Review of Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010) by Tom R — 23 Aug 2011

(2D Version) Resident Evil: Afterlife begs, borrows, and steals heavily from The Matrix. The villain Albert Wesker should have been called Agent Smith by the way he wears sunglasses indoors, dodges bullets, talks very low, and shoots people with a Desert Eagle.

It has ridiculous yet inventive action sequences and is a step up for fans of the movies, being better than Apocalypse and Extinction. But clearly it's not going to win over anyone new. Even though Paul W.

S. Anderson has a reputation for making cheap movies, I believe he is a very visual director and like Event Horizon and the first Resident Evil, a lot of shots in Afterlife are unique to look at. The first 17 or so minutes of the movie are legitimately awesome; the opening sequence in Japan is strangely haunting and there's a very cool gun battle with the Alice clones (kinda reminds you of Agent Smith, doesn't it?) full of gratuitous bullet-time, including one silly shot where time itself stops and the camera pans around characters.

After the opening, the rest is a prison movie mess and fans of the game aren't going to like what they did to the characters (namely Chris Redfield). Also, the series stopped being scary after the first one, so they should just do straight up action films with zombies.

At least Afterlife has the best action of the series yet. Despite all the complaints you can give this series, I had a surprising amount of fun with Resident Evil: Afterlife and I can't wait for the next film.