles, for pretty much no stated reason.


Escape From New York – Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell) has been charged with gaining access to an isolated prison colony in the ruins of a great American metropolis. To gain access to the prison, he must perform an insane stunt, landing his fixed-wing aircraft on the roof of a skyscraper. He barely makes it, the craft teetering over the ledge.

Oh wait, this isn’t an awesome John Carpenter movie from 1981, it’s Resident Evil: Afterlife! Eh…whatever…simply replace “Snake” with “Alice.” And “New York” with “L.A.”…which is where Carpenter’s underwhelming sequel took place. So…nothing new here, folks.

Every zombie movie ever made – This prison colony Alice (and Claire) are now at is the sole holdout of all life in L.A., populated by the most standard Los Angeles stock types imaginable: the movie producer, his intern, the egocentric basketball player (for legal reasons, it isn’t Kobe), the wannabe actress, and the few other guys who die earliest.

Yes, it’s the Romero siege scenario everybody pilfers from.

The Silence of the Lambs – There’s also this one jerk behind the plexiglass cage, whom everyone else is terrified of solely because they’ve seen the Jonathan Demme directed serial killer movie. In actuality, it’ Chris Redfield (Wentworth Miller, of “Prison Break”), here again the only person with the knowledge to affect a prison break. That casting’s a little too on the nose. Right, and he’s Claire’s brother, simply because he was in the games too. In film, it seems a might coincidental that a brother and sister would separately be among the few dozen post-zombie apocalypse survivors on earth.

Some Terminator movies – Eh, probably.

Dawn of the Dead (Zack Snyder version) – That’s right, I keep forgetting, these are zombie movies! And while the prison has withstood the zombie siege for roughly half a decade, of course the instant Alice is here, all zombie hell breaks loose. They start breaking in, and running with a degree of comfort the other Residents Evil never toyed with. Oh, that T-virus, able to do whatever Anderson wants…including giving the zombies Predator mouth thinguses possibly in accordance with the games.

Anyway, Chris knows the way past the undead – in a weaponized shielded vehicle. Only it’s a tank now, not a school bus, so it’s “different.” Oh, and the tank’s engine is kaput, so never mind that whole DOTD scenario after all.


Soulcaliber (video game references now) – Instead, the zombies are closing in on from everywhere all of a sudden. There’s also a ridiculously gigantic axe-wielding behemoth (in executioner’s hood), whose existence is never questioned nor answered. Here’s the short of it: T-virus. I’m sure he’s a product of the Resident Evil games, but he reminds me most of Astaroth from Soulcaliber in every fiber of his being.

Die Hard – When Alice is cornered (by zombies) on the rooftop, the only means of escape is by movie reference. Break out the fire hose and explosives! “Yippee kay yay, motherfucker!” (Alice doesn’t say that. She doesn’t say much that registers in my mind as an action one-liner.)

The Descent – Dawn of the Dead scrapped, escape must be made through the monster tunnels of Los Angeles which now suddenly exist (actually, we Angelinos have known about them since the ‘20s). Not much to say here, except claustrophobia benefits extensively from 3-D – except for all the irritating flashlights shining in my face!

Children of Men – Apocalypse at hand, the only salvation for mankind is a roving tanker ship. That’s what Arcadia really is, and right now it’s in the L.A. harbor. And while the Tomorrow of Children of Men was a mighty symbol of hope in man’s darkest hour, its sister ship Arcadia is merely the setting for an action sequence. A lackluster climactic action sequence.


2001: A Space Odyssey – Yes, Rotten Tomatoes lists Anderson’s favorite films, which are to a T-virus all excellent (Blade Runner, Lawrence of Arabia, the Kubrick space movie). It is for this reason that I choose to interpret Arcadia’s sleek, antiseptic interior as a remarkably misguided homage to the Star-Child sequence, Anderson having learned seemingly none of that classic’s tonal lessons. (That I also saw 2001 on an actual movie screen last night doesn’t hurt.)

Amazingly, this white, white space isn’t even bloodied by the franchise’s trademark bloody, bloody doggies. (And here I’d thought they’d been forgotten, just like the once-essential Jovovich nudity – nowhere to be seen!) Of course those dogs are pretty boring four times in…

The Thing – Except when they sprout gory vagina-flower-tongue-thingies from their heads, much like those poor canines the Thing once assimilated. Of course, Jovo-kicks are still fatal to these monsters.

The Matrix again – What else could Wesker’s predictable return entail? He even gets a variation on Smith’s anti-humanity speech, re: the T-virus. If only he had the wit to call Alice “Mrs. Anderson.” See, ‘cause her husband now is Paul Anderson, and – Oh, never mind…

There are more references embedded in here, I’m sure, but it’s early yet in the film’s existence, and my recap-happy butt doesn’t want to overdo it with a movie still in theaters. Let’s just say that Wesker is defeated (maybe only for now…) and Alice rescues the thousands of survivors imprisoned aboard the Arcadia. This somehow makes up for the franchise’s total refusal to do anything with the potential T-virus cure Alice represents – zombie apocalypse or no, somehow humans vs. humans is a more important conflict.

And even while there are no official plans yet for a fifth Resident Evil, this series cannot help but end on a sequel hook. No entry yet has been conclusive. When you’re just watching the things for the spectacle (the 3-D helps with that), this is easily ignored, but it’s still another example of the poor narrative structure underlying all Residents Evil. So once again I must surprise myself, and praise the 3-D to the stars. Without it, and (I can’t believe I’m saying this) Anderson’s sure hand as director, and I’m sure there would be absolutely nothing in Afterlife to set it apart in my mind. But with those things…I’m not upset I went out to see it.


Related posts:
• No. 1 Resident Evil (2002)
• No. 2 Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004)
• No. 3 Resident Evil: Extinction (2007)

Resident Evil, No. 3 - Resident Evil: Extinction (2007)

It’s an action vehicle franchise for model Milla Jovovich. I can’t believe such a thing exists.

Again there’s nothing new to say about this one. Last one did well, sequel green lit. That’s it, baby. Again, Paul W.S. Anderson wrote, though again he could not direct (too busy messing up a Death Race remake). Anderson, as producer, was ultimately upset with how Alexander Witt “mishandled” his precious, precious screenplay for Resident Evil: Apocalypse, so a new director was hired, more in keeping with Anderson’s particular…idiom. Russell Mulcahy was chosen for his incredible work on Highlander and, um, the fact that Highlander II: The Quickening also exists, I guess. Had this been 1986, that would’ve been a phenomenal choice.

Really, from a pre-production standpoint, there is little to say about the third Resident Evil movie. It carries the film series further from the games that inspired it, appeals to an increasingly niche audience, yet somehow makes more money. Most of the cast (of living characters) has returned. Oh, and the movie’s title was originally Resident Evil: Afterlife, before it was switched to Resident Evil: Extinction solely to confuse people in regards to the third sequel to come.

Normally, I’d lump Resident Evil: Extinction in the same stylistic morass as the previous Residents Evil, but that is not the case. It is 2007 now (it’s really 2010, but bear with me), and building your series off of The Matrix’s stylistic effluvia is now even more passé than it was in 2004. Hence some notable shakedowns occur in Extinction. As of Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead remake, it is actually acceptable now to fashion an action epic from your zombie movie, so there’s that. And the tech-noir posturing from before has been replaced with something my mind sees as western posturing. Mad Max and its ilk are now the primary reference points, since Extinction opts to be a post-apocalypse, post-Apocalypse movie. Notably, the little problems from before – impatient editing, mostly – are resolved. It’s even dropped the series’ omnipresent blues (it’s oppressively orange now – damn you, color filters!). And a subtle change has occurred in the scriptwriting – from cripplingly stupid to just balls-out nutbars. It’s still dumb-as-hell, but now the plot is so totally out of control, any handicaps the first non-functioning Resident Evil provides are no longer an issue.

Again we open on an eyeball, as Alice (Jovovich) awakes, nude, in a shower – Hey, waitaminnit! Quickly I check the Netflix envelope, and indeed this is Extinction, not the original Resident Evil. The movie goes on to suggest otherwise, though, as Alice runs through her same red dress mansion routine I am already over-familiar with. As this 90 minute movie leaks away in previous footage, Alice passes out the mansion’s front door to –

The laser hall (from the first). Hold up there! Okay, so Alice dodges the lasers that Anderson is so self-evidently proud of, then moves into –

The Raccoon City Hospital (from the second). Oh for the love of! Alice dodges a guillotine trap that was definitely not culled from Apocalypse, but rather from The Last Crusade, then a bouncing floor gun thingy…kills her.

Yeah, yeah, this opening isn’t as clever as they’d like. This is merely an Alice clone, which is promptly dumped by two hazmat scientists up in the desert, in a great pile of dead Alice clones. This is another of the wicked, wicked Umbrella Corporation’s underground facilities, with the greatest security system money can buy – a single chain link fence. On the other side is a reasonably improved mass of zombies, showing believable desiccation and rot. ‘Bout time this franchise got its central element remotely adequate!


Only now does Anderson deem to provide the franchise mythology to those viewers who didn’t just plow through the previous Residents Evil. Even though the second film, like the first, ended with the zombie-making T-virus unquestionably contained, Alice’s latest expo-dump tells us it wasn’t, simply because. There’d be no movie if the virus wasn’t loose, so it’s loose – alright. And the virus seems to have plot powers never hinted at before…For what was originally supposed to be a cure for a single girl’s busted leg, this thing not only reanimates dead tissue, but arbitrarily turns the Earth into a desert, and even gives the heroine telepathic powers. Okay, the reason for the last one: Matrix sequels did it. (Also, it’s 6 years in the timeline since Apocalypse – that is, it’s the future now: 2010. Just go with it.)

Once they’ve explained everyplace is a desert, we spend the rest of the film in a place that is already a desert: the Mojave. Alice rides alone on a motorcycle, scavenging as is an ersatz Trinity-turned-Max Rockatansky’s wont. She gets into an isolated opening action sequence involving hillbilly nutjobs out of Six-String Samurai and the series’ de rigueur skinless hound dogs.

But that isn’t what I want to focus on. I want to focus on how Alice got to this point. Last we saw her, she’d just been secretly released by Umbrella as part of their Great Wicked Scheme – apparently they wanted her loose. What they, and Dr. Isaacs (Iain Glen), really wanted with her was her blood. To create an army of hyper-intelligent Super Zombies™ – you know, to satisfy Umbrella’s post-apocalyptic stockholders, or market shares, or whatever. The only problem is…Isaacs already has her blood, hence the Alice clones, and hence he’s already home-brewing handcrafted, housetrained Super Zombies™! So…what does Isaacs still want with Alice? To make his pet zombies even superer, apparently. And again, Umbrella’s great Enslave Alice plan first involves letting her go – like the climax to a Disney pet bobcat movie or something…Logic never really lasts long in these Resident Evil flicks.


Alice, who once started as a perfectly normal wire fu-capable amnesiac, has roughly followed Neo’s idiotic arc, as she is now a super-powered, telepathic, zombie-immune weapon of mass destruction, with clones. I cannot wait to see how they exaggerate her character for the fourth entry. But anyway, this unfairly advantaged protagonist means we have to spend time with a mass of new characters instead, who are relatable. That’s this convoy, picking up after the end of The Road Warrior, scouring the wastelands for food and plotline. Their head is Claire Redfield (“Heroes’” Ali Larter), which is the name of a video game character, and presumably nothing else. The survivors from Apocalypse are here, Carlos (Oded Fehr) and L.J. (Mike Epps, now distraught that there’s no other black man around to die in his stead). Jill Valentine is decidedly not here, because Sienna Guillory preferred destroying her career with Eragon instead. It’s “Dragon” with an “E!” Whoo!

There are some new characters as well, with names like Mikey, Chase and Nurse Betty. They’re all going to die. There is also bland blonde K-Mart (Spencer Locke), who looks distractingly too much like Ali Larter. They’re both going to survive, and eternally confuse me.

Down in Umbrella’s evil lair for this entry, the Umbrellites beam in to discuss plot exposition I’ve already worked through – the whole Super Zombie™ thing. Oh, and antibodies from Alice’s blood could permanently cure the T-virus. Umbrella doesn’t want to do that, oh no, simply because they’re the villains, and Evil – which overrides logic and such. No, they just want Alice to accomplish something they’ve already accomplished – idiocy!


Meanwhile, the convoy stops over at an abandoned Mojave motel (already a common enough Mojave sight) to look for supplies, and save the budget with a single set for a vast majority of the film. Carlos and L.J. search the buildings; L.J. finds a zombie. He’s managed for survive 6 years without screen time, but the instant his life is a movie again, he gets bitten. So L.J., despite a thorough understanding now of how zombies work, will get the old “Hide your zombie infection until it’s too late and you eat some of your friends” standard. Never let it be said Paul W.S. Anderson can pass up a well-worn genre cliché.

Back in the Umbrella labs, Dr. Isaacs runs one of his Super Zombies™ through the plot to Day of the Dead.

Claire’s convoy, still at the motel, makes camp for the night, with lengthy scenes depicting precisely how their existence conforms to preexisting post-apocalyptic genre clichés. I complained about how Apocalypse was nothing but incoherent action sequences, but you know what? Extinction could do with one of those right about now. I mean, we’re nearly at halfway!

Back in the Umbrella labs, Dr. Isaacs has an Alice clone in a bubble. This plot is kinda going nowhere.

Back on the surface, Alice – Oh right, Alice! – sleeps by her campfire, clad in what I can only call “survival chic.” She has – yup – flashes of memory, not to anything in particular, because they already filled in her non-starting amnesia subplot two movies ago, but because it’s a franchise staple. Her psionic activities get the attention of Isaacs’ monitoring devices, meaning that now the villains have a goal beyond exposition!


Our heroes (the convoy) don’t, though, meaning they’re still just lazing around that motel waiting for something to happen. And here it comes, in the form of – breaking out Anderson’s movie reference checklist – a Birds homage. The video games had zombie crows, so that’s the one new wrinkle this movie adds to its cinematic bestiary. Why, when you could include all the games’ enemies (and potentially even the whole of the animal kingdom zombified – which would be awesome), do you only give us birds?...Because it’s the bare minimum needed to satisfy fans. Then you can introduce the next game monster in your next movie, ad infinitum.

For what it’s worth, the crows’ attack on the convoy is the best part of Extinction. Even with birdly chaos everyplace, it’s the most coherently shot action sequence in the franchise, and it’s generously paced. This may be the best directed entry.


Everyone’s in dire trouble; you know what that means. It’s time for Alice to swoop in and lift Morpheus and the Keymaker off the exploding trucks – er…that is…use her telepathy to practice a little crow cremation. And now, halfway through, Alice can get involved in her starring vehicle – her participation is pushed back each time.

With Alice’s arrival comes our heroes’ goal – don’t write scripts without one! That goal? It isn’t using Alice to cure the T-virus, or anything concrete like that. Nope, like The Simpsons Movie before it, Resident Evil: Extinction simply posits Alaska as an Eden on Earth we all must go to – without The Simpsons’ satirical content. Alice claims there is some down-to-earth Alaskan town full of real and true Americans (Wasilla?). And now, everyone wants to go there.

Brief interruption so Isaacs can chat with the White Queen hologram which runs the labs. I’m not sure how much sense any of this would make without reference to the original Resident Evil – even then it’s not much.

The convoy cannot simply go to Alaska; they need supplies first. They need to pay a visit to the abandoned Las Vegas set all the advertisements promised us. Okay, fine.

Making this trek exposes Alice to the CGI Umbrella satellites we keep seeing in outer space – methinks they were rather proud of this effect. See, as part of Umbrella’s unexplained experiments on Alice in Apocalypse, she can be automatically tracked by their satellites – hence she’s been living “off the grid” in the inter-film interim like a common John Connor. But now they’ve found her, for all her telepathic bird-scorching, and have schemed something out.


One DVD skip later, Umbrella has made a Las Vegas delivery of Super Zombies™. They burst forth from a great big crate, leading the whole cast on a grand action sequence all around the Venetian, the lamest casino on the Strip. One expendable character heads to the Paris, Paris (or whatever it’s called), and climbs up a replica of a replica of the Eiffel Tower. And, okay, they’re “Super Zombies™” – this means they run, this franchise latching onto the latest bandwagon to come about since its inception. All in all, however, these Super Zombies™ have even less impact than the Uruk Hai, with their apparent superiority over regular orcs. And I’ve just said something exceedingly nerdy.


In the course of all this, Umbrella’s satellites home in on Alice, and use their satellitical powers to, er, freeze her right in place. It’s nonsensical, but so is Alice’s escape. See, she simply uses the power of her heart or some such to break free from the satellite’s grasp. Basically, this resolves an odd plot thread the ending of Apocalypse necessitated, which has no real place in Extinction. Way to plot ahead, Anderson!

How’s all this end up? Well, L.J. has his expected zombie-turning, days later than continuity suggests he should’ve turned – whoopsie! He bites Carlos; Carlos kills him. So now Carlos is gonna die, affording him a Noble Sacrifice later on. And all those Super Zombies™ are dead too, one scene in, after the plot played them up endlessly as the bees’ knees.


Oh, and those Umbrella masterminds were there too, to watch all this nonsense, and pick up Alice’s blood after her totally likely death. The result is Isaacs is also bitten, by a Super Zombie™. His helicopter speed ramps back off to the compound, where Isaacs proceeds to inject himself with a mass amount of anti-virus. But because it was a Super Bite™ (sounds like a fast food meal deal!), Isaacs cannot be healed, only mutated…mutated into the final boss for this entry – A finger-tentacled Ultra-Isaacs. If Apocalypse stole from Hellraiser for its monster, Extinction steals from Hellraiser II, specifically the Cenobite Channard. Oh, that’s embarrassing.

The convoy has a final plan for reaching Wasilla. They shall hijack Umbrella’s helicopter, which Umbrella wisely revealed to the convoy in their last genius attack. And that helicopter is currently hidden away behind one whole chain link fence. There’s only one problem – the scads of CGI zombies outside the fence.

This looks like a sacrifice for Carlos! (In a scene that, if my own amnesiac memory flashes serve, Zack Snyder did better 3 years earlier.)


Claire and the convoy overload the helicopter and take off for good, ‘cause it’ll be no problem getting that thing from Nevada to Alaska! Alice, meanwhile, pokes around and descends into Umbrella’s compound, understanding the latest secret to her existence (and the climax) await her down there.

Also Ultra-Isaacs.


One cut scene from the White Queen is all Alice needs (those Lewis Carroll references ain’t getting’ any better) for her big fight with the turd-man. It’s kinda an uninvolving (though coherent) fight, because Alice is superhuman and Ultra-Isaacs cannot be injured. Meaning whatever excitement we get is from the special effects guys tossing the remaining budget all over the place. There’s also dialogue, which is a rarity in these films even when it’s not an action sequence. Isaacs claims his latest plot-convenient mutation absolves him of the need for Alice blood, so bye-bye villain motivation – apart from being typically violent for no good reason. Oh, and the fight moves through the mansion replica, on to the laser hallway this series cannot get enough of.

The lasers come and slice Ultra-Isaacs into seventy, which is apparently his one and only weakness, because this immortal monster dies. Then the lasers stop juuuuust before an Alice slice. We know, it’s the White Queen, right? ‘Cause she’s the all-powerful HAL computer program down here? Nope! That would’ve made sense, meaning Anderson went with the other option – one of Alice’s clones saved her.

Alice makes a business call to the remaining Umbrellites over in Tokyo. “I’m going to show these people what you don’t want them to see. I’m going to show them a world without you. A world without rules or controls, without borders or boundaries.”…Wait, that’s The Matrix! Well, the gist is the same. And Alice has the Alice-power to back herself up –more of herself, in the form of her clone army. Hey, that one’s like Star Wars!

And that’s Resident Evil: Extinction.


Related posts:
• No. 1 Resident Evil (2002)
• No. 2 Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004)
• No. 4 Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010)

Resident Evil, No. 2 - Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004)

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)

Resident Evil, No.1 - Resident Evil (2002)

Video game movies…these are a relatively new phenomenon, dating back to 1993’s masterful Super Mario Bros. Still, audiences have already discovered the seeming truth: Video game movies always suck. Many an argument is given, how the nature of narrative in modern video games simply cannot translate to the narrative form cinema best employs, how it’s like watching someone else play, how the game plots are dumb in the first place. This is nuts. One ought to be able to readapt any viable medium for film – otherwise, the first Pirates of the Caribbean would be awful (I mean, theme park rides?!). Consider comic movies – A commercial and critical powerhouse for the last decade, they endured a lengthy and tedious evolution process, from e.g. Batman: The Movie to Batman to The Dark Knight. It was simply a matter of determining what to properly take from them, a task that filmmakers have yet to accomplish for video games.

Of course it doesn’t help that the business of films means only the least artistically inclined end up adapting video games. I ain’t even talkin’ ‘bout the dreaded Uwe Boll here! I mean, it all goes back the market. A video game is a recognized name, nothing more. Keep your budget low enough, and you guarantee turning a profit, so care is right out the window there. It’s product, and happy in that sinkhole. I think Cracked, as always, said it best.

While Paul W.S. Anderson is oft reviled as a more respectable Uwe Boll (?!), he may in fact be responsible for the most respectable of video game adaptations – Resident Evil. Boy, that lets you know how dire this sub-genre is! Not until Prince of Persia: The Subtitle of Nonexistent Sequel etched things up into mere ignored mediocrity would a greater video game movie be made. So isn’t it fortunate, if that’s the word, we have this franchise to represent its brotherhood here?

The Resident Evil game, known in its native Japan as Biohazard, debuted on the PlayStation in 1996. I have never played it, nor hardly any modern games; I stopped right around the time of GoldenEye 007, though my attention had been waning since the Super Nintendo faded away (I still play it today). No matter, Resident Evil is noted for pioneering the “survival horror”genre, effectively translating the George Romero zombie rules to a different medium. Within the game world, it is itself a ridiculous, impossible-to-track franchise. The only thing tougher than charting Capcom sequels is trying to work out a timeline for Legend of Zelda. I mean, the 7th Resident Evil game was called Resident Evil 5 – Does that make sense?! (This doesn’t even count side series like Survivor or Chronicle or Outbreak.)

Considering the games’ strong and unabashed Romero mimicry, isn’t it appropriate that George Romero was called in to develop the Japanese ad campaign for the 1998 release of Resident Evil 2? And that he was thanked with a request to do the script and direction for a feature film Resident Evil movie? As the man who invented the modern zombie, in Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead, who better to reintroduce the beasts to the big screen? – Especially since he and his creations were undergoing a lengthy hibernation. I have not read his draft, though maybe I should; here it is.

Survival horror ought to be the simplest game genre to translate to screen, especially since A) horror is easy, and B) it uses (Romero) films for inspiration. And apparently Romero had viable characters and scenarios to build on; reportedly, he was very faithful. Too much so, in fact. The producers, in their infinite logic, said by being so close to the games, fans would criticize it for being not close enough to the games…Okay. So Romero was fired. To quote Yoshiki Okamoto, Romero’s script wasn’t “good.”

(Romero’s hypothesis is that he wasn’t able to anticipate the producers’ invisible and unstated new direction for the series – That they somehow wanted a war movie, when he, a master horror director, had written a horror movie adaptation of a horror video game.)

Much like the later Alien vs. Predator, Paul W.S. Anderson was the savior who could extricate the property from development hell. This…this really makes no sense to me. At least two separate times, this notoriously poor screenwriter has been able to convince the moneymen his generic, toothless action pastiches were what audiences wanted. It’s market risk, man! ‘Tis the simplest thing to sell, especially in 2002: a Matrix parrot, same as 70% of all films out at that time, with the “name” brand to make it stand out. Appropriate or not, you cannot risk your property with a potentially off-putting notion like Romero’s. Horror? Pssshhh!

Conceived initially as a prequel to the games, Anderson’s Resident Evil was ultimately placed in a separate continuity altogether, which was wise and/or lazy. Surely, it angered Resident Evil fans who were the franchise’s core base – for some damn reason, all video game movies feel the need to do this. In many cases (Uwe Boll), it’s because the filmmakers actively hate gamers, yet are compelled to cater to them. All that remains are scant references to the games (that I need the director’s myopic commentary to pick out), grafted to a generic new millennium zombie movie – without any of the better elements of new zombies. No running, no humor, no gore. None of that Romero social satire either. It’s just an excuse for the waiflike cast to fire off prop guns a bit – it’s really just a respectable House of the Dead (with more house). Oy!


An opening text crawl is narrated to us, indicating the illiterate contempt this R-rated film holds for its audience. It seems there is such a thing as the Umbrella Corporation, with their ridiculously evil fingers in all the pies: consumer products, military hardware, genetically-engineered zombie appliances, stupidly translated Japanese names.

We are instantly beset by the film’s two crowning traits: it’s aggravating and overeager rocktronica soundtrack (by Marilyn Manson, natch), and the color blue. Damn those post-production filters The Matrix popularized! This has to be the bluest film ever apart from I Know Who Killed Me (oh right, and Cremaster 1).

Like the turdly AVP, Resident Evil is the sort of movie which delays its establishing exposition (despite the tattletale opening text) for the duration of the running time, effectively replacing a true story with simple explanations of what we’ve seen. To make sense of such nonsense here, it helps to just lay all the cards out on the table. The stifling office environment (theme: blue) is actually the Hive, an ultra-secret Umbrella Corp. research facility so secret, even the people who are in it do not realize they are in it – I’m serious. It’s located deep in the ground underneath Raccoon City – a nickname I reserve for Eugene, Oregon. (The Hive, naturally, looks like a hive – or to my mind, delicious falafel meat on the spit.) Here in the Hive’s labs, secret even to the guys who have made the secrets, the T-virus is wantonly manufactured in cutesy-wootsy helix vials. One “accident” (or obvious tossing) later, and the T-virus is airborne, going through a completely bloodless mass slaughter of the Hive’s, er, drone workers. All this is orchestrated by the complex’s “HAL” computers, ‘cause modern youth audiences today, they don’t even need to know it’s a 2001 reference; give ‘em Resident Evil, and they’ll gladly huck out the old sci-fi classic. This is my least favorite thing about the movie – it shamelessly rips off from movies its core audience couldn’t care about, thus making these presumed morons think it invented the Romero zombie. Things like this and Transformers directly challenge our pop cultural literacy.

One bit of cock-blocking elevator schtick later, and everyone is gormlessly dead…


Alice (Milla Jovovich, a model with delusions of talent) awakes nude, as is her introductory wont. Conveniently to Anderson’s script, she has the amnesia – a wonderful conceit for a game that uses PCs as player surrogates, but rather more irksome in film where we want actual characters. And that name, Alice? It’s the first of Anderson’s shallow, sparse “Alice in Wonderland” references, which add no new layers to this wreck, but give off a strange stink of unearned pretension.

Alice creeps about her vacant, photo shoot-ready mansion, perusing common items found around the house: notes, framed wedding photos, secret armaments of firearms. Oh, and those HAL cameras are there too. We hear a noise. This is the closest the film gets to “creepy,” which augurs poorly for its horror chops. But the stifling non-action Anderson substitutes for tension is about to be shattered, rudely…

By a flurry of incomprehensibility! Within like three seconds, a dozen SWAT members have smashed in and arrested some other guy who is suddenly also there! Things calm down enough for the characters to attempt dialogue, only I cannot hear it over Marilyn Manson’s blaring crap-rock-atronics. Naturally, this pitiful music shall substitute at all times for adrenaline.

Yes, Resident Evil is an action movie, with some zombies (eventually) in it. And as an action film in 2002 (an age that people somehow thought at the time was “revolutionary” action-wise), it apes The Matrix something fierce (as stated). It’s saddening. Before that movie, in 1999, cinematic hacks were content to mimic Die Hard, in their desperate penis compensation. But with The Matrix, suddenly there was something kewl to steal from, in all its shallow, surface details – omnipresent leather, androgynous heroines, techno, a total misunderstanding of anime and Asian action tropes. Seriously, Resident Evil just feels like the product of someone who is desperate to be on the cutting edge, and is consequently several years behind at all times.

The man the SWAT jerks have handcuffed is Matt Addison (Eric Mabius, “Ugly Betty”), whose personality quirk is that he wears a tie. You see how a video game renders people boring? Amongst the SWATs, who are mostly just obvious cannon fodder, is Rain Ocampo (Michelle Rodriguez) – Of course, she’s cannon fodder too. I only know of one film Ms. Rodriguez has survived (The Fast and the Furious), only so she could die ten minutes into the sequel (Fast & Furious). And we’ll be anxiously awaiting her long-delayed death, for Ms. Rodriguez has this very irritating acting tic, her attempt at “badass,” where she simply dons a Droopy face, trying to hide her pupils behind her upper eyelids. It’s endlessly distracting.


Captain of both the SWAT and exposition is James “One” Shade (Colin Salmon, of the Brosnan era Bonds). As Manson’s screeching chords accompany our team onto a basement choo-choo train on its way to the Hive, Shade fills us in: The team is here to retrieve the Hive’s mind, and get it back out, ‘cause surely the ultra-complex complex’s own emergency shutdown procedure couldn’t do that on its own. If it could, though, there’d be no story, so there’s that. Alice was guardian of the secret Hive’s super-duper-extra-ultra-high-double-probation secret entrance, the train-toting mansion. Her amnesia is the result of the Hive’s shutdown…Makes sense to me!

Alice’s “husband,” Spence Parks (James Purefoy), is here too, also suffering the amnesia. That excuses him, at least, for a lack of personality. Alice too. What’s everyone else’s excuse? I mean, you’d think they’d learn how to make Aliens rip-offs by now – yeah, this also “borrows” from Aliens.

The team of interchangeable human bodies progresses further and further into the blue, blue confines of the Hive, accompanied by N64-quality CG to give us a sense of location to compensate for Anderson’s own inability to convey it via cinematography. I’m serious, it is mighty challenging to tell where we are at any given point. All the Hive’s uniform hallways look exactly the same, the sort of problem I thought died with Monogram in the ‘40s.

That HAL computer that’s all over the place? Let’s keep thinking of it as HAL, really, though technically this thing is to be called the “Red Queen.” Yes, Paul, I’ve heard of Lewis Carroll too! (Incidentally, referencing this book is another way Resident Evil recreates The Matrix.)

(Another amusing side note: By checking the credits, I’ve learned the names of the more inevitable future-corpses among this team. We have Blue, Brown, Black, White, Gold, Grey, and two separate Greens – Mr. and Dr.! Ah, Paul W.S. Anderson’s seen Reservoir Dogs!)

After about four more door openings, the team has progressed on to the seventh level, using one warp zone. Then Hudson – sorry, Black – open yet another door, and all of our most disposable SWAT members head right in. (Meanwhile, why’d they bring the two amnesiacs and the random tie-wearer along? They serve no purpose at this juncture.) So somewhere between four and eleven or so SWATs are in, yeah, a hall, when Anderson proves he’s also seen Cube – Good, at least he’s getting slightly more obscure. And how’s he prove that? A (blue) laser dissects all these individuals, in the most squeamish scene possible that can still earn an R-rating. I mean, it’s barely any more vicious than the punch-pulling Alien vs. Predator!


Speaking of, the whole of the Hive reminds me exactly of that Antarctic pyramid from Anderson’s other movie. It’s basically the same script, really, with zombies and xenomorphs proving effectively no different, and even the setting morphing and altering its layout in the same way. Amazingly, I now have less respect for AVP than I did before.

Anyway, the only surviving characters are Alice (of course), Matt the man, Rain the Rodriguez, Spence, and this one SWAT guy who looks exactly like Spence. A few others might be there too, but the editing’s awful enough, I honestly cannot say.

Alice and that other guy (who’s named Chad Kaplan, by the way) go to the Red Queen’s overdesigned CPU, where they throw the One Ring into the fiery pits of Mt. Do- I mean, where they retrieve the computer’s data. This prompts the creation of a little holographic British girl, to issue warnings of the vaguest and least helpful sort. Kaplan’s actual justification for this latest reference (to the future, somehow, and Terminator Salvation) is a doozy: It is “a holographic representation of the Red Queen modeled after the head programmer’s daughter.” Suuuuuuuure…

Removing Red Queen’s data opens up all the doors throughout the Hive. And before you can say “AVP was more efficient than this,” the complex is swarming with piles of the least impressive Romero zombies ever. Seriously, Anderson just told his hired dancer extras to “do whatever.” This man – he cares about his art!

The zombies function by the most basic Romero rules possible. To wit, they’re slow, headshots kill ‘em, and a bite turns you into a zombie. That super-deadly T-virus, once airborne, has somehow gone into remission in precisely this genre-specific way. Now, the problem with nearly every zombie movie is watching the heroes learn the zombie rules ever…so…slooooowly. Okay, I’ll grant these folks do not understand that the freshly-bitten Rain has but one character arc open to her, but Anderson seems to think the audience doesn’t know it either! That’s what I mean when I say Resident Evil is aimed at viewers with no foreknowledge of cinematic history, which it wishes to supplant. It’s sickening! And after a zombie shootout that offers no interest, one of the SWATs (one I hadn’t realized was still alive) gets the driest variation of Captain Rhodes’ Day of the Dead kill I’ve ever seen. What’s with Anderson and gore?!

For no particular reason (I think it’s a reshoot), Alice alone wanders off into the labs. Maybe it has something to do with the post-filtered flashbacks she occasionally gets, when the plot deems she may have some of her memory back. Oh wait, here’s the reason Alice went here: to be harassed by a pack of skinless doggies (blood hounds – heh heh!). And a zombie too, just because. It’s a mini-boss.

Apropos of nothing (except those memory flashes), Milla Jovovich is now an action heroine. She shoots the sweet doggies with astounding accuracy, and damn it, was that bullet time stuff really necessary?! ‘Cause really, Matrix wannabes at this budget just come across like Kurt Wimmer movies! But uh oh! Alice is out of bullets, and there’s one more enemy on the screen. This is a problem only stupidity can resolve:


This nonsense over, it’s time for a little more back story exposition to clue us in. Matt, the guy who has less business being here than Topher Grace in Predators, is involved in corporate espionage. He had worked out with Alice, pre-amnesia, a way of ridding the Umbrella Corp. of their T-virus and blah blah blah. Matt now suspects her of betrayal, what with the zombie hordes and all, and the movie is desperately wishing we’ve all forgotten there’s a second amnesiac around to take all the blame for this later (spoiler).

Oh, and there’s a time limit for everyone to escape. (What would a cliché-ridden movie be without one.) See, as a rather extremely delayed shutdown , the Hive seals its outer doors seven hours after zombies first happen. Of course, it could’ve done it immediately, only…we’d have no movie then! There are a few too many of these problems here.

Around here, everyone returns to the Red Queen’s CPU (save point) for five minutes of zombie exposition. Stuff most people figured out back in 1968!

Another rather unmotivated zombie “action” sequence follows, in a sewer this time in place of antiseptic hallways. It’s damnably confusing. I chalked off nearly every character as dead at some point here, except…No one dies! Fat lot of good that scene did us!


Alice gets another of her convenient flashes, having apparently maxed up to the next level, and earned a continue. You see, now she knows the Hive houses a secret chamber full of 1-ups – er, anti-viruses. Okay, we’ve got an item to get now – It’s nice for our characters to have an objective for once…All that rather dropped away for about half an hour there.

It’s around here where Spence, getting a plot-convenient flash of his own, remembers he’s a bad guy, and that he’s already stolen the anti-virus – it’s back at the train. Off he goes, when the game’s – er, film’s – Big Boss reveals itself. A so-called “Licker,” the result of combining the T-virus with pure human tissue and Japanese insanity, descends from the ceiling in all its CG glory, and does Spence in by…by…Well, Spence is totally undamaged in another scene, so presumably the Licker just sanguinated him via some subtle means…And licked him, I guess.


The rest are trapped in the labs. The Red Queen appears on a monitor, promising to release them if they kill Rain – since she’s carrying the virus. Instead, Alice smashes the Queen’s HDTV, which is presumably all it takes to kill this computer program. They’re nowhere near the CPU! But it must work, because it’s the capper to a scene full of “drama” and “tension.”

Then they go to the train, Alice finds a zombified Spence very much not ripped to shreds, and does him in with a pickaxe (off screen).

The train is speeding along, as everyone shoots up on anti-virus like the heroin addicts Milla Jovovich rather resembles. Everyone is safe now, an idiot thinks, while those familiar with narrative convention and basic logic are counting down the seconds before the Licker’s triumphantly noisy entrance. It kills the useless guy (Kaplan), claws Matt a bit, then gives in to temptation and licks Alice’s thighs. Paul W.S. Anderson reenacting his home life for us, eh?

Then Michelle Rodriguez finally turns into a genuine zombie and – get this – everyone is surprised. It’s Zombie Movie 101, people! But she is shot, and meanwhile the Licker’s great slobbering tongue snags itself on the tracks under the train as it drags away to certain CGI death.


Alice and Matt alone escape, passing into the mansion just as the Hive’s vault doors seal for good (off screen, which is either artful or lazy – take your pick). Thus begins the Return of the King of horror movie endings – another 10 minutes of post-climax climaxes, all in slow motion. So Alice and Matt relax on the mansion’s marbled floor when –

Hey, Anderson’s seen E.T. too! All these hazmat scientists enter to drag the clawed and mutating Matt away, to be a part of the Nemesis Program that means nothing to me now – though I’ll be seeing the sequel soon. Alice, once so formidable barehanded against the legions of the dead (and CGI Lickers), is bested by these scant scientists, who drag her off kicking…


She awakes, again nearly nude, in – you’ll never guess – a blue, antiseptic room. Some would call this “coming full circle,” some would call it a narrative that’s accomplished nothing, I would call it the starting point of 28 Days Later.... For Alice escapes, picking a keycard lock with an IV – You can do that?! – and takes to the streets. Predictably, it’s now post-zombie apocalypse in Raccoon City – basically, it’s downtown Toronto after the Maple Leafs win. Alice preps a shotgun and – INSERT COINS TO CONTINUE…


Oh, it’ll continue alright! An ending like that is designed with sequels in mind, because when you make a “market risk” movie, that’s always a possibility. Resident Evil and its ilk are designed to be franchises. The accountants have it all worked out so that a $33 million dollar movie, making a mere $40 million in the U.S. ($103 million worldwide), can be constituted a “success.” And even while critics and the public as a whole recognized Resident Evil for a poor, poor property, there will always be certain viewers – people with no sense of taste or knowledge of other films – who will watch such tripe. Just release it in a so-called dead season (March in this case, September for the sequels), and you’re set.




Related posts:
• No. 2 Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004)
• No. 3 Resident Evil: Extinction (2007)
• No. 4 Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010)