RESIDENT EVIL: AFTERLIFE (2010) REVIEW

It's video game zombie film time with the fourth in the series of Resident Evil films. What did i think of Resident Evil: Afterlife? Click after the jump to find out....

!!!!!!!!WARNING! SPOILERS AFTER THE JUMP!!!!!!!!!!!

Zombie films are a genre of films that I hold very dear to my heart, I don’t know why I am drawn to these films more than werewolf or vampire films, but the zombie genre seems to have that one thing that keeps drawing me back, but even though 99.9% of all Zombie films follow the same plot of total zombie apocalypse I still seem to find my self fascinated by the whole idea of them. So with the dawn of 3D gaming and the release of the 32 bit PS1 from Sony, the idea of being thrust into the action and you, the player, being the one who has to dispatch of the living dead, my world was almost complete, and the game I am referring to is RESIDENT EVIL. Now the PS1 was released in 1995, that is fifteen years ago, and since then the resi games have become one of the most lucrative franchises in gaming history and sit along side Mario, Sonic and Final Fantasy, so it was inevitable that there would be a movie version of the game.

Originally intended to be written and directed by zombie Icon and godfather of modern horror, George A. Romero, who incidentally had written a full script for the film, Romero was dropped in favor of British director Paul W.S. Anderson, who only had Shopping and the first Mortal Kombat film on his CV, but the producers preferred Andersons vision for the franchise and in 2002 Resident Evil hit the big screen. That film garnered quite a good box office and while not really having much to do with games apart from the inclusion of Umbrella Corp, still managed to make enough money to warrant a sequel, the wonderfully titled Resident Evil: Apocalypse that took the action from the underground and placed it topside. The film was written and produced by Anderson but director duties were handed to some one else and although the sequel pales in comparison to the first, it still managed to make enough money for a threequel, again wonderfully titled Resident Evil: Extinction. Extinction set the action against a post-apocalyptic wasteland that was the Nevada desert and much like the previous 2, follows the adventures of the super enhanced Alice as she tries to take down the evil Umbrella Corp. As with Apocalypse, Anderson was on board as writer/producer and this time the film was in the hands of the very capable Russell Mulcahy, director of Highlander and Razor Back, and while being only a tad better than the second, this still made enough money to earn yet another sequel, this time titled…wait for it….Resident Evil: Afterlife.

THE PLOT:

Resident Evil: Afterlife follows Alice who is now human as she continues her hunt for the leader of Umbrella, the dastardly Wesker, a man who dresses like Neo but has the acting talent of a fish. Along the way she meets up with a band of survivors who is holed up in an abandoned military compound dead in the center of Hollywood. Here she meets up with Chris Redfield, who for the main character of the first game, has taken 4 movies to appear in. Chris says he can get them out and to the safety of the ‘mythical’ Arcadia, a large cargo ship just off the coast of L.A. He does this but the whole thing is a set up as the ship is actually an umbrella ship that has captured survivors and is doing experiments on them. There are at least 3 final showdowns in the ending of this and they’re all between Alice, Wesker, Claire and Chris.

THE CAST:

MILLA JOVOVICH as Alice

Again with this fourth film, Jovovich plays Alice, and again she plays her dead serious even though the character laughable at times, but she seems to be playing Alice as The Transporter’s Frank Martin, giving her this ‘I can’t really act that well, but I can kick some serious ass’ feel. But she is of course the main character of the film and people do kind of like her even though she never appeared in any of the games…

ALI LARTER as Claire

Ali Larter returns to the Role of Claire Redfield that she took up in the third film. Again, like Alice, Claire seems to be more of an automaton and the character seems lifeless. This could be down the script because Larter is a decent enough actress..

KIM COATES as Bennett

Kim Coates again plays the kind of scumbag character he’s used to, but he does give the film its credible actor status as he plays a movie producer who turns against the survivors and turns towards Umbrella.

WENTWORTH MILLER as Chris Redfield

Miller brings something quite cool to the film, he’s cocky, funny but also a hardcore soldier, its just a shame it’s taken four films for him to appear. When we’re introduced to Chris Redfield, he’s being held in a sort of prison cell, and I just kept thinkng, you’ve broken out of two prisons and broken into the most secure vault in the world, yet you can’t break out of a crappy little cell, but then I remembered that I wasn’t watching Prison Break. Wentworth Miller is a breath of fresh air for the franchise and I hope he’s back for the inevitable fifth film.

SHAWN ROBERTS as Wesker

Who is this man, he doesn’t have a talented bone in his body and is the worst character and actor in the film. The character of Wesker is completely different in the games and Robert’s one dimensional performance destroys any interest in the character.

The Direction:

As always Anderson’s direction is good, he easily handles action set pieces, but the only downfall of these scenes are the obvious over use of green-screen. Although I have to say some of the CGI visuals are good and shows just how apocalyptic the zombie outbreak was, and while not on par with the depressing sense of the end of the world that was shown in the films The Road and The Book of Eli, they\re still quite striking. The only problem I have with Anderson’s direction on this is that he seems to have stepped back a bit and while he shoot this well using James Cameron’s Digital 3D camera, he doesn’t have the rawness of say Death Race or the icey atmosphere of AVP, but I still find my self enjoying his films and I do always look forward to what he’s got coming next.

MY FINAL VERDICT:

I know it sounds as though I didn’t find anything of any redeeming value, but I still found Resident Evil Afterlife to be incredibly entertaining and in my opinion the best since the first. Jovovich owns her character and to be played by anyone else wouldn’t be right, just as if some else took the role of John McClane or Jack Bauer, it just wouldn’t fit right. But it all comes down to the entertainment value and Afterlife is very entertaining, it zips along faster than the first two sequels and as with those films leaves you on an opened ended end ready for the fifth film, and I tell you this, if it’s as entertaining as this then I am there my friends. Bring on the Zombie hordes and give us fucking LEON KENNEDY already…

RESIDENT EVIL: AFTERLIFE

FILM: 7/10