Review of Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010) by Rob C — 04 Jan 2013

Continuing off the last film in the series, five years have passed and we're thrown into a battle involving a squadron of Alice clones as they try and infiltrate the Umbrella headquarters and kill Albert Wesker (a cheap knock-off of Agent Smith of The Matrix).

After pointless bullets and bodies are thrown around, the headquarters are destroyed and the original Alice and "Agent" Wesker escape via helicopter where they once again do battle until they crash land into oblivion.

Fast forward six months and Alice is still alive and in search of Arcadia, eventually finding Claire Redfield and a prison in a dystopian part of Los Angeles. Up to the point where they find the prison, the film is a hideous mess of special effects and cheesy dialogue that should have been left out of the final cut.

I don't know what director Anderson was thinking incorporating 3D effects accompanied by Kindergarden narrative acts---excuse me, children have more imagination than this. However, I kept on watching because I have this thing about finishing what I start in a film, no matter how horrid the script is.

Once our protagonists reached the prison, the film got a little more digestable with some new faces, who were easily dispatched; mind you, and some athletic-looking zombies including a nine-foot axe-wielding behemoth impervious to head shots.

The special effects looked mighty fine here, but I just couldn't stomach the battle between Claire and the behemoth, hoping she would have been taken out in the process. I believe one female with superhuman agility was enough in our heroine Alice, let alone two.

However, in our final part to the film our characters reach "Arcadia", which so happens to be a ship, to partake in the most moronic battle in the series. This basically felt like a deleted scene in one of The Matrix films.

This is what cemented my decision on why the Resident Evil series should have ended on the previous film, even though I wanted to see how this film would have turned out. I guess my wanting of a greater film should have been left to just the desire.