This is the fourth film in the Resident Evil live-action series, and like the rest of the movies, is following an alternate sequence of events and with the exception of a few minor hints and drops, the movies continue to be nothing like the video game series.
Loosely based (and we mean LOOSELY) on certain events, the series of movies kicked off with a viral outbreak in a facility below a mansion in Racoon City (Resident Evil), several days later that virus made its way into the city and the population was devastated (Resident Evil: Apocalypse) and it only continued to spread wiping out human society (Resident Evil: Extinction) but there was hope in Alice, a super soldier and former Umbrella employee now out to avenge the world and bring justice to Umbrella Corp.
Towards the end of the 3rd movie, Alice begun to wake to her through powers but discovered that so had the people in Umbrella and when Alice discovered a laboratory filled with her clones and a graveyard where the failed copies were dumped, she begins her fight against the company and so we open Resident Evil: Afterlife with Alice infiltrating one of the Umbrella’s secret compounds deep under Tokyo city.
There the army of super powered Alice clones use guns, swords, grenades and psychic powers to destroy everything that comes in their path but Alice has one target only, Albert Wesker.
After he destroys the base and crashes the plane himself and the real Alice were using to escape, she finds herself searching for Arcadia, a place free of infection and the last known whereabouts of her friends and Claire Redfield.
Once there Alice is attacked by Claire, who claims to have no memories of her life before after Alice removes a device from her chest. Together they begin searching for answers and head to San Francisco where the meet a group of survivors and learn that Arcadia is not a town in the frozen wilderness of Alaska but a ship that travels the coasts, rescuing survivors.
Standing between them however is a city full of Zombies, the Executioner and a smart breed of the undead and since Alice lost her powers she must rely on her human instincts once more to survive.
The film was released for 3D cinemas and it’s pretty clear from the beginning of this movie that the film would be relying heavily on this feature to get us through the full 97 minutes however for those of us who aren’t yet millionaires and can’t afford a 3D television, the movie falls flatter than its 2-dimensions.
Much like the games, which have been flogged, beaten and dragged through the mud (with the exception of Resident Evil 5… sort of), this franchise is being milked for everything that it is worth and unfortunately the last two movies have done nothing to help revive a die-hard fan’s interest.
Mila Jovovich reprises her role once more as Alice and while we always enjoy seeing her on screen, it’s getting to the stage where even she looks like she knows the movie is a bit pants (seriously watch the expressions on her face throughout the movie, she is worried more about the box office than zombies), she is also joined by Ali Larter who played Claire Redfield in the third movie. Wentworth Miller joins the cast as the only other person worth mentioning and despite his chiselled good looks we found ourselves staring in disbelief as the script shredded Chris Redfield to pieces and he delivered a weak performance. The role of villain Albert Wesker is taken up by Shawn Roberts and if we needed further convincing that this franchise should get a bullet between the eyes, Robert’s performance is the finger on the trigger.
In a movie that is about a zombie apocalypse we could count on just two hands how many Zombies actually appeared in the film (that weren’t CGI) and while we didn’t have high hopes for the movie that little naïve gamer in us who remembers his first experience guiding Jill around that mansion and shaking from our encounter with that giant snake still wanted to feel something, anything during the movie but alas we were as cold and ambivalent to the movie as we were to Resident Evil 4.
The end of the movie hints at a sequel but we can only beg with directors and writers to leave this alone before Alice finds herself talking to an alien called Gazoo and on whacky adventures.
This is one Zombie movie franchise that needs to stay dead!
