It is just terrible.
I think this is the spot where we can clearly see the creative bankruptcy that is the Resident Evil franchise. Just about everything here is about as amateur hour as you can imagine. What the fuck is wrong with the people who green lit this piece of trash? There aren’t enough drugs to make a normal person think this film as any merit creative or entertainment wise.
I have watched a lot of crappy movies on this blog, but this one might actual be the most insulting. It is clear that Anderson ran out of crappy ideas and just said “eh, fuck it, I’ll just rip off every other zombie film I can think of and break my own arc for some cheap money.” Everything about this is just simply terrible.
This pathetic film barely breaks 60 minutes if you cut out repeat scenes and credits—that should give you an indication of how empty the script is. We start out with a slow-motion reverse shot of the opening action scene. I can almost hear Anderson “Hey you know what no one will enjoy? Seeing the same fucking thing twice. Let’s do that.” As from being repetitious and boring, it is also horrid to look at. The special effects are about SyFy film levels now, and the whole thing really has become a sad undead husk of what it once was (and it was once shit, so what is it now).
There is so much wrong with this film that I almost want to do a “critic’s commentary” voice track you could play with the damn thing. Oh yeah, the dumbass narration is still there. I guess I have to give it my begrudging respect for that.
It amuses me that they are shoehorning in videogame characters left and right at this point, and doing a piss poor job of it. Leon is all super serious here, and not a joker as in the games. Barry seems about 25 years to young (and probably 40 pounds too light) to be the gruff bear from the games. I guess in short, the characters are pretty much shit.
But wait, there’s more! Aside from bringing in new poorly written characters we also get new versions of old (dead) poorly written characters. That is right folks, you get like 5 times the stupid all in one package.
I suppose I should stop being sassy and actually review the film.
This time around we follow Alice as she is trapped in an Umbrella facility and must rendezvous with a strike team in order to escape. Oddly, this film is probably the only one so far that could actually be turned into a Resident Evil game. The whole thing is actually kind of like a game—levels, time limits, and all that jazz. I suppose if I wanted to be generous I could say the bored looks on the characters faces throughout also remind me of videogames. However, I think it is easier to just say the acting sucks.
The film is episodic, as they have increasingly become. It is just a bunch of convenient sequences for pretty actors to kill zombies with a bunch of cuts. At this point, you’ll probably only watch it if you’re a fan. If not, stay far away. 3/10
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