E's Reviews: The Resident Evil Movie Marathon Rant

Okay so...this is less a review and more of a rant. This weekend I attempted to do the impossible...I tried to watch all of the Resident Evil films back to back to...well you get the idea. I want to say first that this isn't a shot at Milla Jovovich. She's great and I am indeed a huge fan of her work. It isn't even an attack against the cast or the crew...or even Paul W.S. Anderson...ok not entirely an attack (I still loved Alien V Predator and Event Horizon is totally amazing)...but this franchise? Yeah, it sucks. It really **BLEEP**ing sucks...it sucks so bad that I couldn't even get through the last movie (The Final Chapter). And yes, before people start blowing up my feed reminding me Anderson didn't direct all the movies...he was still the producer and writer for a few of them. For all intents and purposes, this is his baby, his mega franchise, and he made a ton of money making it.



But let's start with the first film...Resident Evil. It got a lot of great love from the horror and gaming community. I mean, come on, the games are (mostly) awesome. And there's a ton of love now with Resident Evil 2 getting an HD remake that looks amazing, and with Resident Evil 7: BioHazard that came out last year still being a critical and financial success, it's safe to say the RE franchise is a winner for Capcom. But what about the movies? They did make a bunch of money, with the opening film in the franchise banking almost 103 million dollars at the worldwide box office. That makes it a huge draw. But was it good? Let's see...sure. It was okay. The movie had a solid cast, most of whom weren't well known, but you had Milla Jovovich carrying her first big franchise as a lead, you had Michelle Rodriguez as a badass coming off a very successful Fast & the Furious film which made her a household name, you had Screen Gems/Sony behind them, even Capcom was behind them. So there was star power, there was money, and there was some awesome trailers, soundtrack music, and marketing.

Even with all that, what we got was a cheesy action/kind-of-horror film that was loosely based off the first video game. It did very well at the box office, it also was kind of fun. It wasn't scary though, taking the more action approach. Anderson delivered on the zombie action, the gore and the violence, but here's the thing...some of his choices were what I'd call...questionable. The sequences were kind of all over the place, there are quick cuts and edits throughout that numbed my brain a few times. Even so, I didn't hate the film, I actually kind of like it. The movie has that nostalgia in it for me. I remember seeing it in theaters and enjoying it, so when I see it now, I still enjoy it just as much. So really, the first film was not the problem, even with all the cuts and quick edits and cheesy low-budget CGI. The gist of it is this: viral outbreak caused by dickhead bad guy, team comes in to investigate and make things right, except virus turns people into zombies. Everyone dies. Alice makes it out with some dude, dude is infected with a different strain. The end.

(Resident Evil 7.5/10)


When we move on to the next film in the series, Apocalypse, we can tell the budget's been upped quite a bit. We have more action, more violence, more actors, more zombies, better CGI (slightly), there's more Milla kicking ass, and they even introduced more stuff from the games (Jill Valentine). There's something about Apocalypse that I just loved. I don't know if it was because I dug the soundtrack, I don't know if it was the action sequences, just everything about it was so over-the-top glorious that I was SO into this movie. Like, I don't know if Anderson changed his cinematography to kind of test some stuff out, but this movie was all over the place with some amazing set pieces that looked genuinely scary (complete with zombie children eating a reporter....yummy....) and had some great wide shots for the action. They used more conventional effects, as well. I mean c'mon...how great did Nemesis look? I thought I was back on my PlayStation firing bullets into the boss monster that wants to kill me. This one was still a massive cheese-fest and, as expected, not loved by critics. But it is indeed beloved by fans and I absolutely adore it. Oh, I guess it's because Anderson didn't direct...Alexander Witt did...no wonder the action sequences looked great... The gist of the second film is this: the virus spreads to Raccoon City (silly name, for real) and everyone is a zombie. Umbrella tries to contain it. Some people get trapped and have to escape the city before the city gets blown to bits by Umbrella...because bad city, bad zombies. Alice saves the day, survivors make it out. Simple, right?

(Resident Evil: Apocalypse 8.5/10)


Now this is where everything kind of...falls apart. Extinction takes place several years after Apocalypse, and we get that..."LAST TIME ON RESIDENT EVIL!!!" moment to remind us that, hey, we're watching a Resident Evil movie, and there was some stuff that went down, and we should care about that stuff that went down, even though most of us were like "Yeah, we do care, or else we wouldn't be here..." It got really annoying and it's something I'll be talking about later on about the rest of this trash heap of a franchise...seriously, it gets really bad. The really annoying quick cuts and slow motion action scenes are back, and there's about a million of them in this movie. The film also kind of kills any character development from the previous two films and just fills it with a bunch of generic characters that we're not supposed to give a shit about because they're just fodder for zombies. The CGI at this point should've gotten better, but instead it looks like 2002 and they just didn't have the budget (and don't lie because I know for a fact y'all had made a ton of money off the previous entries...) Anyway, sure Milla is still badass, but we get Ali Larter playing Claire Redfield and we have Alice and we have this caravan and there are people from the previous movie there but there's no chemistry, no development, and I just didn't care about any of these people that were being killed by the horde of zombies...or the super zombies (what the actual **BLEEP** were those?) And then she's got psychic super powers? What? Gimme a break guys...And the sad thing is this isn't even the worst of the franchise...This time the story is...well they're trying to survive and I have no idea how the world becomes completely barren after a couple of years due to a zombie outbreak...it boggles the mind.

(Resident Evil: Extinction 5/10)


So I know I said it fell apart with part 3, but this is essentially where they were like fuck it (I'm not censoring myself anymore) and decided to just churn out another of these turds...also this is also not the worst of the franchise...Anderson returns to direct, we have Alice being a badass again, except without her powers because of that dick Wesker, played by Canadian actor Shawn Roberts, who nullifies her powers and turns her human again. How she survived the crash at the beginning of the movie...I do not know...but she does, finds Claire (surprise!) and they go off in search of Arcadia from Extinction. Supposedly a place where there are no zombies. Also, there's that "LAST TIME ON RESIDENT EVIL" shit I mentioned earlier which completely hurts my brain to see. This movie still had some merit to it, though, adding in slightly better CGI effects, some decent acting thanks to Milla Jovovich, Ali Larter, and even Kim friggin Coates makes an appearance. The ensemble is decent, some of them having some pretty good chemistry on screen. But the script is so cringy, the action sequences are filled with even more quick cuts and slow motion that I checked out about halfway through, only to realize the credits were rolling and there was a mid-credit scene that was like "Ohhh snappp!" except I just didn't care.

(Resident Evil: Afterlife 6/10)


Alright fans...friends...family...this is where shit hits the fan. Resident Evil: Retribution (LAST TIME ON RESIDENT EVIL!!!!!) Basically, Alice gets captured during that end credits scene from Afterlife and is being held in an Umbrella facility to be...interrogated? Okay, why? We already know why she's not helping you, you morons (Umbrella has to be the worst bio-weapon manufacturer on Earth...) Jill Valentine from the OHHH SNAPP!!! moment is working for Umbrella because brain-washing? Ada Wong, played by Li Bing Bing, shows up to save her (Oh hey another nod to the video game!) and a strike team led by Leon Kennedy (OHHH!!!...wait, another newer actor none of us really know about? Sigh...) is coming to save them all. I mean, cool. I guess? But that's the entire movie. There weren't really any zombies (although the Russian zombie attack was pretty cool...I guess...) We had those weird dog zombie mutant things from the first movie making a return, but bigger and kind of Alien-esque with the cocoon thing. Wesker is sort of a good guy? Seriously guys, I couldn't really pay attention to most of this one. It had the same problems as the others, bad cuts, bad slow motion action, and really...Kevin Durand was the best part of this movie. Milla was still badass, even a bit affectionate towards her clone-child that she protected and stuff, which was a nice change...but it completely took me out of the film. None of it made sense or fit with the rest of the franchise. It felt like a completely different film. This entire movie made me want to punch a wall. The acting from most of the cast was just laughable, the CGI? Back to 2002 we go! And it made...almost a quarter of a billion dollars. Like...what were people thinking!? WHY DO I OWN THIS!? And the end? A cliffhanger...of course...because we gotta tie it all up with the next one, right? Fuck this franchise...

(Resident Evil: Retribution 4/10)


So here we are...Resident Evil: The Final Chapter...and YES THERE IS A FUCKING LAST TIME ON RESIDENT EVIL SEQUENCE!!!!! COMPLETE WITH ARCHIVE FOOTAGE TO CATCH YOU UP! Fuck you, Paul W.S. Anderson...we already know what the Hell happened. I can't hold back anymore, this was a huge fuck up. This way of recapping? It belongs on a television show. It does not belong in a movie THAT MADE OVER 300 MILLION DOLLARS WORLDWIDE!!! I'm sorry, but at this point, I was so annoyed with that recap bullshit I wanted to walk out of the room. Seriously, I wanted to quit right there (again, WHY DO I OWN THESE MOVIES?!) So the story...the world is ending, Umbrella going up against what's left of the government and Wesker and...whoever the fuck else is left after the first movies in this franchise except they never explain why some of them who are alive are missing now (where's Leon? Where's Chris?) Milla gives it her all and...yeah I stopped halfway. I gave up on this movie. The quick cuts, slow motion action, jump scare bullshit is all throughout this piece of trash. It was so mind-numbingly annoying, I couldn't finish it. I got to the second act and said "fuck this" and turned it off to watch videos of cute puppies on YouTube (for real). I lost all hope for humanity. I can't even score this movie, but I can tell you this, after part 3 this franchise goes straight to direct-to-video status for me. It should've never gotten the wide release it did...but I guess because it made a ton fuck of money for Screen Gems, I should've expected it.


In closing, Screen Gems, stop making this trash. You guys seriously make a lot of stinkers (Slender Man? What? Ughhhhh...STOP RUINING STUFF FOR ME!) and y'all should know better.

Rant over. I need a bath for my brain now...so I can forget all this crap...