Resident Evil: Afterlife

Excellent!

I've always had a soft spot for the Resident Evil movies. Maybe it's the zombie action. Or the brainless fun they offer, the type of movie you can pop into the player on a rainy Saturday and watch with a dopey grin on your face.

Aw, who am I kidding. It's all about Milla. She just looks so damn sexy when she's kicking zombie (or alien) butt.

I didn't know there was something after the credits which really pisses me off. I guess a certain someone shows up? What did I miss?

Thanks and you have to use that! I edited out the name in my post. I was on RT last night for awhile reading all the reviews which are mostly negative (15% or something) and several of them talk about the ending so I didn't think about it. I got the impression that most of those critics don't play games. The user score is over 80%.

The ending didn't bother me to be honest. I think the movie is good enough so that it should easily do better than the others. I know it had the highest budget of them all although I haven't been able to get a figure.

I sometimes wonder what even people who have played the games see in them. I always thought that mostly they were pretty incoherent as far as the stories went, a trait I find common among Japanese video games and movies. I chalk it up to things being lost in translation. Actually, I thought the games got more things wrong than they did right but I have always loved them anyway. Resident Evil 5 to me was the first game where I felt that not only did the story make perfect sense but they fixed most, if not all, of the problems I had with the series. Maybe the fact that Paul Anderson drew so heavily from that game is the reason I liked it as much as I did.

I think we are all on the same wave length on this one. I sent this to David last night but hasn't put it up yet.

Resident Evil: Afterlife

Resident Evil: Afterlife, the 4th film in the franchise, written and directed by Paul W.S. Anderson, is the best entry in the series yet. It takes up exactly where Extinction left off, with Alice and her clones going after Umbrella Corporation while Claire Redfield, K-Mart and the rest of the survivors flying off in search of the infection free zone and safe haven, Acadia. It opens with quite a striking scene taking place 4 years prior with the camera panning up the body of a beautiful Japanese woman standing in the rain in the middle of a crowded sidewalk and suddenly attacking the nearest passerby. All, of course, in slow motion, all the lights on the Earth shut off and thus the movie begins. After the opening titles fly overhead we come to Umbrella headquarters, Tokyo. The Alice clone army lays siege to the underground complex, quickly and efficiently eliminating all Umbrella soldiers in a hail of bullets and sword blades. All of this is again, in slow motion. Wesker, however, is a slippery one and escapes in an impressively designed V-TOL aircraft. Alice, the real Alice, makes sure she’s on board when he does. He quickly turns the table on her though and stabs her in the neck with a syringe with a serum that eliminates the T-Virus, taking away all of Alice’s superpowers, which should be a good thing for all the people that have been complaining about them for the last several years. The aircraft crashes into a mountain during the tussle and Alice and Wesker go their separate ways.

A few months later Alice has found an airplane, which is not so miraculous considering she survived a crash into a mountain and the subsequent massive explosion without a scratch, and is now in search of Acadia herself. Consider the next 15 minutes or so an interlude as we are treated to some very nice shots of the Alaskan wilderness and the plane flying over it. She soon finds a field with a lot of empty airplanes and helicopters parked in it where she is attacked by Claire. She quickly disarms her and removes the device that is injecting her with a fluid turning her into a Haitian version of a zombie. She is wild, incoherent and has no memory, so without finding anyone else, into the plane they go and off to L.A. it is. Claire soon recovers as they fly over the dilapidated Hollywood sign and into L.A. where they discover another small band of survivors on the roof of a prison. Making a rooftop landing that even Maverick and Snake Plissken would be proud of we are introduced to the rest of the cast. Only one of them being of any kind of importance, the others serve their purpose well enough. This is where Claire finds out that Acadia is not a town in Alaska but a cargo ship anchored just off shore. So now, they must find a way to get there and because the plane only holds two people, it’s out of the question.

They soon find out that they are not even safe within the seemingly impenetrable concrete walls of the prison because just as Romero’s zombies in Land of the Dead figured out how to walk under water, Paul W.S. Anderson’s zombies figure out how to dig tunnels underground. Not even the basement is safe from modern zombies. At this point the action ensues with zombies climbing under the walls and a giant, hooded monster with an enormous axe, pounding down the front gate, where thousands more zombies wait to bust in. Though Alice has been stripped of her super abilities, she can still do some pretty extraordinary things; such as jumping off the Nakatomi Plaza sized Prison roof in her best John McClane impersonation only replacing the explosion with hordes of zombies tumbling after her as she lands on her feet, shooting zombies in the head as she hits the ground running. I think inserting the line “Yippie Ki-Yay Motherfucker s” would have been a nice touch. I know how painful it is to go more than 5 minutes without something blowing up for the average moviegoer and while this movie has a pretty good amount of nicely choreographed fighting and action sequences there are moments when the characters just talk. That was ok with me. The dialogue isn’t exactly Shakespeare, but it’s not as annoyingly awful as it is in a lot of movies. I felt the movie moved along quite well and I did not want to check my watch or go have a smoke break.

Several of the ideas in Afterlife, such as the aforementioned giant axe wielding monster and zombies with tentacles coming out of their mouth, are taken right from Resident Evil 5. Are there plot holes and gaps in logic? Is it over-the-top and ridiculous at times? Yes but isn’t that to be expected? Have you played the games? I think that if these movies had been played straight they would have stopped being Resident Evil and become just another zombie movie. Aren’t there enough of those already, especially with The Walking Dead hitting TV in just under 2 months? I like these movies because they are fun. I like the games because they are fun. I don’t expect any more out of them and frankly don’t expect any kind of high art to ever come from a video game adaptation. Not that video games aren’t art, mind you.

Last but not least I want to hit on the 3D. Am I rambling? Do the 3D effects in movies not warrant a paragraph of their own? I think they do. If I’m expected to pay more for a ticket because of the 3D effects then I’m going to be critical of them and I think we all should be. I was lastly heavily disappointed in the post-conversion 3D effects of Piranha 3D. This movie was filmed in 3D using James Cameron’s cameras and supposedly his crew though I’m not positive of that. The whole movie benefitted from it and there were occasions when I really felt that this new technology is going to be good for film. Everyone probably has their own ideas about what makes for good 3D. What I don’t particularly like, and didn’t like in the 80’s either, is when objects kind of hang in space for an extended period of time, like an eyeball, while people ooh and ahh about it. What I prefer now is the kind of 3D that is more subtle and gives the movie more depth without being blatant and intrusive. For instance, in Afterlife the scenes of the airplane flying with the clouds in 3D and the burning cityscape were pretty impressive. Is the 3D mind blowing? No, but I don’t expect to have my mind blown by it for at least 5 years. What I hope to see are incremental improvements until then. Like it or not 3D is not going to go away this time and I just want it to be used in an artistic way and not just a gimmick. Resident Evil: Afterlife is pretty easy on the eyes that way.

Afterlife is an enjoyable time at the movies and a good 3D experience. I know that’s not saying much but it is the best Resident Evil film so far and I really hope they have plans to make a 5th installment because I really want to see how Claire and company get out of the situation they find themselves in the final moments of the film. It’s nothing classic, but I think it’s worthy of a solid 3 on our 4 scale.

Haha, I was cracking up when I read your review and saw that you picked that up. Not that it was subtle. It was an awesome scene with all those zombies spilling off the roof. I didn't see any critics mention it when I was reading some from RT.

After reading Tristan's I felt stupid for not thinking about the score because I thought it kicked copious amounts of ass.

Yep, I loved the opening scene. It was kind of stunning to watch thinking that Paul W.S. Anderson was behind it. Incredibly beautiful.

The 3D really was nice. Chris mentioned the fog in his review which I loved as well and the clouds, there is definitely potential in the technology when it's used properly. I picked up the latest, incredibly badass, issue of Horrorhound today and they interviewed Anderson and the first question was about the 3D and he said he'll never be involved with a conversion after knowing how amazing it is to shoot a film in 3D and made a lot of really good points and observations.

With a $27.7 million opening weekend, the best in the franchise so far, I think it's safe to say that there will be a 5th installment. You can sleep better now Chris knowing the Cliffhanger will be resolved.