Resident Evil: Afterlife

Is there a point in writing this review?

There are people who like these movies. And there are those who don’t.

Just like there are those who think that the new Star Wars movies are superior to the originals — I mean like, dude, Yoda has a lightsaber — and then there those who curl up every night in their Hoth themed duvet covers, repeatedly stabbing a George Lucas voodoo doll in the double chin with a plastic accessory from an 1977 Kenner original-line action figure.

The two sides of this divide will forever be hurling insults at each other, like chimps flinging shit in a zoo. And I sincerely doubt introducing a single, astonishingly incisive critique on the cultural validity of video game adaptations into the debate would stop you getting a mouthful of monkey poo.

Resident Evil: Afterlife 3D is for people for whom story means nothing, and novelty and distraction, everything.

It’s for an audience who are totally devoid of irony and completely without soul — just a million pairs of milky, saucer eyes and a single gigantic all consuming mouth, skulking in an Airfix apartment block mashing buttons on Sony 360s and Game Stations, or whatever, and burning money as incense in worship of the Dark Lord, Michael Bay.

But they don’t pay me the big bucks to sit on the fence, so for what its worth, here’s what I really think:

Here we are at number four in the Resident Evil: Quadrilogy. Who would have thunk it?

The Resident Evil: Franchise lurched into the multiplexes in 2002 with a story that bore no resemblance to the seminal survival horror Playstation games on which it was supposedly based. Since then we’ve had a film every three-years or so.

The budgets have steadily crept up, from a modest 32 million to a pretty reasonable 62 million, they’ve increasingly borrowed more and more from the games (which in turn, in my view at least, have gotten worse), and the critical reception has declined from a heady high point of 34 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes for the first installment, to a shamefully low 22 per cent for Resident Evil: The One Before This One.

And now we have the latest offering, shot in full IMAX 3D on James Cameron’s Avatar cameras, introducing a whole new dimension and scale of disappointment.

Yes, Resident Evil: Whatever It’s Called is bad. Its plot is incomprehensible and the characters defined only by their attire and steely glares. It proudly exhibits very average CGI monsters and dialogue that is made up entire of terse questions, shouted commands, redundant exclamations and creaky exposition.

Paul W.S Anderson returns to direct for the first time since the original, having ‘only’ written and produced the previous two ResidentEvils.

And while this movie is an improvement, Anderson is still the demented monkey who’s in charge of the story.

(We’re talking about that Anderson. The Anderson who managed to make a worse Alien movie than Alien Resurrection. Not the corduroy and clove cigarettes hipster Jesus, Anderson.)

And as always for this series, the story is the biggest problem.

I can live with dumb macho dialogue and still love a movie (hello Predator). I can accept shallow 2D characters who are just functions of the plot (hello Neo).

But please, please, please … at least give me a story.

Aside

More depressing than all that has been finding out Milla Jovovich, with whom I’ve been madly and deeply in love since The Fifth Element, is married to Anderson. This is terribly disappointing. I always wanted her to have taste.

Next thing Zooey Dechanel will marry Steven Seagal and kill all my dreams.

Jovovich has had great turns as an actress (notably in 2002’s Dummy opposite Adrian Brody), released a semi Kate Bush-y album and been an fashion designing, AIDS campaigning supermodel with a conscience.

And now she’s stuck in comic book nerd-crush land along with sell-out soul-mate, Kate “I do it for the money” Beckinsale.

The good news is that Jovovich has a habit of marrying her directors — first Luc Besson and now that scum, Anderson.

So I’m finishing my script, grabbing my camcorder and heading to Hollywood, baby. I’m coming for you Milla. I swear it.

*End of Aside*

Sure, you can complain about the movie’s structure, how the first ten minutes are spent undoing the plot points of all the previous movies in the franchise, ditching the Milla Jovovich clones and her super powers (don’t ask). Proof, if any proof was needed, that there’s no great over arching ‘vision’ behind this franchise, just a string of ‘this’d be awesome’ moments.

You can snidely observe that it just moves from clichéd set-piece to clichéd set-piece without any real connection between scenes (much like a badly designed video game, you might say).

And you can punch yourself in the face until your teeth fall out, begging someone to explain why none of it makes any sense at all and why nothing is ever explained.

But it’s all just too exhausting.

It’s easy to dismiss these movies as pap. Yes, its unrestrained hyped-up overtly masculine filmmaking from a frat-boy who makes movies with passion but without care. But people go to see them. People like them. They make money. So why bother getting bent out of shape about it?

If you want to go see it, go. I won’t judge you. Much.

The best I can say for it is that it’s probably the best Resident Evil movie yet made. And you can take that faint and damning praise for what it is.

Oh and good news for fans: this is apparently the first of a new trilogy of movies.

Resident Evil: Hooray!

By Brian Herron