Resident Evil: Afterlife

This movie did not start out well. Mainly it was the previews. I guess we couldn’t really ask for anything else, since it was a Resident Evil movie, after all, but all the trailers we saw were for horror movies. Which neither Evan nor I have any interest in seeing. So not only did the trailers make us each a bit squeamish (Saw 3D, anyone? Please, let it be the last one), but we didn’t even get to add any movies to our list. Not a one will we be going to see.

The movie itself opened up with a slow scene in Japan. Sorry, I should say slow-motion. There were some interesting shots in 3D using rain, but it was pretty much about 7 minutes of slow-motion crowded sidewalk. Whee.

Anyhow, after that it got into a pretty good set piece with Alice (Milla Jovovich) invading Umbrella headquarters in Japan. It was cool, but had some stupid moments. For instance, she takes down a squad in a long battle involving guns and swords. Its pretty awesome, but after it’s done, she’s immediately surrounded by another squad with guns. She levels that one with one flash of telekinesis, which makes me wonder why she didn’t take out the first squad like that. The only reason she didn’t is because fights with guns and swords are cooler, so that’s what Paul W.S. “I have 3D!” Anderson put in there.

After that comes a lot of travelling around the wasteland, and a bit of character development. Alice occasionally narrates into a camcorder, expressing herself and wishes and desires and all that stuff. It doesn’t work. Either Anderson doesn’t understand his audience, or he’s appealing to the critics. Dude, you’re making a Resident Evil movie. It ain’t gonna get good reviews. Deal with it, and bring the zombies.

So he brings the zombies. Alice and someone from the previous movie make it to LA, where they battle zombies with a group of survivors they find there. They also fight this monstrous humanoid … thing ... with an axe that would be right at home in World of Warcraft (seriously, my character wants one. It’d be called the “Serrated Blade of Doom” or “Edge of Falling Darkness” or something similar. Seriously, weapon names in World of Warcraft? Awesome!) Anyway, he always wears a burlap sack over his head (I think it was nailed to his neck) which makes me wonder two things – how did he see, and who was he mourning?

They manage to get to a safe zone, and then it’s one final battle with Umbrella, and then a cliffhanger ending. Which apparently is a standard Resident Evil thing, but it’s been a while since I’ve seen the first two, and I didn’t make it through the third.

The 3D is technically good, but it seems like Anderson is showing it off more than using it to support the movie. It’s like he shoots things specifically to take advantage of the 3D, instead of shooting it normally and just having the 3D there.

The slow-motion is very annoying. He leaves giant chunks of the movie in slow-motion, instead of breaking it up into manageable sections interspersed with normal-time sections. We don’t need 5 minutes of a slow-motion fight, honest. My theory is that if they hadn’t used slow-motion at all, the movie would’ve been shorter than Jonah Hex, so it may have just been padding. Also, a lot of them use falling water, so it’s also possible Anderson really, really wanted to show off his 3D.

There was a scene where Alice was inching up on a door, with something possibly behind it. I don’t know why directors keep putting these kinds of things in movies. Either there’s something in there that bursts out and scares the audience, or there’s nothing in there, the hero(ine) relaxes, and whatever it is pops up behind him/her and scares the audience. Still, people jump, so I guess it works.

All in all, it’s a DVD movie. When I left the movie, I thought it might be a bargain rental, but after a night to ponder it, I think it’s a little better than that. Despite some problems, the action is pretty good, and there’s one spectacular shot that’s almost like a 3D photograph of the instant before a plane crash that’s incredibly well done.

The thing that I really wonder about, though, is what they’re going to call the next movie. They’ve used Apocalypse, Extinction, and Afterlife. They’ve already used up all the stages of human life. What’s next? Evan says Purgatory. Rebirth? The Big Bang? I vote for Resident Evil: Please Give Me Money or My Wife Will Divorce Me.