Resident Evil: Afterlife

Former Umbrella agent Alice continues her search for life in a world gone to Hell.  The discovery of a mysterious signal leads her to the ruins of Los Angeles, where a small band of survivors hopes salvation lies at the signals source.  To get there, Alice must navigate a prison of terror, as newer and deadlier menaces produced by the T-Virus emerge.  At the end of this journey lies an old enemy, hellbent of capturing Alice for their own ends.  The time has finally come to take the fight to the enemy that started this nightmare: the Umbrella Corporation.

Four films into an eventual six film series, Resident Evil the Movies have strayed so far from their source material that theyre simply borrowing random elements from the games just for the sake of keeping things looking cool.  That can only get you so far and it hasn’t gotten this movie franchise far at all.  And then they went to the literal apocalypse and it feels like Resident Evil has been trying to justify its existence when really, this should have been named something original altogether.  If it feels like I’m rambling, that’s because it’s really hard to open this review with anything positive about Resident Evil: Afterlife.  I mean, if you though Apocalypse botched promise, Afterlife might actually be worse for a whole slew of reasons…and for once Alice might be the least of those reasons, though she continues to be pretty high on the list.

First off, that dumb but epic looking promise of Alice leading an army of psychically powered clones to Umbrella HQ in Tokyo to take down the corporation that destroyed the world once and for all…over in five minutes and all the clones are killed.  Admittedly, Milla Jovovich slaying evil soldiers in a skintight suit with dual katannas is a fun guilty pleasure image.  But it’s still over way to quickly and is so over the top that it further emphasizes just how far removed this movies have become from the video games theyre based on.  Sadder yet, the intro might be the most entertaining part of the whole of Afterlife compared to everything else.

You might notice there’s a good amount of slow mo and eye popping images throughout the film.  Well that’s because Resident Evil: Afterlife came out in 2010, when Hollywood was still trying to capitalize on the massive 3D success story of James Cameron’s Avatar.  Afterlife supposedly used some of the technology from that film for its own 3D sequences.  But honestly, only one or two 3D shots stand out (and hardly matter now since youre probably not watching Afterlife in 3D anyway).  And the slow motion adds what feels like 20 extra minutes to a movie that’s already 97 minutes long.  Besides the films opening, Afterlife seems to borrow elements from Resident Evil 5, especially in the climactic fight with Wesker…and that’s one of the worst ideas yet.  They went with that option because of the slow mo moves Wesker was pulling off in that game but Resident Evil 5 isnt well looked upon by the fanbase (I think it’s ok but that’s just me).  Wesker throwing his sunglasses in slo mo might look kind of cool in game.  In Afterlife though, it’s just needlessly added screentime.

Resident Evil: Afterlife might be the first film in the franchise to try and do something with Alice’s character.  After losing her powers, Alice finally begins to show wear and tear as she travels the world looking for life.  But any promise of her looking worn down wears off quickly as she’s back to her usual one note self soon enough.  But the unnecessary slow motion and Alice are the least of this films problems, for once.  No this time, the bad comes from a pair of poorly miscast characters.  Shawn Roberts replaces Jason O’Mara as Wesker and while he looks the part, he’s trying way too hard.  Even when he was just sitting, O’Mara felt like the threat Wesker could be.  Here, Roberts is just around to pull off those aforementioned feats of slow mo bad assery and sunglasses tossing, not much else.  Then there’s Wentworth Miller as Chris Redfield, arguably the main hero of Resident Evil in general.  I love Miller, particularly for his role as Leonard Snart aka Captain Cold in The Flash and DC’s Legends of Tomorrow.  Here…he just isn’t Chris.  Chris isn’t some soft spoken Batman wannabe.  Seriously, Paul W.S. Anderson is writing these scripts and stories and doesn’t know anything about the characters he’s adapting (he’s also back in the directors chair again after sitting out Apocalypse and Extinction, though he wrote those as well).  Miller should have had a better role and better direction given to him.  Instead, his Chris Redfield becomes just as pointless and as much a character in the background as Jill and Carlos.

Resident Evil: Afterlife is a nearly 100 minute film that should be 80 minutes.  It blows a dumb but promising setup in favor of something that’s beginning to feel increasingly insulting to the Resident Evil fanbase and stale overall.  More legacy characters are mishandled and miscast and the slow motion sequences feel as long as they are…well slow.  It strange to think that, while she is still a major reasons these movies don’t work, Alice isn’t at the top of the problems list this time.  Still, if Afterlife did anything, it solidified the doubling down on this different direction the movies were taking…and trust me, that’s pretty far from a good thing.

2.5/10