Review of Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010) by Jarrett M — 26 Feb 2012

Finally, by the time we get to the fourth film, we finally get a movie that feels as dark and depressing as I feel that the films should have been all along. And at last, the badassery of Wesker starts to shine through.

Sort of. And they finally include one of the pinnacle characters of the resident evil universe, although I'm dumbfounded why they bothered at this point. I was going to try to decipher where all the characters and story points come from for this movie, but truth be told, it borrows from nearly every game and to try to explain everything would probably only confuse.

The biggest obvious change is now zombies heads peel open like a lotus flower to attack their victim. Why this suddenly happens it this film is never explained after the seemingly normal zombies of the last film.

I guess the audience is just supposed to except that this is a natural progression with the zombies. Truth is it is a ripoff of the common enemies of the Resident Evil 5 game, which aren't even zombies anymore, but people playing host to a vicious parasite.

Also stolen from RE5 is the Executioner, who has a quite impressive battle with Claire and Alice in the shower room. Most of the rest of the story follows the original storyline that Mr. Anderson has put us on.

Although I don't know why he decided to include Claire's brother Chris Redfield, from the games RE1, RE: Code Veronica and RE5. Anyway, I found this film to be considerably grittier than previous outings and the dark and menacing tone kind of feels more like the games did, as did the pitting of characters against seemingly overwhelming odds.

I also enjoyed the action this time around the best, but there wasn't exactly a wealth of it. And the Wesker/Chris/Claire fight near the end of the film is a near shot for shot/move for move remake of the Wesker/Chris/Sheva fight near the end of RE5.

The acting is decent this time around, with the familiar cast having a good grasp of their characters. The new cast doesn't have a whole lot to do, but the new Wesker played by Shawn Roberts is perhaps the most acurate portrayal of a character from the game series thus far in the film series.

So long as you compare him to his RE5 counterpart. This film seems to have lost some fans of the series somewhere, but I think it's closer in tone to the games of all the films. Perhaps that's why.

Or perhaps it was the inlcusion of the 'cool in a couple of scenes but largely unneccesary' use of 3D that is all the rage now. Take this with a grain of salt and it's a decent way to kill some time, but don't expect the world.

PS. Stick around for about 15-20 seconds into the credits for a scene featuring a certain surprise character that just vanished from a previous film. Although it's not that big of a surprise as the name is revealed in the credits before the bonus scene.

But try to act surprised so that the filmmakers don't feel bad.