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Is it worth $10? No
Zombies aren’t deep characters. There aren’t too many movies that are told from the zombies’ point of view. Their only purpose is to eat heroes and get shot, stabbed, bludgeoned, blown up, and otherwise splattered in various ways.
To its credit, “Resident Evil: Afterlife” delivers on that expectation. The film is based on a series of videogames of the same name about a group of survivors of a virus epidemic. Much like in a videogame, the zombies are there for cheap scares and target practice. After all, they’re not much good for anything else.
And it’s not just zombies who get disposed of by the truckload. The film starts with an assault on the secret underground headquarters of the Umbrella Corporation in Tokyo. They’re the ones responsible for the virus, and for turning Alice (Milla Jovovich) into a kind of a cross breed. Alice is faster, stronger, and more agile than regular human beings. And apparently, somewhere along the way, she found a way to clone herself. An army of Alices take on an army of Umbrella Corporation guards. We watch as she flips, twirls, stabs, slices, and shoots her way through her enemies in a sequence reminiscent of “The Matrix.”
It ends with a confrontation on board a helicarrier with head Umbrella baddie Albert Wesker (Shawn Roberts), who is also superhuman. Even though he is fast and strong, he apparently isn’t smart enough to turn on the autopilot when he leaves the controls unmanned. He has just enough time to inject Alice with a substance that strips her of her powers before the helicarrier crashes. We then see Alice walking away from the wreckage without so much as a sprained ankle or tear in her clothes.
The story then picks up six months later. Alice is in a plane headed to Alaska. We’re given brief flashbacks that remind us that at the end of the last film, “Resident Evil: Extinction,” Alice took off to fight Umbrella while the rest of the survivors, led by Claire Redfield (Ali Larter), got in a helicopter to go to a town called Arcadia, which they believe is a safe haven in Alaska. Once in Alaska, she finds no safe haven, but meets up with Claire again, and the two fly back south toward Los Angeles.
That’s one heck of a plane. It’s a single engine two-seater that not only flew from Tokyo, Japan to Alaska, but then flew from Alaska to L.A. Where Alice stopped to refuel is anyone’s guess. This film doesn’t concern itself with the details, such as: In a land controlled by the dead, where do you get fuel for your plane? Where and what are the food sources? How come hundreds of rounds of ammo are expelled in seconds and no one ever has to reload? Even the videogame makes you reload. That’s what makes it so scary—as a game player, you don’t want to be caught surrounded by five zombies with only two bullets left in your gun. Some suspense could have been derived in the movie from a situation like that.
Alice and Claire also are lucky to have great make-up. In every scene, they’re wearing lipstick and eyeliner, and it never smudges, no matter who they’re fighting and how many times they’re hit. It must also be waterproof, because the ladies get soaked in a few scenes and it never runs.
Maybe this is too much to ask from a silly popcorn movie, but it’s these types of details that could have separated it from being yet another zombie action shoot ‘em up. The director and writer, Paul W.S. Anderson, returns to the franchise for the first time since the first “Resident Evil.” That film had a fun take on the zombie movie. This time around he seems to be content with piggybacking off the fun of other films—not just “The Matrix,” which he borrows from heavily, but also “Die Hard,” “The Poseidon Adventure,” and “Dawn of the Dead.”
A good chunk of the film is a direct reference to “Dawn of the Dead.” Only instead of a mall, Alice and Claire crash land their plane on the roof of a prison where other survivors sought out safety. We then follow Alice, Claire, and the rest as they try to find their way out, while at the same time trying to avoid becoming a zombie meal.
The 3D is top notch. It’s refreshing to see a film that was shot with 3D in mind, rather than added as an afterthought. Fun is had with the 3D a few times, and the images pop with clarity. It’s far better than the second rate 3D that causes headaches and nausea. There’s even a great shot in the beginning as the camera flies straight down from outer space into the middle of a city. It would have been a disaster in bad 3D, but since it was done with quality it’s a fun shot and feels almost like a roller coaster.
But aside from some good 3D—for the first time in a while—“Resident Evil: Afterlife” has very little to offer other than more of the same zombie splatter. Romero’s newer zombie films may not have the same kick as the crop of newer zombie movies, but at least he is bold enough to take the idea of zombies in new and different directions. Perhaps if he wrote this story it would have been something more interesting. There’s an idea: If Romero and Anderson could team up, combining Romero’s ideas with Anderson’s visuals, the zombie movie could be saved. Let’s hope they do that. Another movie like “Resident Evil: Afterlife” and the zombie genre will be dead—and it won’t be coming back to life.
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TravisP
said:
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... Just saw it tonight, I have to disagree with you. Compared to the last movie this one was pretty good and worth the 10, and the 3D was incredible and breathtaking as the character model for the Executioner(the ax man. However i felt they couldve added more to the fight with Wesker. |
LockesKidney
said:
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... yea this movie was all 3D show off material nothing more. the story was a joke |
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