Review of Resident Evil: Damnation (2012) by Jamie J — 03 Oct 2012

I may be one of a diminishing and dying breed, but I still really fucking love Resident Evil. Despite Capcom's recent attempts to obliterate the franchise and turn it into something palatable for the Call of Duty and mindless Hollywood action crowd. But in hindsight Resident Evil 5 was actually pretty good, and the previous CGI film effort RE: Degeneration was actually rather fun. CGI follow up and Resi 6 appetite whetting stop-gap doesn't disappoint either. By now of course people will have made their minds up as to whether they love Resident Evil 6 or not, but I hope at least people will judge Damnation on it's own merits. Of which it actually has a lot.

OK so the story is a bit far fetched, but it at least presents a first for Resident Evil: a credible war scenario, where B.o.w's are used against each other. The graphics and animation are also quite frankly incredible, Capcom and Sony pictures have clearly thrown a lot of money at this project, perhaps unprecedented for what is essentially straight to DVD bargain bin fodder. It isn't all perfect however, characters seem to come and go with precious little explanation, and they do also fall somewhat into a stylised uncanny valley. Perhaps Sony could have added an extra ten minutes to the cut just to flesh out the cast, or even the back story somewhat. But when you see a fist fight between a ten foot tall Tyrant and a group of Lickers (which I have to add are superbly animated and suitably creepy) you cease to care about quibbles.

The three or four hardcore fans that are left will certainly lap this up, and it is genuinely interesting to see Resident Evil 4's Ganado's and las plagas victims in high definition at last, some scenes are also genuinely uncomfortable, and blood almost seems to fly at the screen at regular intervals, perhaps one of those films that pushes the '15' rating further than most. But it's horror, what do you expect? If you are more of a fan of Hollywood's bastardised attempts at making RE films however, you may want to wait for their latest effort instead.