Review: Resident Evil: Afterlife

Grade: C+

It has been four years since the T-virus outbreak in Raccoon City. The infection that brings people back from the dead, turning them into flesh hungry zombies, has spread worldwide now. Alice continues to battle the evil Umbrella Corporation while still trying to find as many survivors as possible and trying to get them to safety. After a trip to Alaska, where there was supposed to be a safe haven free of infection, turns up a dead end, Alice is reunited with an old friend. The two fly to Los Angeles in hopes of finding more survivors but find the city in ashes except for a small group of survivors hiding out in a prison. As they help the small band of survivors, they come across new dangers and realize that they are all about to enter a trap as they uncover even more secrets of the Umbrella Corporation.

I love the Resident Evil movies but unfortunately Afterlife is a bit of a disappointment. The action in the movie is still a lot of fun to watch and the story is still very interesting and keeps you on the edge of your seat, constantly wondering what is going to happen next. The rest of the movie, however, falls short. To start, it’s almost as if there were two movies in one and the first movie, the more interesting of the two, only lasts the first ten to fifteen minutes. The opening sequence where the army of Alices (which are shown at the end of Extinction) break into the Umbrella hive underneath Tokyo was pretty dun and interesting, but I felt that could have been a movie all in itself. After this sequence, director Paul W.S. Anderson takes a note from Roland Emerich’s book and the movie slows way down for way too long. For a movie in a series which has focused mostly on fighting zombies, there is really only one sequence in the movie where this happens. The director seems as though he is also trying to be the next John Woo because in every action sequence the movie goes into slow motion every five seconds. The movie was shot in 3D so when you watch it in 2D there are many parts that look stupid because stuff is just pointing right in the camera. One of my biggest problems is that this movie is to insider-y. There are constantly things showing up with little to no explanation. When I did ask some people they would say “it’s in the game”, that’s nice, I still want an explanation as to what it is. I will say though, the sequences in the movie with the main protagonist, Wesker, are pretty fun and entertaining to watch, especially the fights.

The movie stars Milla Jovovich (Resident Evil, Ultraviolet) once again as the movies main character, Alice. Jovovich is once again a blast to watch in this role, for some reason it almost seems as though the role of Alice was made for her, she did such a great job. Ali Larter (Obsessed, TVs Heroes) returns as well as Claire. Larter was fun to watch in this movie as well as her character takes on a slightly larger part than she had in Extinction. The movie also features Shawn Roberts, Kim Coates, Boris Kodjoe, Wentworth Miller and more.

This movie has plenty of moments that make it fun and worth watching but it also has a lot of flaws. If you like the Resident Evil series, I still have to recommend watching it, but I really hope that this is the final installment in the series, they need to quit now before they completely ruin it.