REVIEW : RESIDENT EVIL : AFTERLIFE

RESIDENT EVIL : AFTERLIFE

Resident Evil was, and still is, one of the most remembered and respected games in the entire history of gaming. It brought horror to an audience that until that point had almost no choice when it came to horror video game entertainment. So it would seem that making a movie of such a franchise would make sense, keeping the dark, suspenseful thrills and creepy set pieces that have become such a part of groundbreaking games.. or you could just turn into an action movie that just happens to have zombies in it. Lets go for the second one shall we? And here comes the review of Resident Evil Afterlife 3D.

Alice is on the hunt for Wesker, the head (I think), of Umbrella corporation. After something to do with clones Alice loses her powers and ends up flying a plane to a place where she, for some reason, finds a feral Claire Redfield with no memory and they head off as enemies to an abandoned prison where a few survivors are holding up. All this is strung together with bad story telling and of course the magic of 3D.

Now first up as you can tell from the synopsis above, the plot of Afterlife is almost non-existent, as with the previous Resident Evil movies.  But lets be honest now, if you went into this movie expecting anything with substance then you are probably one of the unrealistic characters that inhabits these movies in the first place. So with that said lets actually look at it for what it is.

The 3D is not post conversation for a start, which means that the film was shot in 3D, not converted afterwards, (Unlike Piranha and Wes Craven’s My Soul To take), so Afterlife gets points for that. As usual it also tries to jam in some cool things from the games, of course often at the expense of story telling. So the appearance of the huge axe wielding brute from Resident Evil 5 was a nice touch and Chris Redfield finally appears for no real reason, but its familiar and should have fans of the series happy.

The film is stylish, looks great and most of the action flows very nicely, the main issue I had with the film was that there was no real spectacle made from the 3D. Therefore almost making it pointless to have shot in 3D in the first place. Most of the 3D moments felt half-cocked, with no dynamic to them and that brings the film down to below average.

OVERALL

The film is actually watchable if you turn your brain off, so if you’re one of the zombies waiting to eat Alice’s brains, then you should be fine. Don’t expect much and you’ll be all right. Unfortunately the lack of any kind of plot when releasing a film that costs this much and is shot in brand spanking new 3D tech leaves me no choice but to bring it down in marks. I have no doubt that Resident Evil 5 is on the way as the film hit big at the box office, but as usual I wouldn’t expect much, apart from naked Alice of Course.