Resident Evil: Damnation (2012)

I've been a fan of Capcom's Resident Evil video games since the franchise began, before I even owned a console on which to play them. I remember many a weekend in 1996 and 1997 where I'd go down the street to hang out with a friend who owned a PlayStation and playing the first game until the wee hours of the morning. The franchise is even one of the big reasons why I bought a Nintendo GameCube. And then Sony Pictures had to go and break my heart by letting Paul W.S. Anderson make his live-action movies inspired by the games.

I've spoken about my disappointment with Anderson's movies numerous times in the past, so I won't go into that again. But I will confess to being excited to see the animated Resident Evil: Degeneration when it was released straight to DVD in 2008. It was flawed, sure, but it was fun and I ultimately walked away moderately pleased. And because of that, when a sequel was similarly released to home video in 2012 (coincidentally between the fifth live-action movie and Capcom's Resident Evil 6 game), I was excited to see it. It might have taken me two years, but I've finally gotten around to seeing the sequel. So let's jump into Resident Evil: Damnation and see how well it turned out.

The movie takes us to the Eastern Slav Republic, one of many countries that came into being after the fall of the Soviet Union. But the country's transition to independence and a surge of unchecked capitalism led to a widening gap between the rich and the poor, allowing an oligarchy to gain control of the government. A militia of freedom fighters arose to turn class warfare into actual warfare, sending Eastern Slav into a bitter civil war.

As our story proper begins, we're once again introduced to U.S. federal agent Leon Kennedy (the voice of Matthew Mercer), who has secretly entered Eastern Slav to investigate rumors indicating that the rebels have acquired biological weaponry on the black market in an attempt to turn the war's tide in their favor. But shortly after he arrives, his superiors order him out after a breakdown in peace talks prompt Russia and the United States to get involved. Convinced that something suspicious is going on, Leon defies his orders and begins searching for the source of the rumors.

This might come as a shock, but his fears prove to be well-grounded. Leon discovers that not only do the rebels have some lab-created monsters at their disposal, but are controlling them via the Plaga parasites seen in Resident Evil 4 and 5. However, as is tradition with this franchise, things have gotten out of control. The parasites have also been unleashed upon Eastern Slav's capitol city, its victims becoming violent zombie-like lunatics.

In order to survive, Leon is forced into a shaky camaraderie with Sasha Kozachenko (the voice of Dave Wittenberg), a rebel fighter whose personal stake in the war has pushed him to make some increasingly desperate choices. But things get even more complicated when Leon learns that the Plaga outbreak is part of conspiracy that runs far deeper than a mere civil war, a conspiracy that goes all the way to the top of Eastern Slav's political food chain and the country's president, Svetlana Belikova (the voice of Wendee Lee).

I honestly don't know why it's taken me two years to see this movie. I guess I was afraid of having another "it's okay, nothing special" experience like with Degeneration. But now that I've actually seen it, I can't figure out why I waited so long because Damnation is a fun flick. Again, I didn't think it was perfect, but the movie is still an entertaining ride.

One of my big complaints about Degeneration was the animation. It was serviceable enough, but it looked like it belonged in a video game instead of a movie. The CGI here, however, is fantastic. It feels like an actual movie this time around. Thanks to the combination of the gorgeous look of the CGI and the use of motion capture, the animation is a lot more fluid and looks surprisingly realistic in a number of scenes. The fistfight between Svetlana and super-spy Ada Wong particularly stands out in this regard, and serves as one of the movie's highlights due in part to the quality of the animation. I also felt the movie also felt more exciting than its predecessor as well. The movie's fight scenes, action sequences, and especially the protracted climax (one that pits Leon, Sasha, and a number of Lickers against two humongous "Tyrant" monsters) are actually more intense than I originally thought they might be.

The catch, though, is that the movie was obviously supposed to have been in 3D. From the way certain shots are composed to things getting thrown or pointed at the audience, it's obvious that they were aiming for a 3D release for the movie. I've heard it even got one in some Japanese theaters, but here in the United States, we're forced to do without. The added depth would have made the visuals that much cooler to see, so needless to say, I'm disappointed that I've been left out in the cold.

Another problem I had with the movie, one less superficial than the movie being in 2D, is the screenplay (which, much like Degeneration, is written by Shotaro Suga). My beef with it is that the plot feels murky and convoluted. With the games, you're constantly finding clues and other material that fill in the gaps in the story and provide some extra exposition that straightens out any questions one may have and makes the world of the games richer and more rounded. But you can't do something like that here without the movie grinding to a complete halt. Because of that, it makes the story feel weak. Maybe it's me just not noticing every little detail or something going over my head that would have straightened things out for me, but I felt like the movie's government conspiracy storyline was more complicated than it should have been.

To Suga's credit, however, he has improved on some things. One of Degeneration's flaws was that splitting the narrative between the separate paths the two main characters were taking caused it to be less focused. He fixes that with Damnation, spending the bulk of the story following the Leon character. We do cut away to Ada and her sneaky attempts at infiltrating Svetlana's office but for the most part, this is Leon's movie. This singular focus allows the movie room to stretch its legs without getting bogged down by having to bounce back and forth between protagonists.

The movie also benefits from some decent voice acting as well. The cast, comprised of veteran anime voice performers and actors reprising the roles they play in the Resident Evil games, all put forth respectable work. Granted, they're once again stuck with the occasional bit of clunky dialogue, but they're still good. I enjoyed Val Tasso, who plays a goofy rebel that takes a liking to Leon, and especially liked Matthew Mercer and Courtenay Taylor as Leon and Ada, reprising the roles they've played multiple times in the games. The two know exactly what to do and where to go with their characters, making both of them intriguing and likable in their own ways.

Resident Evil: Damnation isn't a perfect movie, and it might not appeal to those who aren't devoted fans of the games. But it's still a very fun, entertaining movie that, as a fan, I thought was a really satisfying effort. If Sony Pictures were to ever get rid of Paul W.S. Anderson and reboot the live-action movies, they'd do well to follow in the footsteps of Capcom's animated movies. It might just be a tie-in created just to promote a video game, but Damnation is totally worth your time if you're even remotely a Resident Evil fan.

Final Rating: ***

Resident Evil: Retribution (2012)

I've had kind of a love/hate relationship with the Resident Evil franchise over the years. While I've loved nearly all of the video games that have carried that name since the first game was released on the original PlayStation in 1996, the cinematic adaptations have left me sadly disappointed. Each of the movies have had elements that I liked, I can admit that. But the fact that the rich mythology of the games I cherish so much was either altered or flat-out discarded in favor of mediocre fan fiction makes the movies more frustrating than anything else.

But every time a new Resident Evil movie is released, I still have to go see it. I don't know what it is, but I'm drawn to every single one of these movies. And thus I was sucked into the newest chapter, Resident Evil: Retribution. And once again, it's a sadly average entry into a franchise that's never really seemed able to rise above its own faults.

The movie picks up not long after the end of the previous one, as the squad of Umbrella soldiers have laid waste to the survivors and captured Alice (Milla Jovovich). Alice is imprisoned and subjected to brutal interrogation tactics, but a freak power outage allows her to escape from her cell and make a break for freedom.

Alice is quickly intercepted by Ada Wong (Li Bingbing), an associate of the perpetually evil Albert Wesker (Shawn Roberts). It turns out that Wesker triggered the power outage and sent Ada to retrieve Alice, whose altered DNA is the key to saving the human race from extinction.

But escaping to the outside world will be no easy feat. It turns out that Alice had been imprisoned deep beneath the ice of the Arctic Circle, in a combat research facility populated with Umbrella's homegrown creatures, monsters, and beasts. And while Wesker has his own team of commandos to extract Alice and Ada from the facility, the supercomputer that runs the place has sent a team of its own soldiers ― led by the brainwashed Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory) ― after them as well.

Once again a Resident Evil movie sees a theatrical release, and once again I leave the theater feeling disappointed. Is it too much to ask for one of these movies to be better than the crap that this franchise has been giving us for the past decade? It's like everyone involved in the cast and crew can't be bothered to care because they know they'll still make a ton of money from people like me, people who are too dumb to know any better. And I really should know better, because I know exactly what I'm getting into when I walk up to the box office and buy a ticket to see a Resident Evil movie. But I keep doing it anyway, because I'm an idiot.

Returning to both write and direct the latest entry into the saga is Paul W.S. Anderson, a filmmaker who as far as I can tell is like a low-rent version of Michael Bay. He's all sizzle and no steak, putting as much emphasis as possible on style without even remotely considering substance. That isn't always a bad thing, but with this movie, Anderson doesn't make so much as the slightest attempt to use that style to overcome or distract from the movie's flaws. It's like he just can't be bothered to care as long as Sony Pictures is still willing to hand him a big stack of cash to keep making the Resident Evil movies.

But practically all of the movie's flaws lie are with Anderson's screenplay. The script for this movie is just more proof that he simply does not care and would rather cobble together a bunch of garbage that shares a couple of names with the video games that Anderson is supposed to be adapting. And as bad as the writing for the other four Resident Evil movies might be, Anderson flushes the whole thing down the crapper with this one.

I do applaud his efforts to connect the disjointed continuity of all the movies together with a monologue at the beginning of the movie, but beyond that, Anderson steers things into a nosedive. It begins with his introduction of a bunch of new characters and the reintroduction of characters that died earlier in the series (having been brought back via cloning courtesy of Umbrella), while some from Afterlife disappear without as much as a mention. What happened to Chris and Claire Redfield? What happened to that "K-Mart" girl? They just up and vanish, no excuse given. Was this a situation where the actors didn't want to come back and Anderson couldn't recast them? I'll admit that I enjoyed seeing Ada Wong, Leon Kennedy, and Barry Burton up on the big screen, but did we absolutely need them when there's perfectly good characters already there?

What bugged me more than that is the absolute lack of anything resembling a plot. There is no story here. None. We're given the "Alice has to escape from Umbrella's facility" setup nearly twenty minutes into the movie, and that's it. The whole movie is just one big flimsy excuse for a batch of loosely connected action scenes. With no plot and no reason to give a damn about anything that happens, the movie just becomes a cacophonous mess. It's like Anderson is letting Uwe Boll write these movies, because he obviously has no desire to make anything that resembles the games anymore.

At least Anderson's direction is pretty good. Since he can't give us any substance, he makes up for it with a lot of style. Not only are the movie's 3D effects absolutely amazing, but the action scenes are very well done. While Anderson runs out of steam by the time the movie ends, he still manages to craft an action movie that's a real feast for the eyes. My favorite part, though, as near the beginning, when we see a huge mob of zombies running amok through a test simulation in a fake suburban town within Umbrella's facility. It actually takes the movie towards the horror contained within the early chapters of the video game franchise, and I thought it was really effective. I actually got invested in it (before Anderson shot himself in the foot with the rest of the movie, that is). The scene is really good, and it makes me wish Anderson had just done that for the whole series.

And then there's the acting, which is a mixed bag. Nobody is actively bad or anything, it's just that a lot of the cast feels like they're on autopilot. Take Milla Jovovich, for instance. For the majority of the movie, she's her usual self. No heavy lifting is required for her role, she just needs to talk in an unaffected monotone voice and beat up some monsters. It's all the more jarring when you see Jovovich playing a clone of Alice programmed to be a devoted wife and mother in that suburbia simulation I mentioned. Jovovich is great in that sequence, but once she has to jump into "Ass-Kickin' Alice" mode, that all goes away and she gives us the same old performance from the first four movies. Maybe I'm projecting my own utter contempt for the Alice character onto Jovovich's performance, but she struck me as just being here for the paycheck.

I was also on the fence about Li Bingbing as Ada Wong. She looks the part and actually comes very close to nailing it. But I didn't feel like she had the same sly, mysterious nature of her video game counterpart. And maybe it's just me, but Li's dialogue sounded like it was dubbed. I'm aware that English is not her first language and perhaps she memorized her lines phonetically, but something about it just sounds... off, I guess.

But I did, however, like Sienna Guillory, who plays the brainwashed Jill Valentine as the most unapologetic, cold-hearted bitch imaginable. She really makes it work, and I'm glad Guillory's returned to the franchise. But without a doubt, my favorite bit of acting comes from Aryana Engineer. She plays an artificially-created little girl built to be Alice's clone's daughter in that suburban weapons test, but finds herself taken in by Alice after her "mother" gets chomped on by a zombie. Engineer plays the role extremely well, and I thought she was really cute and likable. The relationship between her character and Alice is obviously supposed to be somewhat evocative of Ripley and Newt in Aliens, but I won't hold that lack of originality against Engineer, who I felt did a fantastic job.

Unfortunately, the movie as a whole is nowhere near as good as Engineer's performance. It actually makes me outright resent the Resident Evil name altogether. I probably wouldn't be so frustrated with it or the movies as a whole if I weren't already a fan of the games, but even that doesn't change the fact that Resident Evil: Retribution is an unmitigated disappointment. They'll probably end up making a sixth one of these godforsaken movies, especially considering how Retribution ended, and despite all my better judgment telling me to do the opposite, I'll probably see it anyway, There's no way it could be as bad as this one… could it?

Final Rating: *½

Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010)

I've been a fan of Capcom's Resident Evil games for a long time, since even before I owned a console on which I could play them. Their combination of zombies, monsters, and the "oh crap, something's gonna get me!" vibe made me fall in love with them as far back as the PS1 days in the middle of the '90s. So when I heard that there was going to be a Resident Evil movie, I got super-excited.

And then I actually saw it. I remember the date: March 16, 2002. I sat in that darkened theater watching something so unlike the games that I was dumbstruck. The Umbrella Corporation was there, the T-virus was there, the zombies were there, but it was far from the Resident Evil I knew and loved. It was, plain and simple, 101 minutes of stupidity.

But then came the sequels. Resident Evil: Apocalypse got a teensy bit closer to the games and was better for it, while Extinction said "screw it" and took the movie franchise as far away from the games as possible. All three were utterly mediocre movies that show what happens when a filmmaker wants to piss in the faces of a franchise's built-in audience by turning his significant other into an unstoppable superhero at the expense of everything that made the source material cool.

That leads us to Resident Evil: Afterlife, the fourth movie in the saga and the first to be made in 3D. Having given up all hope of seeing a live-action Resident Evil movie that's truly faithful to the source material, I went into Afterlife at least hoping that maybe it wouldn't be as silly as the first three movies or as goofy as its trailers and commercials made it look. Turns out all my hopes were in vain, as the movie is just more of the same.

The movie begins where Extinction left off, with Alice (Milla Jovovich) and her army of clones pursuing her vendetta against the Umbrella Corporation. The team of Alices storm Umbrella's underground bunker in Tokyo, a mission that ends with the clone army wiped out, Umbrella chairman Albert Wesker (Shawn Roberts) seemingly dead, and Alice stripped of her superpowers.

With her enemies defeated, Alice ventures off to find Arcadia, a rumored safe haven for survivors located in the Alaskan wilderness. She arrives to find nothing but a field of abandoned planes and helicopters. The only other person to be found is Claire Redfield (Ali Larter), who has been stricken with amnesia and has no memory of where her convoy could have gone.

While flying down the western seaboard in search of other survivors, they discover a small group living in a maximum security prison in the ruins of Los Angeles. Among them are former pro basketball star Luther West (Boris Kodjoe) and Claire's brother, Chris (Wentworth Miller). When Alice and Claire mention Arcadia, the survivors reveal that it is not a town, but a cargo ship traveling along the coast. They've heard no radio broadcasts from Arcadia for several days, and it seems as if the zombies and monsters outside the prison will get to them before any help does. Left with little other recourse, this small band of survivors must find a way through the legion of undead that surrounds them and get to the safety they believe Arcadia has for them.

Resident Evil: Afterlife is a weird movie on multiple levels. It tries to do its own thing, yet it also tries shoehorning in elements from Resident Evil 5 without making them feel natural. And despite its 100-minute running time, it feels like only half a movie. There's really only enough plot to sustain it for somewhere around 30 to 45 minutes. The movie is just a compilation of action sequences that are barely connected to one another. It's a lazy movie that, for some strange reason, still manages to be somewhat watchable and even a little fun on occasion.

Paul W.S. Anderson returns to the franchise's director's chair after simply writing the other sequels, and he once again proves that he's more style than substance. The movie looks gorgeous, with some excellent cinematography and impressive special effects. And although there was no discernible need for the movie to be 3D, it still provides for a few very cool moments. (The scene where Alice and Claire fight that giant executioner guy from Resident Evil 5 in the prison shower is awesome, by the way.) Unfortunately, there's nothing much to it at all. Anderson's overuse of slow-motion and "bullet time" gets annoying after a while, too. There's so much slow-motion in the movie that I started to think that Anderson was just padding out the runtime.

It doesn't help anything that Anderson isn't a very good writer. There's no two ways about it. It's especially obvious with this particular script, which is so utterly bad that I'm surprised a movie studio signed off on it. There's practically no plot at all, and what little there is goes absolutely nowhere. Nothing is accomplished, nothing is gained or lost. It contributes nearly nothing to the Resident Evil movie franchise at all. And that pretty much sums up the entirety of Afterlife; it's a great big mountain of nothing. The characters are useless, the story is nonexistent, and the dialogue is banal. The movie is just plain there, with no point and no reason to exist. And that's terrible.

If I may single out some more specific complaints, one of the things that bugged me the most about the script was how quickly Anderson dumped the idea of an army of Alice clones. Yes, I've complained about how Alice had completely overwhelmed everything else in the movies, but a movie where dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of Alices go to war with Umbrella was something I could have gotten behind. That could have been a cool movie. But what happens? Anderson gives us a couple of clones and kills them all off in the first ten minutes of the movie. Couldn't we have gotten at least half an hour before they get eliminated? You never cease to disappoint me, Paul W.S. Anderson.

At least Anderson manages to get a cool musical score out of his composers, Thomas Hajdu and Andy Milburn. Collectively known as "tomandandy," Hajdu and Milburn provide a bass-heavy techno score that is far better than what the movie actually deserves. If there's one good thing about Resident Evil: Afterlife, it's tomandandy's music.

Rounding us out is the cast, who aren't great, but don't totally suck either. Milla Jovovich once again returns as Alice, a role that doesn't require Jovovich to do much acting. I mean, all she has to do is look like a sexy badass and hope that the stunts don't go awry. I'm still convinced that Anderson continues to give Jovovich such a huge part in the Resident Evil movies so she'll have steady work, but maybe she should try talking him into letting the role have a few more moments where she can actually do some acting, or just stopping the movies altogether so she can do some other movies for a change.

Moving on, I thought Ali Larter and Wentworth Miller were quite good as Claire and Chris Redfield, the sibling duo whose exploits have been such an important part of the games. Both Larter and Miller play their roles with a quiet, focused intensity that I thought made them that much cooler when they got to kick some ass. I still wish, though, that the movie franchise had focused more on the game characters than Alice. Maybe then Larter and Miller would have had more time to shine.

Among the others in the cast, I have to confess that I thought Boris Kodjoe did a fine job in his role. It's a thankless character that isn't written all that well, but Kodjoe did the best he could. The same can be said for Kim Coates, who plays one of the most entertainingly irritating horror movie characters I've seen in a while. Coates purposely plays the character in such a way that you'll hate his guts the second you see him and will be happy to see him get his comeuppance. He hits every note exactly right, and though he doesn't have a whole lot of screen time, Coates's portrayal of the clichéd prick of the group was aces.

Last but most certainly not least is Shawn Roberts as Albert Wesker. Wesker has been one of the most important elements of the Resident Evil franchise, serving as its "Big Bad" in one form or another since the very beginning. He's probably my favorite video game character of all time, and I thought Roberts did a fantastic job in the role. Roberts absolutely nails it, playing the character exactly how I'd always wanted to see a live-action version of Wesker done. Honestly, if the entire franchise had followed the leads of Roberts and Sienna Guillory's take on Jill Valentine from Apocalypse, the Resident Evil movies would have turned out a lot better.

Maybe I'm being too hard on the movie. Maybe when it hits DVD in a few months, I'll watch it again and have a different opinion of it. It happens. But as of this present moment in time, Resident Evil: Afterlife is disappointing. I knew exactly what to expect when I bought my ticket and put on those 3D glasses, but I still hoped for the best. And I'll continue to hope that someone will finally make a live-action Resident Evil movie that's actually good. I know it's possible. I'm sure of it. I'll be patient and bide my time, and I'll watch every movie bearing that name anticipating something great but knowing that I probably won't get it. At least the games haven't let me down yet. I still have them to remind me that the Resident Evil name can be attached to something awesome. Maybe one day, Hollywood will get it right.

Final Rating: **

Resident Evil: Degeneration (2008)

Three times now, I've spoken at length about the movie adaptations of Capcom's Resident Evil series of video games. And I stand by my belief that at this point, they've become vehicles that Paul W.S. Anderson uses to make Milla Jovovich look like the biggest badass possible. They're unbelievably mediocre attempts at this, but they're attempts nonetheless. And that's a real shame, too, because the movies are an incredible disservice to the games themselves. Outside of a tiny handful of characters and a few small elements, Anderson's movies have practically nothing whatsoever to do with the games.

But believe it or not, there actually is a Resident Evil movie that remains faithful to the source material. Commissioned by Capcom and released by Sony Home Entertainment, Resident Evil: Degeneration was a CG-animated flick intended to serve as something of an bridge between Resident Evil 4 and Resident Evil 5 that could easily be fitted into the continuity of the games themselves. And even though it could have been better, it'll surely please most fans of the game franchise.

In 1998, the town of Raccoon City was decimated by a biological weapon known as the T-Virus. The effects of the T-Virus were devastating, turning those it infected into flesh-hungry zombies. To stop the outbreak and prevent its outward spread, the government was forced to launch a missile at Raccoon City and effectively wipe the town off the map. Only a handful of people were able to make it out alive, among them Claire Redfield (Alyson Court) and Leon Kennedy (Paul Mercier).

Seven years have passed since the Raccoon City disaster. In that time, Claire has joined TerraSave, a group that handles search and rescue operations following attacks using biological and chemical weapons. She arrives at an airport to meet a friend, but soon finds herself in the middle of a T-Virus outbreak.

The airport is quickly quarantined, leaving Claire trapped inside with a small group of survivors. As part of the lockdown, the military sends in Leon — now a government agent — and Special Response Team members Greg Glenn (Steven Blum) and Angela Miller (Laura Bailey). The three-person team enters the airport and fights their way through an army of zombies and monsters to locate the survivors, eventually escaping with them in tow.

At a debriefing, Leon discovers that a terrorist group is responsible for the outbreak at the airport, having obtained the T-Virus on the black market. This group's goal is to force the American government to admit their rumored connections to the T-Virus's development. As the movie progresses, dark secrets are brought to light as the source of the terrorist group is revealed, and the threat of a greater viral outbreak looms on the horizon.

In watching Resident Evil: Degeneration, I had something of a realization. People are always criticizing video game movies for straying too far from their source material. I've done my fair share of it in the past. But I realized that staying too close to those roots can be hazardous as well.

That's my biggest complaint about the movie. It's a direct translation of the game's world. The animation makes it look like a 96-minute cutscene from the games, some of the franchise's voice actors reprise their roles in the movie, and it's even introduces certain elements that would be referenced in Resident Evil 5. But while those are positives in a sense, they're also negatives. Because of how close the movie is to the games, it risks alienating potential viewers who are not avid followers of the Resident Evil saga. They won't know the characters or the backstory, and if they have to do homework in order to understand the movie, they probably won't watch it at all.

One of my other gripes is the quality of the animation. I'd be a fool to expect Pixar-quality CGI, but am I wrong for wanting more from the movie? Yeah, it's good, but it doesn't feel like it belongs in a movie. It looks like it belongs in a game, so much so that I was hoping that I could actually just start controlling the characters in the movie instead of just watching them.

The animation looks enough like the games that I felt like I was just watching someone play a Resident Evil game instead of playing it myself. It actually put me in the mood to turn the movie off and go play one of the games instead. It's just sad, really.

There's also the screenplay, credited to Shotaro Suga. Once again showing how close the movie is to the games, the screenplay is full of corny dialogue, precious little character development, and a convoluted plot that isn't really all that necessary. You tend to ignore flaws like that when you're playing the games, but the lack of interactivity makes them more evident and annoying.

Last on my list is the voice acting, which is okay, I guess. It's not great, but it's acceptable. (It doesn't help them that the dialogue is so clunky, though.) The voice actors get a bit hammy at times, almost to the point of being laughable, but as a fan of the game series, I can't say I didn't see that coming.

Maybe I'm being a bit harsh on the movie. It isn't really as bad as I may have made it out to be. In fact, it's a lot of fun. But you come away from it with a feeling of mediocrity. However, I would still recommend it to anyone who calls themselves a fan of the Resident Evil saga. Unfortunately, I don't think I can justify giving Resident Evil: Degeneration anything more than two and a half stars. And at least the movie didn't feature any of those frustratingly complex puzzles from the games. That would have been too much.

Final Rating: **½

Resident Evil: Extinction (2007)

Since the early 1990s, movie studios and filmmakers looking for a quick buck have turned to video games for inspiration. Unfortunately, the idea of doing movies based on video games got off to a rocky start when the lackluster Super Mario Bros. movie was released in 1993, and the genre has been struggling to prove itself ever since. While there have been a few notable adaptations that could be considered good (specifically Mortal Kombat and Silent Hill), the majority of video game movies that enter production usually end up being pretty bad. Or if it's directed by Uwe Boll, they'll end up being hideously, miserably, appallingly terrible.

But it should be noted, though, that a few fall through the cracks and end up being somewhere in between. Among them are Paul W.S. Anderson's movies based on Capcom's Resident Evil franchise. The games are considered sacred gems of the "survival horror" genre, but when the first movie based on them hit theaters in the spring of 2002, the reception from the core fanbase was decidedly mixed. Some liked it and defended it, while others loathed it due to its drastic departure from the source material.

Differences in reaction aside, it was still financially successful enough to spawn a sequel that tried to satisfy disillusioned fans by bringing things closer to the universe of the games. And though it still polarized the fanbase, it racked up plenty of money at the box office and prompted Sony Pictures to approve a third Resident Evil movie. Once again heading down its own path while borrowing a handful of elements from its source material, Resident Evil: Extinction is evidence that even if a movie isn't great, it can still be somewhat entertaining.

Our story begins five years after the events of Resident Evil: Apocalypse, and the world is much worse for wear. Thanks to the T-Virus managing to escape its quarantine, the human race has been pushed to the brink of extinction. Earth has become a barren, desolate wasteland, and those who haven't become flesh-hungry zombies are forced to stay on the road and struggle for survival.

However, this tiny little setback hasn't stopped the malfeasant Umbrella Corporation from continuing their experiments in their subterranean compounds around the globe. Chief researcher Dr. Isaacs (Iain Glen) postulates that the undead masses could be domesticated with a new strain of virus synthesized from the blood of his favorite lab rat, Alice (Milla Jovovich).

Of course, Dr. Isaacs neglects to mentions to his superiors, including Umbrella chairman Albert Wesker (Jason O'Mara), that he's also using it to create zombies that are faster, smarter, and a million times more aggressive. But that's just a minor little detail, isn't it? Dr. Isaacs is committed to developing this new virus, and has no qualms with sending hundreds of Alice clones through a deadly obstacle course to obtain the samples he needs. However, he'd much rather have a pure specimen from the real Alice.

However, Alice is taking every precaution necessary to avoid detection. She has taken herself off the grid, living a nomadic life as she tries to cope with the ever-escalating telekinetic powers bestowed upon her by Umbrella's experiments. But her eremitic existence is about to get a little less lonely.

While on her way to a supposedly isolated spot in Alaska, she crosses paths with two old friends: Carlos Olivera (Oded Fehr) and L.J. (Mike Epps). The pair are headed to Las Vegas, and have a caravan of fellow survivors in tow. Among these survivors are Claire Redfield (Ali Larter), the caravan's leader; Betty (Ashanti), L.J.'s girlfriend and the resident medic; and a teenage girl called K-Mart (Spencer Locke), nicknamed as such because the others found her living in an abandoned K-Mart store. Plus there's also a few people who are — let's face it — anonymous cannon fodder.

The caravan agrees to follow Alice to Alaska, but a choice encounter with Dr. Isaacs and his army of super-zombies leads to a change in plans, as making it to Alaska becomes secondary to the destruction of the Umbrella Corporation.

It seems apparent that Resident Evil: Extinction, as with the two movies preceding it, was made merely as a vehicle to showcase Milla Jovovich's monster-fighting skills. The series of movies are ostensibly a triumvirate of adaptations of the Resident Evil games, but all of that seems to have been eschewed so we could watch "The Adventures of Super-Milla."

If you're a fan of the games and are upset by the movie trilogy's great distance from the source material, then you'll absolutely loathe this chapter in the film franchise. Outside of a few character names and a handful of certain minute details, there's really nothing at all to connect it to the games. So as a video game adaptation, I think the movie is a failure. But as a sci-fi action movie, it's actually somewhat entertaining.

Let's start things off by discussing the direction, handled by Russell Mulcahy. Particularly notable for his work on Highlander and dozens of music videos, Mulcahey does a very good job here. Unfortunately, there are a few spots that I had trouble with his work. One was his overuse of the CGI mapping of Umbrella's underground complex. Once is good, twice is okay, three times or more is a waste. I also absolutely hated the scene in which the Alice character fights off some zombie dogs. The scene is poorly shot and atrociously edited, to the point that you can barely tell at all what is supposed to be happening.

However, Mulcahy does reign in his editor after that, and he and cinematographer David Johnson craft a film with an exciting, ambitious visual flair. The action scenes are well done, and they put the desert setting to good use, making things look dirty, gritty, and lifeless. They also give the same lifeless feel to the underground bunker scenes, except adding a colder, more bureaucratic tone befitting the moments that happen there.

Mulcahy's work is also bolstered by the great special effects, as well as the musical score composed by Charlie Clouser. Though the CGI blood splatters look fake (whatever happened to stunt guys using the old-school squibs?), the other visual effects and Patrick Tatopoulos's makeup effects are well done. I specifically point to the nasty super-zombies and the enormous creature Alice fights in the film's climax, which look both amazing and frightening.

Meanwhile, Clouser's music does much to pull the viewer in. His work echoes the score composed by Marco Beltrami and Marilyn Manson for the first movie, and its aggressiveness suits Extinction to a T, going a long way to enhance the film's visuals. If anything can be said in the positive about this movie, it's that it looks and sounds pretty good.

The bad news is that all the great direction, music, and effects in the word couldn't save the horrible screenplay. Once again written by Paul W.S. Anderson, the movie feels like we've skipped over the franchise's third movie and are now watching the fourth. Characters are missing with no explanation as to what happened to them, and certain events we weren't privy to are only vaguely hinted at. Is it so wrong to expect at least a little more information to bridge the events between Apocalypse and Extinction?

And let's not forget the horrible misuse of characters from the games. Albert Wesker is the Keyser Söze of the Resident Evil franchise, but here, he just sits around and acts smarmy. And how about Claire Redfield? I don't remember her being anything like her movie counterpart in the games. My guess is that she was just supposed to be a stand-in for Jill Valentine. If I understand the facts correctly, Sienna Guillory, who played Jill in Apocalypse, was supposed to reprise her role in Extinction. But since her commitments to Eragon made her unavailable, we're instead stuck with the same character getting a different name. I mean, was Anderson even trying? It's like he figured he'd just throw out some random names and factoids from the games and hope the fanboys would be satisfied.

But the real problem is that there's nothing resembling character development or anything like that. In fact, any character who isn't Alice, with the possible exception of Dr. Isaacs, is simply a complete non-factor. As I said, the movie might as well be renamed "The Chronicles of Milla Jovovich, Badass Superheroine," because she comes across as the only character Anderson really gives half a damn about. I'd like to avoid making accusations, but I think he made the Alice character such a huge focus because he's dating the actress that plays her. Not to say that's the truth or anything, but still.

And even if that weren't the case, the script is still pretty bad. The scenes feel like they're just strung together with no real rhyme or reason, including a few scenes that fail to contribute anything at all to the movie. Like the "Alice vs. zombie dogs" scene at the beginning, for example. Not only is the scene incomprehensibly shot and edited, but I can't think of any reason for it to be in the movie in the first place. The primary demographic for the movie is the crowd that liked the first two movies, so did Anderson assume that they'd forgotten Alice was über-powerful? My assumptions are either that, or they just needed a scene to pad out the movie's running time. This scene being included is probably just as much Russell Malcahy's fault for leaving it in the movie to begin with, but somebody had to write it.

Okay, time to move on. The more I think about Anderson's lame writing, the more upset I get. Let's discuss the cast, shall we? Since she's the star and the entire movie revolves around her, let's talk about Milla Jovovich first. She obviously enjoys playing the role, and her enthusiasm shows. She's acceptable during her dialogue moments, but she's a lot of fun to watch during the physically demanding fight scenes. If the intent of these movies is to turn Jovovich into the next big female action star, she's off to a good start.

The cast's other big gun, Iain Glen, is entertaining to watch as our scenery-chewing villain du jour. His portrayal of Dr. Isaacs as an over-the-top mad scientist contributes a lot to the movie, making for an entertaining villain that is fun to watch.

Unfortunately, because the characters are so flat, it affects how the performances of the other actors are viewed. Because of that, it seems like the rest of the cast are just skating by on auto-pilot. Ali Larter is fine in her role, though I don't really believe the character was written to suit her strengths. I also thought Oded Fehr did well, and that Mike Epps was quite funny and likeable. Spencer Locke is just kinda there, and while Grammy-winning singer Ashanti actually does a better job than I thought she would. However, since her character only has two or three scenes, it's really hard to gauge the quality of her performance.

I should also make note of Linden Ashby's entertaining performance in his tiny, thankless role as the caravan's resident cowboy. And lastly is Jason O'Mara as Albert Wesker. Though the links between the video game version of Wesker and his cinematic doppelganger are loose at best, O'Mara still does a decent job replicating the character's style.

Though I don't believe this movie will ever be considered a piece of classic American cinema, it's most certainly a "guilty pleasure" kind of flick. It is a movie that is quite focused; it knows exactly what it wants to accomplish, and who its audience is supposed to be. And although there are some big flaws, the movie never tries to be anything more than a simple slice-and-dice zombie movie. That's really the best that can be expected from it. So I'm going to give Resident Evil: Extinction three stars. If you loved the first two movies or are obsessed with any and all things Resident Evil, go check it out.

Final Rating: ***

Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004)

The survival horror genre of video games has given the gaming world some landmark titles since the genre came into prominence in the mid-1990s. But few survival horror games can say they're as influential as Resident Evil. The original game and its sequels have become seminal titles for fans of horror games, and I doubt it came as a big surprise to anyone when a Resident Evil movie was released in 2002.

And although the reactions from fans and critics were decidedly mixed, the movie's box office returns were enough to warrant Sony Pictures sending a sequel into production. Retaining elements of the first movie while adding a heaping helping of elements from the game franchise to soothe upset fanboys, Resident Evil: Apocalypse is at least an improvement over its predecessor.

The movie begins shortly before the end of its predecessor. A team of scientists from the Umbrella Corporation opens up its Hive laboratory below the Midwestern town of Raccoon City following the release of the T-Virus, but like most things in sci-fi/horror movies, things just go straight to Hell and the T-Virus escapes. Umbrella begins evacuating its executives from Raccoon City, leaving the rest of the city to rot. Thirteen hours later, Raccoon City has been contaminated with a widespread outbreak of the T-Virus. The town has become overrun with packs of zombies attacking any citizens they come across, and police actually arresting some zombies.

Around that time, we're reintroduced to Alice (Milla Jovovich), the survivor of the first movie. Like we saw at the end of the previous movie, she awakens in an Umbrella-owned hospital and wanders out into an abandoned street, making sure to snatch a shotgun from a police cruiser. However, she might not need it, as it turns out a round of Umbrella experiments has given her superhuman fighting abilities.

Come nightfall, Raccoon City has descended into chaos. The zombie infestation has reached massive proportions, forcing Umbrella to quarantine the city and quell a mass exodus to prevent their little accident from making national news. A team of Umbrella commandos sent in to clean up the mess has been wiped out, leaving just Carlos Olivera (Oded Fehr) and Nicholai Sekolov (Zach Ward) to fend for themselves. They discover and team up with another band of survivors, comprised of Alice, local pimp L.J. (Mike Epps), news meteorologist Terri Morales (Sandrine Holt), and video game heroine Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory), a suspended member of the Raccoon Police Department's elite STARS division.

The motley crew is soon contacted via payphone by Dr. Charles Ashford (Jared Harris), a high-ranking Umbrella scientist outside the city gates who's been following their actions via Raccoon City's street cameras. And folks, Ashford has some crappy news for them. It turns out that Umbrella's gonna use their military connections to drop a nuke on Raccoon City at dawn, but Ashford will guarantee them safe passage out of town before then if they can find his daughter Angie (Sophie Vavasseur), who disappeared following a car accident during the evacuation of Umbrella's crew.

Unless they'd really like to stick around and have a missle dropped on them, they don't really have a choice. Thus, they're stuck fighting through a horde of undead humans and packs of zombie dogs to rescue Angie. However, even after finding Angie, they still have to make it to their rendezvous point intact. But it turns out that zombies and dogs aren't the only things they have to worry about; there are also the Lickers that return from the first movie, and the "Nemesis" (Matthew G. Taylor), a bio-engineered leviathan roaming the streets in search of Alice.

Resident Evil: Apocalypse is a big violent action roller coaster ride, and it knows it. It has no qualms with substituting thrills in lieu of things like plot advancement and character development. The movie isn't for moviegoers who like well-written stories and Oscar-caliber acting. It's for those who like watching people shoot at monsters with high-powered weapons.

Director Alexander Witt uses his feature film debut to show off years of tricks learned working as a second unit director on flicks like Pirates of the Carribean: The Curse of the Black Pearl and The Bourne Identity, and other than a few moments, the film is visually astounding. Unfortunately, many of the best action scenes are buried underneath quick cuts and shaky camera moves.

And though I said the movie wasn't about plot, the script by Paul W.S. Anderson (who passed the director's chair to Witt so he could make Alien vs. Predator) could have used some work. The plot proper (an amalgamation of the the second and third Resident Evil games with a dash of the original movie for flavor) didn't begin until almost a third of the way through the movie, and the buildup to the climactic Alice/Nemesis fight scene was actually very anticlimactic when it's all said and done. We did get some fun scenes, though; namely a Licker's siege on a church and the survivors fighting their way out of a zombie-infested graveyard. Something is always happening on screen, however, and it's never boring.

Unfortunately, it seems as if Anderson didn't really care about the side characters, just wanting to cram Alice down our throats. If you're going to disrespect the game's characters by making them sidekicks to some new character that comes across as the female John Rambo, the fans are really going to resent you. That's probably why that the Resident Evil movies aren't all that popular with the fans of the franchise that I personally know.

The movie's acting was also give or take, depending on which actor we're talking about. Sienna Guillory was great as Jill, emulating her video game counterpart right down to the way she walked. Too bad she was second banana to Alice, but what can you do? Meanwhile, Milla Jovovich seemed to be half-assing it at times. It's like she said, "Okay, folks, my boyfriend wrote the movie, so the rest of you goons are gonna work while I sit here and look all awesome. Somebody get me a martini." I also liked Oded Fehr as Carlos, but he was severely underused. Why bother promoting Carlos from the games to the movie if you're barely gonna put him in there?

I really enjoyed Mike Epps as well, even if he was just one-dimensional comic relief. He got a lot of mileage out of it, and provided many funny moments. Another thing I enjoyed was Jeff Danna's industrial-metal score. It's far from memorable, but it worked for what the movie needed. And whoever was working the sound effects needs to be beaten. A lot of the scares are accompanied by a loud sound effect, making it seem like they wanted to scare the audience by making them deaf

While Resident Evil: Apocalypse is certainly a better film than its predecessor, it still struggles to reach higher than mediocrity. It teeters precariously on the line between good and bad, coming across as fun at certain times while banal at others. It's really that inconsistency that brings about the movie's downfall. There are some entertaining moments, especially for fans of the games, but ultimately, the movie is average at best. There's a good movie that could be made out of the Resident Evil games, but this sadly isn't it.

Final Rating: ***

Resident Evil (2002)

Just like any other form of entertainment, video games are blessed with a multitude of genres. That way, there's a little something out there for every kind of gamer to enjoy. Among the more profitable genres is survival horror. The idea of dropping a player into an isolated location populated with evil demonic monsters from the edge of Hell is a surefire money-maker for game publishers. And in this reviewer's opinion, the standard bearer for survival horror has been the acclaimed Resident Evil franchise.

When Capcom released the first game (titled "Biohazard" in Japan) on the Sony PlayStation in 1996, it was a smashing success. The decade that followed saw the franchise branch out to include three sequels, a prequel, a number of spin-offs, a remake, a bunch of novelizations, and action figures of the game's characters. So it was only a matter of time before Hollywood became knocking at Capcom's door.

Though Sony Pictures green-lighted a Resident Evil movie in 1999, behind-the-scenes shake-ups caused it to languish in developmental hell until Paul W.S. Anderson - director of the well-received cinematic adaptation of Mortal Kombat - was brought in to write and direct in 2000. The movie finally started moving forward in production, and saw a spring 2002 release date. Considering the "curse of mediocrity" that is said to befall video game adaptations, just how does the Resident Evil movie stack up?

Our story begins with a quick introduction of the Umbrella Corporation. For those of you unfamiliar with the games, Umbrella is the largest commercial entity in the United States, a politically influential company that handles everything from computers to pharmaceuticals and health care. Ninety percent of all homes in America have at least one Umbrella-produced product. However, unbeknownst to the general public, the company's immense financial gains are thanks to having a hand in the underground production of military technology, genetic experimentation, and viral weaponry.

That leads into a short prologue at an Umbrella laboratory called "The Hive," a half-mile beneath Raccoon City, a small Midwestern town that Umbrella practically owns. Someone purposely shatters a small vial containing an unknown substance, which escapes into the ventilation ducts and prompts the Hive's security system to go homicidal. It locks down the Hive, then kills everyone inside by crashing two crowded elevators and suffocating everyone in the labs and offices with Halon gas.

We flash forward to five hours later, where a young woman named Alice (Milla Jovovich) wakes up in the shower with a nasty bump on the head and a bad case of amnesia. She soon discovers that she's in a huge mansion in the woods, with a hidden cache of guns in her dresser drawers. Why? She doesn't know. Alice has no idea what's going on, but she's quickly jumped by an unknown man. At that moment, a team of commandos storm the mansion, crashing through the windows and tackling Alice and her assailant.

The commandos run an ID check on the man and learn that he's Matt Addison (Eric Mabius), a local man claiming to be a police officer. He's placed in handcuffs since his presence is a tad questionable, and access a hidden door that leads them to a subterranean train statio. There they find a shady fellow amnesic named Spence (James Purefoy), who we learn lives in the mansion with Alice, posing as her husband. Anyway, the commandos and their three companions take the train down into the Hive with the intent to shut down the Red Queen (the voice of Michaela Dicker), the artificial intelligence program that's in charge of the Hive. However, the Red Queen's defenses chop up most of the commandos into itty-bitty little pieces, but those that remain shut down the defenses and manage to turn off the Red Queen.

Shutting down the Red Queen ends up opening every locked door in the Hive, which is a very, very bad thing. As those still alive try to leave, they're attacked by a massive horde of reanimated corpses. Despite having all kinds of firepower, the zombies get the best of them and the crew's numbers are thinned out to five: Alice, Spence, Matt, and commandos Rain (Michelle Rodriguez) and Kaplan (Martin Crewes). They promptly reboot the Red Queen and grill her for information, learning what exactly caused their mess: the broken vial we saw earlier caused an outbreak of Umbrella's newest creation, the T-Virus.

Being infected with the T-Virus can have some extreme consequences (i.e. reanimating the dead), so the Red Queen killed everyone and locked up the place to prevent the outbreak from spreading. Of course, she wasn't exactly expecting a crack team of commandos to barge in and raise a stink, but what can you do?

So after this little revelation, the crew decides to head for the nearest exit. Unfortunately, they have less than an hour to escape before the Hive's doors close for good, and they also have to worry about the zombie army, a pack of zombified dogs, and the "Licker," an vicious Umbrella-created monster with immense claws and a super-long tongue.

Lots of people have knocked Paul W.S. Anderson for doing less-than-stellar movies. However, I must give Anderson credit for giving the movie a very slick and stylized look that I appreciate. He and cinematographer David Johnson use crazy camera angles to hearken back to the games, such as overhead shots and close-ups of opening eyes. From the way he talks on the movie's DVD commentary, Anderson has a real passion for the games, and after repeat viewings, it shows.

However, that passion couldn't raise the film to be more than what it is. One thing that bugged me was the cast. I liked Jovovich as Alice and Purefoy as Spence, but outside of those two, the rest of the cast was either useless cannon fodder or just not that good. Then again, I liked Rodriguez too, but she pretty much plays the same role she plays in all her movies: a tough-as-nails tomboy. Watch The Fast and the Furious, Girlfight, Blue Crush, or S.W.A.T., and she's playing the same character with some subtle differences. And I'd be remiss if I didn't compliment Marco Beltrami and shock-rocker Marilyn Manson for their awesome score. With the film being more of an action film, the throbbing industrial rock music fitted much better than an orchestral score would.

A second problem is that the plot is too loose from the games. Sure, there's zombies and labs and the T-Virus, even a Licker, but those are the only real similarities. The movie relies too much on homages to other movies (such as Dawn of the Dead and Cube), and not on the material presented in the games, though I am glad it wasn't a direct knock-off of the games. If it was a direct translation, the movie would have been a James Bond movie with zombies. And there's also many similarities to Alice in Wonderland, too. Why? I don't know, and I don't think anyone involved knows why either. The only reason I can think of is the main character is named Alice, and even then, her name isn't mentioned until the cast roll call in the closing credits.

Night of the Living Dead director George Romero, who'd originally been attached to write and direct the movie for years prior to Anderson taking over, wrote a script that was a wee bit more faithful to the games. While Romero's script could have used a few rewrites, I think it could have been spun into a halfway decent movie. Maybe someone could have adapted S.D. Perry's novelizations of the games into screenplays, too.

Overall, Resident Evil might be watchable, but I don't know exactly if I'd call it good. You know that kind of movie. It's the kind you'll pop into your DVD player on a lazy Sunday afternoon if you want an inoffensive way to kill an hour and forty minutes. Is it as good as the games? Unfortunately, not by a long shot. But the movie adaptation of Resident Evil isn't totally bad.

Final Rating: **½