Review of Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010) by Alec D — 22 Sep 2012

Well Paul W.S. Anderson finally made a keeper. Yea Resident Evil: Afterlife was way better then it's predecessors even though it was rated like 10% on Rotten-tomatoes. Although it was much more entertaining it still isn't that good of a movie. It's definitely shot in a blockbuster style and there are tons of stuff they have yet to fix, like Alice's dialogue, but it still is a significant improvement. Oh yeah there will be a few spoilers, but you really shouldn't see this movie for plot, so it shouldn't matter.

Starting off with the plot, which was decently okay. So Alice battles Umbrella briefly in the beginning, like she said she would in Resident Evil 3: Extinction. She sacrifices her clones, again the clones are from the previous movie, to get very close and attempt to kill Wesker. Wesker kicks her ass her, takes away her powers and almost kills her, but she gets away. Then she goes on a journey to find Arcadia which turns out to be a ship. The plot is like none of the games, and there are a few hole-ish things, but that doesn't really matter. This movie doesn't need a good plot, because it has some of the best action sequences to date.

I'm not just comparing this to the other Resident Evil movies when I say some of the best action sequences I'm talking about in general. Paul W.S. Anderson used the technology used to make Avatar and he delivers with some of the smoothest action scenes I've ever seen. The action is just so crisp and awesome, even though very exaggerated it works so well, and is the driving force behind this movie. I might also add that in a few of the scenes Anderson captures the game-play of a few of the more modern Resident Evil games. An example is the scene where Claire is getting chased by an executioner, he's from Resident Evil 5 and I'll explain it later, and I could just see there being Press Square and X to dodge on screen every time she dodged one of the swings of his axe. Overall the action deserves a fucking 10/10 it is shot so well and lots of it is so much better then say the action in The A-team or even Kick-Ass.

Time for characters and acting. The characters have improved, but the acting hasn't. Milla Jovovich is still Alice and she like I said has gotten boring. Her character is kind of developed, she wants to save everyone she possibly can, but she was like that in the first of these movies, and I'm tired of seeing her not change at all. The thing about this movie is the assholes are way more distinguishable and we can clearly focus are hate on them where as in the other movies you didn't care about the characters enough to hate their enemies. Basically everyone is written a lot better and we can definitely see their desperation a lot more clearly, however some of the acting is bad. Like Wentworth Miller does his best Sam Worthington impersonation for some idiotic reason, plus he doesn't look all that much like Chris Redfield. I also think Ali Larter is not only a dumb choice for Claire Redfield, but a bad actress. Wesker kind of not really makes up for it. Albert Wesker is played by Shawn Roberts and while he looks decently like Wesker, he doesn't really sound like him and on top of that he has shit for lines. He acts very well though and definitely captures Wesker's different breed of evil which is what makes his character so cool. So characters and acting is okay much better then in the other films, but not great.

Correlation time and I hate to say it, but Anderson actually might have played the games for once. The plot is sort of like Code Veronica, but Wesker needs Alice's blood to control the T-virus. Where as in the game he wanted the blood inside Alexia to become stronger, which was kind of a theme in the game. Wesker always wanted to become stronger, and he escaped death a lot. The second is almost exaggerated throughout the movie, but they don't even touch the first. Chris and Claire's history are completely off, as to be expected. The thing that this movie fucked up was the Executioner which is the dude with the big ass axe. Now he is from Resident Evil 5 which for the most part didn't have the T-virus/Progenitor Virus, but the Las Plagas parasite from Resident Evil 4. I assume the executioner was one of the crazy creations made with the use of the Las Plagas parasite, but he is in the movie. for all 4 movies it has been strictly the T-virus, they haven't even mentioned the G-virus, although the G-virus was a big plot device of the animated Resident Evil: Degeneration. Another small thing is the super shit coming out of their mouth zombies. They look exactly like the Experiment boss from Resident Evil 4, which again was strictly Las Plagas, not T-virus. I wouldn't be mentioning if the the only instance of shit coming out of a zombies mouth was from Resident Evil 4. This makes me feel like Anderson played Resident Evil 4 and 5, and didn't realize that the majority of those games was Las Plagas, so he put random cool shit from those games into his movie. I would be cool with that had he explained what they are instead of just inferring that the T-virus can do weird shit like that. The last correlation thing I'm angry about is Wesker uses dual Dessert Eagle's instead of the Samurai Edge. The Samurai Edge is a really bad ass looking version of the Beretta 92F with custom almost everything and it sucks that they didn't at least make one and let him use it once in the movie. Those last two to three things were very nitpicky and I guess shouldn't be taken to heart.

Last sort of complaint was the length and pacing. I felt this movie was too short and they didn't have time to cover enough stuff, like I stated in correlation the Las Plagas bit or even an homage to Wesker spreading the parasite might have been nice. This also threw the pacing off, but it didn't really matter in the end.

Well all wrap this sucker up with saying the plot is okay and they made the characters more like-able, even though the acting is a bit worse, but the real reason to see this movie is the action. Anderson uses Cameron's technology better then Cameron has used it, I might add with 1/4th the budget. Ironically enough I started this review with 70% in mind, but I raised it to 80% last second as a testament to how much fun I had at this movie. I am kind of concerned with how much critical bashing this movie got. I feel like it's turning into one of the Boondock Saints movies, where it's a good to great movie, just the critics bash the shit out of it for no apparent reason. Although not the best movie this year definitely worth paying extra for 3D IMAX and oh yeah STAY AFTER THE CREDITS for a 40 second clip for the Resident Evil 5 movie. I totally forgot to do that last thing and missed a reference to the Resident Evil 5 game, which I am now sure Anderson played while making this movie.