(Long Island, N.Y.) Resident Evil: Afterlife, the fourth film based on Capcom’s best-selling video-game series, is the ultimate example of flash and style over substance. Directed by Paul W. S. Anderson (are you surprised?), Afterlife contains no story, no characters you care about, and nothing even remotely resembling a realistic moment in the entire movie-
it’s just plastic, CG-laden, and a good example of everything that’s wrong with modern movies.
But with that said, I have to admit that the Resident Evil movies all retain some base degree of entertainment value. I admit to being a fan of the games, and seeing the various characters and monsters transformed from polygons and pixels into live, twisted and
quivering flesh is actually quite cool. But beyond that, there’s something about watching a solid, dumb, fast-paced sci-fi/action movie that aspires to be nothing more than just that. It’s better than the sorrow of a film with a great idea or premise that just horribly screws it up, at least. But on that note, I always give points for trying.
Resident Evil: Afterlife picks up right where Resident Evil: Extinction left off: the evil Umbrella Corporation’s T-Virus
bio-weapon research has gotten a wee bit out of hand, and almost the entire Earth is overrun with zombies and other assorted creatures. Alice (Milla Jovovich, reprising the role for the fourth time), a former Umbrella employee turned T-Virus enhanced powerhouse, continues her
fight against her former bosses with the aid of her army of clones, who were created at the end of the last movie.
The twig-thin Jovovich gets more and more tiresome as she continues to play nothing but unstoppable superhuman characters throughout her career, and the thought of dozens of her running around didn’t exactly have me overjoyed. But the beginning of Afterlife fixes this
problem quite effectively by blowing up all the Alice clones and having main Umbrella baddie Albert Wesker (Shawn Roberts) rob the original of her powers. Right on, Al! A waif-like, unstoppable juggernaut Alice who can easily fight monsters on their own terms is just silly, but a normal Alice with real human frailties might actually generate some tension. It doesn’t, however; turns out she’s still pretty tough, even without the T-Virus in her system.
The now fully-human Alice moves on, looking for other survivors of the zombie apocalypse. She first runs into old buddy Claire Redfield (Ali Larter), and then into a gang holed up in an abandoned prison, all of whom are looking for the fabled safe haven known as “Arcadia.” But does it really exist? And if so, will they find it before Umbrella (or even just the millions of zombies shambling around) closes in for the kill?
One major problem with Resident Evil: Afterlife is it’s complete dependence on the viewer having seen and being intimately familiar with the other films in the series. But even if you are (guilty!), it STILL comes across as oddly random and, in parts, even sloppy. Example: Alice is in an Umbrella base near the end of the film and notices that a character named “K-Mart” is being held captive there and gets all excited…meanwhile, this is the first time “K-Mart” is even mentioned in the movie. Now, for those of you who don’t know, she’s actually some kid they ran across in the pervious movie who got her name from the K-Mart store they found her in. I think she couldn’t talk or something, which is why they stuck her with that ridiculous moniker. I don’t really remember, but frankly, it’s embarrassing that I even know THAT much. Anyway, no one watching probably had any idea who K-Mart (the person, not the store) is, and the movie didn’t bother to tell them. But it’s not important who K-Mart actually is, because she’s only in the movie for about 37 seconds and has no dialogue; I guess I was right about her not being able to talk.
Wow, that was a long paragraph about not much of anything. Hmm.
Oh, and director Paul W. S. Anderson continues to refuse to grow as a filmmaker or writer, except in terms of robbing flashy and pointless camera and effects shots from better movies and paying less and less attention to character development while doing it. Alas, the promising young Paul Anderson (no “W.S.” back then) that directed awesome movies like Event Horizon (which had crazy things like “plot,” “atmosphere,” and “memorable characters”) appears to be long dead and buried. Sigh.
Still, on the plus side, Afterlife’s highly-touted 3D effects (filmed with James Cameron’s 3D Fusion Camera System, which he developed for Avatar) were very convincing. The movie also had some neat fight scenes, Jovovich’s Alice character became 10,000% less annoying by losing her superpowers, and the appearance of several characters and monsters lifted directly from the Resident Evil video-games, such as the “giant hooded axe-wielding dude” from Resident Evil 5 and the first live-action appearance of
series mainstay Chris Redfield (played by Wentworth Miller) and Albert Wesker (well, he popped up at the end of Extinction, but whatever), were all really cool.
Overall Resident Evil: Afterlife is decent, brainless fun, but just as vapid and instantly forgettable as the rest of the RE films.
