A Less Super Zombie Killfest

Resident Evil Apocalypse

What’s It About

This movie picks up right where the first Resident Evil Movie left off; except they briefly explain how the virus was able to get out of the Hive again. Raccoon City has been ravaged by the plague and the people who work for Umbrella are getting out. That leaves Alice to save the day again. Valentine and Olivera are here from Nemesis, but they are not the heroes that they seemed to be in the game. They are all trying to get out of the city after Umbrella has decided to close it off and nuke it so that the virus does not spread. The creator of the virus is evacuated, but he needs to get his daughter back. He decides to get the few people that survive on the inside to help him in exchange for a helicopter out of the city. Overall, the story worked well, but not having conclusive endings is scary when the second movie in the series has gotten worse.


How’d They Act

Milla Jovovich stays consistent with her character in the first movie; little talking and completely sure of herself. There are low expectations for acting in this type of movie which certainly helps here, but no acting is very good in Apocalypse. On the flip side, there is not any acting that is absolutely horrible to watch. The main problems come in with the directing.


Delivery

Paul W.S. Anderson wrote the first Resident Evil and Apocalypse as well which is probably why the actual story seemed fairly solid. There are shaky times of course, but it manages to make some sense once you get to the end. However, the directing was sloppy to say the least. There were a few notable things missing from the original. First, there were very little scenes that had a single person slowly walking to find that horror lurking in the darkness. Although there were a couple of scenes that did have one person and the suspense building, there were noticeably less than the first movie had which was already too few considering the original intent of the video games. The second problem was the fight scenes. Although they often were visually impressive at times, they lost any sense of realism and came across sloppily. Third; if you are going to have a person on a motorcycle fly through the second story window of a church at a painfully coincidental time you could at least explain how they were able to reach that height and why they decided to be there at that moment. ARghh! Just thinking about that moment in the movie has forced me to lower the score.


The Real Deal

When I originally saw this movie I was shocked and appalled at how poor it was, but after a second visit I have found it to be less painful to watch. Some of the story began to shine through and possibly seeing the two back to back helped it make more sense. Also, I went into this movie thinking that it was going to be very difficult to watch because it was so bad (that always helps the movie seem better than it is). Overall though, there was nothing that could save this movie from being a prime example of why sequels are such a bad idea.


The Skinny Version

Should you see it? Maybe. 526,487 out of 1,000,000 Stars
Not a Sharon Movie!