You go into a RESIDENT EVIL film thinking you know exactly what you're getting. A statuesque beauty kicking undead ass while attempting to uncover an overarching corporate/government conspiracy, and also while saving the lives of assorted, improbably well-coiffed, survivors of the zombie apocalypse. There'll be impressive feats of insane bravery, a whole bunch of wire work, slow motion replays of previous events, assorted sidekick types lost and found, the occasional fright provided by the lurking legions of the undead, and lots and lots of gunfire, all scored to a calculatedly pounding baseline you can feel all the way to your spine.
You're not expecting high art, not for a second. But neither are you, I would hazard a guess, expecting to be bored.
From the outset of this, the fifth in the franchise, that was my predominant emotion. Oh, I jumped a little every now and then at the advance of a particularly heinous zombie horde, I was able to call forth at least a modicum of appreciation for the continuing splendor of the action sequences, and there was more than a little perplexity in there as well as the tale got ever more convoluted, but almost from the moment our heroine, Alice (Milla Jovovich) began her usual deadpan recounting of previous events, her "My name is Alice, and I'm about to exposition the hell out of you people" straight-to-camera Story So Far, it was all I could do to muster any interest in proceedings.
This is a shame, as there is not a single other entry in the series that I didn't, at least on some level, enjoy. Perhaps my major problem with this movie is that it is by far the most video game-esque of all of the series thus far, and since I have never played the game, I don't really understand these scenes' appeal. Director Paul W. S. Anderson has dispensed with even the semblance of plot now, and instead is relying on the thrill of vicarious levelling up to appease moviegoers. Oh, there has always been an element of this in the movies, as is only right and proper; one should never ignore one's roots, and not throwing in the occasional sop to the gamers in the form of a subtle reference to one of the more beloved design elements would be not only disrespectful but foolish. But there is subtle homage and then there is outright cinematic LARPing; Jovovich and co. basically spend the majority of the movie as live-action Player 1, working their way through level after level, all the while shooting almost indiscriminately and surely taking hits that should have killed, or at least inconvenienced, them in all of the chaos. I swear, I saw the guy beside me in the theater flick his fingers in what looked very like someone mastering a PlayStation controller, his sense memory clearly telling him that for all of this stylized, almost ritualistic carnage to be erupting on screen in front of him then surely he should be X-Y-bumper-right-left-ing to make it happen.
The premise is this: picking up directly from where the last movie left off – and yet, not entirely – Alice is captured by the ruthless Umbrella Corporation and is due for extermination by the rogue company artificial intelligence, the Red Queen. She experiences a memory, or perhaps an hallucination, where she was married to Oded Fehr and had a hearing impaired daughter before the zombies took over the world, and when she awakens in her cell, it takes her a moment to recapture her badass. Capital-E EVIL corporate lackey Albert Wesker (Shawn Roberts) frees her from her cage for inscrutable reasons (he tries to explain, but his stentorian, Agent-Smith-"Mr. Anderson"-style delivery of his every line makes it hard to focus), and then Alice and her wooden, if dexterous, new helpmeet Ada (Li Bingbing) must battle their way through the Umbrella complex, defeating the antagonists in each new room – and, of course, the hard-to-kill Big Boss – before moving on in an attempt to escape. Oh, there are other people involved here, too; some from previous movies in the franchise, some new faces, but the main objective is just to kill as many extras as possible, be they zombie or Umbrella minion or clone.
I may be making it sound more interesting than it actually is.
Then there are the performances. Milla Jovovich does her valiant best, but this is a hard plot to rise above, and it is really only when she is sharing the screen with the most abysmal of actors – and there are many – that she truly shines, if only by comparison. Michelle Rodriguez, who is way too good for this, is fine, considering the few scenes and limited dialogue she has to work with, and Oded Fehr, whom we see in this one for barely a second, is WAY too good for this, and must have really needed the paycheck -- but then, he was way too good for APOCALYPSE and EXTINCTION, and they were exponentially better films.
Most of the remainder of the speaking cast – excepting the aforementioned Roberts and Bingbing – are fairly inoffensive, and Boris Kodjoe always brings the pretty, but Sienna Guillory as friend-turned- Umbrella-puppet Jill is truly terrible, going for possessed-by- malevolent-artificial-intelligence but achieving only petulant, I-was- rejected-from-THE HILLS screechiness.
The movie ends on a cliffhanger (as has become the norm in this franchise), and for the first time I just don't care at all what happens next. So perhaps I should be happy, now cured of one of my more pointless enthusiasms of recent years. And should a sixth movie in this series be made, as seems unhappily likely, here's hoping the zombies win.
– Rachel Hyland, Geek Speak Magazine
You're not expecting high art, not for a second. But neither are you, I would hazard a guess, expecting to be bored.
From the outset of this, the fifth in the franchise, that was my predominant emotion. Oh, I jumped a little every now and then at the advance of a particularly heinous zombie horde, I was able to call forth at least a modicum of appreciation for the continuing splendor of the action sequences, and there was more than a little perplexity in there as well as the tale got ever more convoluted, but almost from the moment our heroine, Alice (Milla Jovovich) began her usual deadpan recounting of previous events, her "My name is Alice, and I'm about to exposition the hell out of you people" straight-to-camera Story So Far, it was all I could do to muster any interest in proceedings.
This is a shame, as there is not a single other entry in the series that I didn't, at least on some level, enjoy. Perhaps my major problem with this movie is that it is by far the most video game-esque of all of the series thus far, and since I have never played the game, I don't really understand these scenes' appeal. Director Paul W. S. Anderson has dispensed with even the semblance of plot now, and instead is relying on the thrill of vicarious levelling up to appease moviegoers. Oh, there has always been an element of this in the movies, as is only right and proper; one should never ignore one's roots, and not throwing in the occasional sop to the gamers in the form of a subtle reference to one of the more beloved design elements would be not only disrespectful but foolish. But there is subtle homage and then there is outright cinematic LARPing; Jovovich and co. basically spend the majority of the movie as live-action Player 1, working their way through level after level, all the while shooting almost indiscriminately and surely taking hits that should have killed, or at least inconvenienced, them in all of the chaos. I swear, I saw the guy beside me in the theater flick his fingers in what looked very like someone mastering a PlayStation controller, his sense memory clearly telling him that for all of this stylized, almost ritualistic carnage to be erupting on screen in front of him then surely he should be X-Y-bumper-right-left-ing to make it happen.
The premise is this: picking up directly from where the last movie left off – and yet, not entirely – Alice is captured by the ruthless Umbrella Corporation and is due for extermination by the rogue company artificial intelligence, the Red Queen. She experiences a memory, or perhaps an hallucination, where she was married to Oded Fehr and had a hearing impaired daughter before the zombies took over the world, and when she awakens in her cell, it takes her a moment to recapture her badass. Capital-E EVIL corporate lackey Albert Wesker (Shawn Roberts) frees her from her cage for inscrutable reasons (he tries to explain, but his stentorian, Agent-Smith-"Mr. Anderson"-style delivery of his every line makes it hard to focus), and then Alice and her wooden, if dexterous, new helpmeet Ada (Li Bingbing) must battle their way through the Umbrella complex, defeating the antagonists in each new room – and, of course, the hard-to-kill Big Boss – before moving on in an attempt to escape. Oh, there are other people involved here, too; some from previous movies in the franchise, some new faces, but the main objective is just to kill as many extras as possible, be they zombie or Umbrella minion or clone.
I may be making it sound more interesting than it actually is.
Then there are the performances. Milla Jovovich does her valiant best, but this is a hard plot to rise above, and it is really only when she is sharing the screen with the most abysmal of actors – and there are many – that she truly shines, if only by comparison. Michelle Rodriguez, who is way too good for this, is fine, considering the few scenes and limited dialogue she has to work with, and Oded Fehr, whom we see in this one for barely a second, is WAY too good for this, and must have really needed the paycheck -- but then, he was way too good for APOCALYPSE and EXTINCTION, and they were exponentially better films.
Most of the remainder of the speaking cast – excepting the aforementioned Roberts and Bingbing – are fairly inoffensive, and Boris Kodjoe always brings the pretty, but Sienna Guillory as friend-turned- Umbrella-puppet Jill is truly terrible, going for possessed-by- malevolent-artificial-intelligence but achieving only petulant, I-was- rejected-from-THE HILLS screechiness.
The movie ends on a cliffhanger (as has become the norm in this franchise), and for the first time I just don't care at all what happens next. So perhaps I should be happy, now cured of one of my more pointless enthusiasms of recent years. And should a sixth movie in this series be made, as seems unhappily likely, here's hoping the zombies win.
– Rachel Hyland, Geek Speak Magazine