Afterlife (Resident Evil #4) (2010 Movie)

 

Movie Details:

Title - Afterlife
Series – Resident Evil #4
Director – Paul WS Anderson
Release – 2010
Rating – R
Time – 1hr 37min

My Thoughts:

At the end of RE: Extinction, Alice finds a laboratory chock full of clones of herself. Afterlife starts with Alice, apparently alone, attacking the Japanese headquarters of the Umbrella Corporation. It doesn’t take long for us viewers to realize there are a bunch of clones and their goal is the Head of Umbrella, Chairman Wesker. He escapes on a superplane and destroys the headquarters with some sort of super implosion bomb and kills all the Alice’s there. The original Alice is hiding on the plane and attacks Wesker and he injects her with a super-anti-virus serum that takes away all of her super human abilities. They then crash into a mountain (eye roll moment) and Alice walks away, despite being “just regular human” now. The rest of the movie then begins. You can read about in the synopsis if you wish.

The opening to this movie was spectacular in my opinion. It shows the spread of the T-virus in Japan and just shows some Japanese lady standing in the rain while everybody walks by her. The scene ends when someone makes eye contact and she attacks the poor schlub. The music was a heavy tempo and matched the rain atmosphere perfectly.

There is a lot going on on this movie. Japan, then Alaska, then Los Angeles and then a boat in the ocean. Comparing it to the original Resident Evil movie, I found that I liked the claustrophobia and smallness of the first movie over this sprawling and wide open kind of movie. Zombies don’t feel like much of a threat when you have the entirety of Los Angeles to hide in. Of course, the director gets around that by having every single zombie in the city surrounding the one place the survivors are hiding. And the zombies are evolving so they can dig through concrete and are smarter. Oh, and some of them can thrive in a water environment. I really didn’t think about that and if I were you, I wouldn’t either. Or your brain might shutdown from “Doesnotmakeanysensitus”.

In this movie, we get two souped up badguys who are infected with the T-virus. First up is the Axeman and boy is he a bigboy! He reminded me of the Nemesis monster from the second movie, RE:Apocalypse, just bigger and badder.

The second is Chairman Wesker after he infects himself with the T-virus. He looks normal, just like Alice did when she was infected, but just like her, he’s faster, stronger and just “more”. He also has some sort of carnivorous plant thingy inside him that keeps trying to come out of his mouth. It was disgusting, in other words, it was perfect for a Resident Evil movie, hahahaa.

The ending is pitch perfect Resident Evil. Alice and her cohorts have destroyed the badguys, rescued a lot of innocent people and are about to start looking for more innocents to rescue, when all of the sudden, da da dum, Umbrella Corporation literally swoops in at the last second to ruin everything! And that is how the movie ends. Awesome!

The music fit the movie but sadly, the Manson Umbrella Corporation theme song was not part of this. As far as I’m concerned, that piece of music should have been in every movie, tying Umbrella together as the overarching enemy in the movie series. Plus, it is just a wicked cool piece of music. Ahhh well, life is just filled with disappointments ;-)

I don’t know if I enjoyed this movie more because of the previous one or if I just thought this was cool. Whatever the reason, I thoroughly enjoyed this. My only real complaint would be how big and wide open a lot of the movie was and I wasn’t a fan of that.

Stay tuned as Alice’s Adventures in Umbrella Corporation Land continues next month with the penultimate movie in this series.

Synopsis from Grokipedia:

Click to Open

In Resident Evil: Afterlife, set in a post-apocalyptic world devastated by the T-virus outbreak, Alice leads an assault on the Umbrella Corporation's Tokyo headquarters using an army of her own clones to target CEO Albert Wesker.[4] The clones overrun the facility, but Wesker triggers an explosion that wipes them out, then injects the original Alice with a serum during their aerial escape attempt, stripping her of her superhuman enhancements and leaving her as a normal human.[4] Their aircraft crashes, but Alice survives and begins a solitary journey across the wasteland six months later, tracking a distress signal from a purported safe haven called Arcadia in Alaska, which promises shelter and supplies to any survivors.[4]Alice's search uncovers no living humans until she encounters a mind-controlled Claire Redfield on an abandoned beach; after subduing and freeing her from Umbrella's device, the two fly toward Los Angeles, where they crash-land on the roof of a maximum-security prison besieged by zombies.[4] There, they join survivors led by Luther West, including Angel, Bennett, and others, who reveal Arcadia is actually a cargo tanker ship anchored off the coast that has gone silent.[4] To escape the encroaching undead horde, including a massive axe-wielding mutant dubbed the Executioner, the group frees a imprisoned survivor, Chris Redfield—Claire's brother—who knows a path to the coast via the sewers.[4] Betrayed by Bennett, who kills Angel and steals their plane, Alice, Claire, Chris, Luther, and a few others battle through the tunnels; Luther is trapped in a collapse, presumed lost, while the rest reach the Arcadia, only to discover it as an Umbrella trap filled with experimented-on prisoners, including K-Mart from Alice's past allies, who was captured by Umbrella.[4]Exploring the ship, Alice learns of her cloned origins through Umbrella's records and confronts Wesker, now enhanced beyond control by the T-virus, who seeks to assimilate her as the perfect host to stabilize his cannibalistic urges.[4] Alliances form with Luther, who emerges alive to aid the group, and the survivors—including Alice, Claire, Chris, and K-Mart—engage in climactic battles against Wesker, ultimately impaling the latter and relocating a purge bomb to destroy his escaping helicopter, seemingly ending his threat.[4] However, as Alice broadcasts the Arcadia's location to draw more survivors and repurpose it as a true sanctuary, an Umbrella assault fleet arrives, led by the mind-controlled Jill Valentine, signaling ongoing conflict.

Extinction (Resident Evil #3) (2007 Movie)

 

Movie Details:

Title - Extinction
Series – Resident Evil #3
Director – Russell Mulcahy
Release – 2007
Rating – R
Time – 1hr 34min

My Thoughts:

This was my least favorite of the movies so far, and if memory serves, of the entire 6 movie franchise.

Firstly, Alice now has superpowers. Yeah, they are “psychic” powers, but it amounts to the same thing. She’s not just a kickbutt heroine any more and I really didn’t like that change. One example of this was when she meets up with the convoy and saves them all from undead crows. She uses her jedi mind powers to burn up the entire sky full of crows.

Then there is a scene near the end where some superzombies are transported to where Alice and the convoy are (Las Vegas) to kill everyone and capture Alice. It is one shipping container, but by the end of the fight scene, I counted over 50 superzombies. They kept coming out of the container like clowns out of a clown car. The numbers were simply impossible.

My final complaint is the big boss at the end. The Big Boss Fight for each of the RE movies doesn’t tend towards the long and drawn out and while I’ve been ok with that, this time I just wanted more. I don’t know why, but this Tyrant felt like he should have had more time as the Tyrant and less time building up to him becoming the Tyrant. It didn’t help that he had to share screen time with the Chairman of Umbrella Corporation.

Now, what I did like. I LOVED that almost the entire movie took place during daylight hours. I could actually see everything going on. I loved how the opening mimicked the first opening, so there was that slight sliver of “did I get the wrong movie?” feeling. It started us as viewers on the back foot and that was great. While I complained about various things above, they did provide for a lot of intense action scenes and that is what Resident Evil movies are all about.

The music was pretty good too. We got back to the hive music, which just represents Resident Evil to me.

I also watched the commentary track for the movie. It was wicked weird though. There were 3 guys talking about it, but it was obvious there were two different commentaries going on at once. Two guys were talking to each other while the other guy was simply monologuing the entire time. It was so obvious, and like I said, weird, that it really threw me out from listening to what they were actually saying. Kind of a waste of a commentary track if you ask me.

A decent addition to the franchise, but like I said at the beginning, my least favorite.

Synopsis from Wikipedia:

click to open

A cloned Alice wakes up in a mansion, wanders through its halls, and is forced to escape several security traps. However, she is eventually killed by a bounding mine hidden on the floor. Her body is dumped into a pit filled with dozens of other Alice clones, representing the failed results of the Umbrella Corporation's ongoing Project Alice.

Five years after Umbrella's attempts to cover up the contamination of Raccoon City,[a] the T-virus has spread around the world, causing ecological destruction to all life. The real Alice wanders the wasteland and, after fighting off marauders, discovers information in an abandoned notebook referring to a supposedly uninfected area in Alaska.

Simultaneously, a convoy of survivors led by Claire Redfield and Raccoon City survivors Carlos Oliveira and L.J. Wade travels across the country in search of supplies and safe harbor. While searching a motel, L.J. is bitten by a zombie. Fearing the harsh fate that awaits him, he chooses not to tell the other survivors about the injury. The next morning, the convoy is attacked by a murderous flock of infected crows. With the team nearly overwhelmed, Alice appears and destroys the remaining crows with her newfound telekinesis, though she falls unconscious. Awaking shortly thereafter, Alice is introduced to Claire and tells her about the notebook, convincing her to take the convoy to Alaska.

Isaacs' attempts to domesticate the infected lead to creating a new zombie breed. Albert Wesker's security officer, Captain Alexander Slater, reports on Isaacs' disregard for Umbrella regulations. Wesker tasks Slater with watching Isaacs, telling him to kill the scientist if he disobeys orders again. Tracing an energy pattern sent out by Alice's telekinesis, Umbrella triangulates her location. Desperate to reclaim Alice to achieve his goals, Dr. Isaacs sends his new zombies to ambush the convoy against Wesker's specific orders. During the attack, most of the convoy is killed, and L.J. succumbs to his infection, biting Carlos before he kills him. Umbrella tries to shut Alice down remotely, but she breaks free from Umbrella's programming and continues to fight. She finds Isaacs at the scene, and he is bitten as he flees via helicopter. Alice and a girl from Claire's convoy named K-mart use Isaacs' computer to track the helicopter's flight path, leading them to Umbrella's underground facility.

As the convoy arrives at the Umbrella Facility, Carlos, dying from his bite, sets out to sacrifice himself, giving some goodbyes to the convoy, including Alice. Carlos takes a tanker truck with dynamite to destroy the zombie horde blocking the entrance to the Umbrella Facility. The dynamite explodes, killing him. Alice and Claire get everyone else onto a helicopter to get them to safety, but Alice stays behind.

Entering the underground facility, Alice meets a holograph of the Red Queen's "sister" AI, the White Queen. She informs Alice that her blood can cure the T-virus, defends the Red Queen's prior actions, and reveals what happened to Dr. Isaacs. On her way to the lab's lower levels, Alice encounters one of her clones, which awakens but appears to die from shock soon after. Alice discovers Isaacs/Tyrant, defeating him after leading him to the replica of The Hive's laser corridor featured in the film's opening. Just as Alice is about to meet the same fate, the system is deactivated by the clone, who is still alive.

Later in Tokyo, Wesker informs his fellow Umbrella executives that the North American facility has been lost. Alice appears during the meeting, declaring that she and her "friends" (the other clones) are coming for him.

Apocalypse (Resident Evil #2) (2004 Movie)

 

Movie Details:

Series – Resident Evil #2
Director – Alexander Witt
Release – 2004
Rating – R
Time – 1hr 34min

My Thoughts:

Spectacle. Bloody, violent and furious spectacle.

Everything from the first movie is ramped up, except for the military style. There are Umbrella Corporation private soldiers and some of them end up hooking up with Alice and some other survivors, but they are not real soldiers. They make for good monster fodder though.

We start out exactly where the first movie ends, with some additional info to give us a larger picture of what is going on. The t-virus has escaped into Raccoon City and apparently RC is a walled city controlled by Umbrella. When Umbrella realizes they can’t control the virus, so they shut the city down, release a monster of their own to test it and it runs into Alice, who it turns out is another Umbrella experiment. So a city full of zombies, a few zombie dogs, a few lickers and then Nemesis. All the while an insane scientist is monitoring it all and thinking he’s in control. Oh, right from the first movie, Umbrella is shown to be thinking that they are in control even when it is apparent to anyone with half a brain that they aren’t. That’s half the fun, even as the situation spirals out of control, knowing that Umbrella is going to burn.

Speaking of ramping things up to an 11, well, a tactical nuke is involved at the end of the movie. It helps provide a count down to force the plot forward, but man, knowing that you have to survive and get out or you get nuked really amps up the tension. I liked it. I also enjoyed the fight between Alice and the Nemesis monster. Knowing it was the nice guy from the first movie just made it that much worse, which is the point of RE. Hold out hope only to yank it away again. That’s the formula and it works for the video games and it works for these movies.

Synopsis from Wikipedia:

Synopsis - click to open

Former security operative Alice and environmental activist Matt Addison escape an underground genetic research facility called the Hive after a zombie outbreak.[a] The pair attempted to expose illegal experiments being performed there by the pharmaceutical company Umbrella Corporation before they were taken into custody by Umbrella.

A team from Umbrella investigating the Hive is overrun by zombies, which spreads the outbreak to the nearby Raccoon City. In response, Umbrella quarantines the city and evacuates crucial personnel. Angela Ashford, daughter of researcher Dr. Charles Ashford, goes missing after her security car is involved in a collision during the evacuation. Meanwhile, disgraced S.T.A.R.S operative Jill Valentine returns to her precinct to urge her fellow officers to evacuate. Alice awakens in a deserted hospital and wanders the city for supplies while Umbrella evacuates civilians via the only bridge. At the bridge, Jill encounters her former partner, Sgt. Payton Wells, but a civilian turns into a zombie, biting Wells. Upon the outbreak reaching the bridge, Major Timothy Cain, leader of Umbrella forces, seals the exit, forcing residents back into the city.

After being abandoned by their employer, Umbrella soldiers Carlos Olivera and Nicholai Ginovaef team up with surviving police units to repel various zombie attacks. Their position is overrun; Carlos is bitten and infected. Meanwhile, Jill, Wells, and reporter Terri Morales are saved by Alice just before being overrun. Umbrella deploys the mutated supersoldier, Nemesis, who kills the remaining STARS before searching for Alice. Dr. Ashford hacks into the CCTV system to contact Alice and the survivors, offering to arrange their evacuation in exchange for rescuing his daughter. He makes the same offer to Carlos and Ginovaef, explaining Umbrella plans to destroy Raccoon City with a nuclear warhead to eliminate the zombie infection.

While heading to Angela, Alice and the group are ambushed by Nemesis. Jill kills Wells after he turns into a zombie. Alice fights Nemesis but is injured, leading her to draw him away from the others. Jill and Morales rescue stranded civilian L.J. and later meet Carlos to find Angela, though Morales and Ginovaef are killed. Angela reveals that the zombie outbreak stems from the T-virus, created by her father to treat her genetic condition, and she requires an anti-virus serum to avoid becoming a zombie. Alice uses some of the serum to cure Carlos. Dr. Ashford informs Alice of an extraction point with a waiting helicopter. The group reaches the rendezvous but are ambushed by Umbrella forces. Cain kills Dr. Ashford and compels Alice, revealed to be enhanced by the T-virus, to fight Nemesis. Alice subdues Nemesis but stops when she discovers that Nemesis is Matt, who was mutated by Umbrella's experiments.

Nemesis turns on Cain and attacks the Umbrella troops but is killed while protecting Alice. The remaining survivors seize the helicopter and eject Cain from it, and he is killed by zombies. As the survivors escape, a nuclear warhead detonates over the city, and the resulting blast wave causes the helicopter to crash. Alice sacrifices herself to save Angela and is impaled on a metal pole. T.V. footage attributes the blast to a meltdown of the city's nuclear power plant, obscuring Umbrella's involvement.

Alice wakes up in an Umbrella research facility and escapes with help from Carlos, Jill, L.J., and Angela. She also displays psionic abilities after telekinetically killing a security guard. As they leave, Dr. Alexander Isaacs, a top-ranking Umbrella employee, reveals that Alice's escape is part of Umbrella's plan.

Resident Evil (Resident Evil #1) (2002 Movie)

 

Movie Details:

Series – Resident Evil #1
Director – Paul WS Anderson
Release – 2002
Rating – R
Time – 1hr 40min

My Thoughts:

This movie, and the whole franchise in fact, is the kind of movie that shouldn’t work for me. Live action tie-ins to video games usually leave me apathetic at best to downright cold at worst. Now, my only knowledge about the Resident Evil franchise is what I garnered reading the horrible game tie-in books in 2011 (Umbrella Conspiracy, Zero Hour, Caliban Cove). I’ve never played the games but I have watched the movies multiple times and enjoyed them immensely, to the point where I bought a “Complete Collection” on bluray last year.

Resident Evil the movie is almost 25 years old and in some ways it shows. The scenes where it is “computer graphics” copying the style of the game is rough and uneven and not what you’d see today. Other than that though, I thought it holds up remarkably well.

I do have to say that you need to turn your brain off to truly enjoy these. This is a zombie action movie and you can pick it apart all day long. I suspect many of the roots of that come from the game itself but Hollywood does have a way of inserting its own stupidity into things, so I’m also blaming them. I’m not here to nit-pick though. But it is a fair warning. Turn your brain off and enjoy.

The music is spot on. You have a pulse pounding techno-something-metal whenever the action is about to ramp up or is happening. It is played a lot during times when the team is initially invading the Hive (the underground complex where everything is happening). It makes even simple scenes of the team running up/down stairs more engaging. But at the same time, it is not overused. I felt like whoever the musical director/choreographer was did a tremendous job of making the music add to the movie without overwhelming or distracting. I also really liked the theme music. Here is the opening theme and it is just plain creepy:

The progression of enemies is stepped just like in a video game. You start out with the Red Queen (the AI that is actually trying to keep the world safe from the T-Virus) and her defense mechanisms taking out like half the team. Four team members die in just one scene and I was a little disappointed it wasn’t spaced out more.

Then the zombies are introduced and the surviving members have to battle them, unsuccessfully at first as they don’t know that only a bullet to the head puts the zombies down permanently. Then Alice, the hero of the movie franchise, meets some doberman pinschers and whooowheee, they looked BAD! And one of the coolest looking scenes happens with that. She runs out of bullets and there is still one dog left and it leaps to attack her. She runs at a wall intersection and runs up one wall, pushes off it, bounces off the supporting wall and kicks the dog and breaks its neck. It is physically impossible but boy, it looked awesome!

Then the team meets the final Big Bad and it is some sort of humanoid mutating monster that is all exposed muscle and teeth and claws and a tongue like a whip. (I didn't use any of the actual scenes from the movie because they were all too dark, so you get this drawn version) It manages to kill off the remainder of the team and only Alice and some guy who was trying to save his sister survive. They make it out of the Hive just as the blast doors sealing it off come down.

Only for the two survivors to be medicalized by Umbrella scientists in bio-hazard suits. The guy has a t-virus infection that isn’t killing him and Alice is being kept under observation. The movie ends with her waking up and ripping out all her monitors and escaping the lab. She is in Racoon City and it is obvious the t-virus has escaped. She grabs a shot gun and that’s how the movie ends.

I am happy to own this movie and am so glad it has stood up to repeated viewings. This was a LOT more than I was expecting to write, which goes to show how much I liked it :-D I’ll also add that you shouldn’t expect this much wordage from me when I review the next 5 Resident Evil movies. So stock up on shotgun shells, sharpen your machetes and make sure your harley davidson motorcycle is fueled up, because we’ve got a lot of adventure left to get through!

Synopsis from Wikipedia:

Click to Open

Underneath Raccoon City, a genetic research facility called the Hive is owned by the Umbrella Corporation. A thief steals the genetically engineered T-virus and contaminates the Hive with it. In response, the facility's artificial intelligence, the Red Queen, seals the Hive and kills everyone inside to prevent the virus from leaking into the outside world.

Alice wakes up in the bathroom of a deserted mansion, suffering amnesia. An unknown person tackles her as a group of commandos led by James Shade breaks in. Alice's attacker claims to be Matt Addison, who just transferred as a cop in Raccoon P.D. Alice and Matt are ordered to go down to the Hive with the group, where they find another amnesiac, Spence, hidden in their train. The commandos explain that everyone in the group except Matt is an employee of the Umbrella Corporation, and Alice and her partner Spence were assigned to guard the Hive's secret entrance beneath the mansion under the pretense of being married.

A laser defense system kills Shade and three more commandos outside the Red Queen's chamber. Despite the Red Queen's pleas for the group to leave, Kaplan disables it, causing the power to fail and all of the doors in the Hive to open. This releases the zombified staff and containment units holding Lickers, creatures created through experimentation with the T-virus. The horde attacks the group, and J.D. dies while the rest are separated. During that moment, Rain loses her keys and Matt, taking advantage of the chaos, sweeps the keys to escape his handcuffs. Alice starts regaining her memories while Matt finds his sister Lisa, who is one of the zombies. Alice saves him, and Matt explains that he and Lisa were environmental activists. Lisa infiltrated Umbrella to smuggle out the evidence of illegal experiments and shut Umbrella down. Alice remembers that she was Lisa's contact in the Hive but does not tell Matt. The survivors reunite at the Red Queen's chamber, where the commandos explain they have one hour before the Hive traps them inside automatically. Alice and Kaplan activate the Red Queen to find an exit; they rig a remote shutdown to ensure her cooperation.

As they escape through maintenance tunnels, zombies ambush them, and a reanimated J.D. bites Rain before she shoots him dead. They reach safety except Kaplan, who is bitten and separated from the group. Alice remembers that an anti-virus is in the lab, but they find it missing. Spence's memory returns, revealing he was the thief who stole and purposefully released the T-virus in the beginning; he hid both the T-virus and anti-virus on the train. Spence turns against the others but is bitten by a zombie before trapping the survivors in the lab. Spence retrieves the anti-virus but is killed by a Licker. The Red Queen offers to spare Alice and Matt if they kill Rain, who has been infected. A power outage occurs. Kaplan appears, having shut down the Red Queen to open the lab doors. The group heads to the train, where Alice retrieves the anti-virus and kills a reanimated Spence.

On the train, they inject Rain and Kaplan with the anti-virus. The Licker attacks them, clawing Matt and killing Kaplan. Alice subdues the Licker before a zombified Rain attacks Matt, the anti-virus having failed to cure her. He shoots Rain dead.

At the mansion, Matt's wound begins mutating. Before Alice can give him the anti-virus, a group of Umbrella scientists seizes them. They reveal Matt is to be put into the Nemesis Program, and the Hive is to be re-opened for an investigation into the incident.

Sometime later, Alice wakes up at the Raccoon City Hospital strapped to an examination table. She escapes outside, only to find Raccoon City in ruins. She retrieves a shotgun from an abandoned police car for defense.