The original RESIDENT EVIL is horrible. To say the sequel is a little better isn’t saying much. However, it does keep up the status that no movie based on a videogame has ever been good.
Alice (Milla Jovovich, DUMMY) returns, finding herself as a guinea pig in an Umbrella Corp. lab. In the first film, Alice wanted to take down the company and ended getting wrapped up in a conspiracy involving bio-weapons and the living dead. Now the living dead have escaped from the lab and the people of Raccoon City are trapped, left to die by the all-powerful Umbrella baddies.
A top scientist Dr. Ashford (Jared Harris, HAPPINESS) is desperate because his daughter Angie (Sophie Vavasseur, EVELYN) is trapped in the city, which will be wiped off the Earth by a nuclear bomb in the morning. So he enlists people inside the city to rescue his daughter with the promise that he will get them out. How he contacts the people inside the city is a plot device so lame that you’d think it came from a videogame.
I’d list the other characters other than Alice, but like a videogame they really are just fodder for the zombies. For fans of the game, Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory, TIME MACHINE), the female cop from the game, makes an appearance. Let’s just say that her outfit is nice to look at, but probably not standard issue attire from the Raccoon City police department. As for acting Guillory might have been better suited as one of the zombies. If you make Milla Jovvovich look good than you need some help.
Then, if zombies where not enough, the baddie Major Cain (Thomas Kretschmann, THE PIANIST) sends in mutant killing machine Nemesis (Matthew G, Taylor, GOTHIKA) to test Alice’s new found genetically altered powers. Why Nemesis looks like a corpse on steroids and Alice looks like… well… Milla Jovovich is not explained. But not explaining is pretty standard for the film, because its only purpose is to string action scenes together. If the zombies are a product of either exposure to the original virus or being killed by a zombie then why are old dead people rising from graves to attack the good guys? These zombies are from the wrong film? Oh, I better calm down because this kind of sloppy filmmaking just makes my blood boil.
The film creates no suspense, no characters, no fun. The fight scenes are even boring. Director Alexander Witt (directing debut, formerly a second unit director) tries to bring some style to the film, but it’s uneven. Sometimes the style works, sometimes you want to laugh at the ridiculousness and sometimes you want to yawn. In the end the film is a mess. With the anti-climactic ending to this film we are assured at least one more film in this fourth-rate franchise.
Rick DeMott
Animation World Network
Creator of Rick's Flicks Picks
