Zombies. Can’t live with them and apparently can’t make a horror flick without them. Over the past few years zombies have run amok in the film industry, starring in at least a dozen films — most of rather low quality.
There have been a few “gems” in the sea of crap, but they’re few and far between. Danny Boyle’s “28 Days Later” was well received at its release, as was Zack Snyder’s “Dawn of the Dead.”
In March of 2002, Paul Anderson’s venture into the zombie realm came with “Resident Evil.” Its plot was loosely based on a successful video game franchise and it grossed over $40 million during its box office run. In spite of its success, film critics were not impressed with it. With the type of revenue it created, however, it was only a matter of time before a sequel hit theaters.
Anderson returned to pen the script for “Resident Evil: Apocalypse,” but he passed on directorial privileges to Alexander Witt. Witt’s debut performance as director proves to both satisfy the desires of fans of the franchise and disappoint fans of coherent plots.
In the first film, an employee of the Umbrella Corporation lets the highly dangerous T-virus loose in a secret facility known as “the Hive.” Everyone in the Hive is killed by the facility’s computer, at which point a team of investigators enter the Hive to discover what happened. The team includes Alice (Milla Jovovich, “Dazed and Confused”), Rain Ocampo (Michelle Rodriguez, “Girlfight”), Matt Addison (Eric Mabius, “Splendor”), and a few other Umbrella employees. They are greeted with open arms by a horde of zombies (the T-virus re-animates dead creatures) and all but two of them die.
“Resident Evil: Apocalypse” begins immediately where the first film left off, with the Umbrella Corporation deciding to reopen The Hive to investigate the events of the first movie, yet again. Believe it or not, something goes wrong and the T-virus escapes into beautiful Raccoon City only to turn its inhabitants into bloodthirsty zombies. Did Umbrella not see the first movie?
Jovovich reprises her role as Alice, who is trying to escape from an entire city of zombies this time around. Alice meets up with renegade cop, Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory, “Love Actually”) and Umbrella employee, Carlos Olivera (Oded Fehr, “The Mummy Returns”). Along the way they must battle zombie citizens, zombie dogs, a zombie with a huge tongue, zombie schoolgirls, zombie strippers, a really big zombie and other various … zombies.
Overall, the film isn’t all that great. The dialogue is ridiculously cheesy at times and some of the action sequences are filmed in a way that viewers can barely tell what’s going on. Looking past these drawbacks, the movie does a few things quite well.
One major complaint from fans of the video games was the fact that the first film shared two things in common with the games they were based on: guns and zombies. This go around, Anderson had the foresight to throw in a bunch of characters as well as a few memorable sequences lifted directly from the games. These translate amazingly and add a bit of reminiscing for long-time followers.
“Apocalypse” isn’t incredibly frightening, but it is a very jumpy movie. Witt apparently has an affinity for things popping out of a dark places, as this event occurs a countless number of times. It adds a lot of tension for viewers of the film, but gets a little ridiculous at times. As always, there can be too much of a good thing.
At a few points in the film, viewers are left to only wonder why the characters took the actions they did. One doesn’t normally see someone drive a motorcycle through a church’s stained glass window on a hunch that maybe there are people cornered by zombies inside … then again one normally doesn’t see zombies taking over an entire city. This never makes the film less enjoyable, so long as no one bothers to think too deeply about character motivation. Then again, horror films have never been known to have developed characters.
Overall, “Resident Evil: Apocalypse” is a satisfying movie. It comes up short in a few aspects, but does a good job of translating a video game into a completely different medium. Gamers will be pleased to see that it stays much more faithful to its roots, even if it doesn’t stray incredibly far from plots seen in the games. It doesn’t introduce anything new to the “zombie film” genre, but it manages to get the basics down quite well.
Grade: B/C
