Resident Evil: Afterlife

Tuesday Lisa and I went to see Resident Evil: Afterlife on IMAX 3-D. After taking a few days to digest the movie, I'm ready to share my thoughts.

Let me begin by saying that I am a huge fan of the Resident Evil game franchise. Though late to the party, I have eagerly collected every title I could find (though I'm still lacking the PS2 titles). Like many fans I eagerly awaited RE4 and the change in game play. I was reluctant about the change in focus from zombies to the plagas, but after playing RE4 I became fully supportive of the change. I loved that the plagas returned in RE5, and I really enjoyed that game.

But we're talking about the movies here... still, now you know my bias.

I enjoyed the first and second Resident Evil movies, but hated Extinction with a passion. So when I heard about Afterlife, my first thought was "I'm going to hate this movie". Then I heard it was being filmed in 3D, and I said "So the movie industry is exploiting this gimmick AGAIN. Great. This is REALLY going to suck." Needless to say, I was going into this movie hostile.

I came out of the theater happy. I enjoyed Afterlife. Not that it doesn't have problems, because it does. Lots of them. Still, it was a fun movie. I'll try to explain my positives and negatives for Afterlife below.

Resident Evil: Afterlife takes two of my biggest problems with the movie franchise (Alice is a superhuman and Alice has an army of clones of herself) and rids itself of them VERY quickly. Alice goes back to being a normal human being (kind of; see my problems with the movie below), and the clones go out with a bang. A big bang. Visually, director and writer Paul W.S. Anderson has chosen to move the films in line with the games, giving the current zombies a look that resembles the Majini from RE5. It's a great visual, and a nice attempt to tell game fans "I haven't departed COMPLETELY from the games".

Claire Redfield is back (yay for characters from the games!) and this time Chris Redfield is introduced as well. Unfortunately, they both play second-fiddle to Alice. Viewers willing to sit through some credits also get a brief look at Jill Valentine, appearing like she does in RE5.

Returning to its game roots is all well and good, but it does lead to one of my problems with the movie. At this point the Resident Evil movies have diverged SIGNIFICANTLY from the games, mainly because of the events in Extinction. Anderson has written an alternate setting where most of the world's population has become the walking dead, leaving only a scattered group of survivors looking for places of refuge, or Umbrella bases trying to find a way to return humanity to the surface of the planet.

While Anderson has visually brought in the creatures from the later games, he has failed to explain HOW they've come to be. Here's an example. The zombies that now look like the Majini from the games. In the games, the Majini are a result of exposure to plagas parasites that have taken over and mutated their hosts. The plagas, in turn, were discovered by European miners. They have NO connection to Umbrella before RE5 in the games. In the movies zombies have taken on Majini traits because... well, who knows. No reference is made to the plagas, the zombies are called "zombies" and the characters in the film don't seem surprised by this change... so the viewer is left wondering what happened.

Plot holes like these are riddled throughout the movie. Claire Redfield loses her memory because of a device implanted on her chest by Umbrella. In the games this device is implanted on Jill Valentine's chest to pump a performance enhancing chemical into her that also keeps Jill subservient to Wesker. The device in the movie... well, apparently it makes Claire forget her whole life, and ONLY Claire, because another character freed from the same device exhibits no evidence of memory loss whatsoever. Chris has to tell Claire that he is her brother... but we never get any memory flashbacks  to actually show us that this is true, or the nature of their relationship in the movies (after all, we can't assume it is the same as the games when Anderson has changed so much). The biggest plot hole is Wesker claiming that the Redfield siblings have become a thorn in his side... when he has only met them five minutes prior to making the statement, and neither has been shown to have had any past history with Umbrella. Perhaps there's a deleted scene to explain it, but the finished product in theaters doesn't.

Afterlife also has problems with its use of 3D. Frankly, the 3D is boring and adds almost NOTHING to the viewing experience. At no time did any 3D effect shock or wow me. There were some great opportunities for the 3D effects to make some "jump" moments... but Anderson fails to exploit them.

Still, the movie is fun. Don't over-analyze it, because it can't stand up to it. Fans of the movies who don't know much about the games will be lost (it borrows too much from RE5 without explanation), but if you aren't trying to match up the games and the movies you'll probably just say "wow, that looks cool!" Either way, sit back, grab some popcorn, and enjoy the ride.

End of Demented Ramblings.