Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004) Review

Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004) Review

 

Paul W.S. Anderson stepped back as director for the second and third Resident Evil films (likely so he could work on other projects, namely Alien vs. Predator and Death Race) but he stayed on as a writer and producer. We begin with a neat little recap, and by neat I only mean in terms of efficiency. It’s kind of dull, but it hits on some key points from the ending of the first movie that are relevant to this one: reopening The Hive to figure out what happened down there, the cop guy going into the Nemesis Program, and who Alice really is. She tells us everything in a weird voice that is somehow monotone and choppy at the same time, which is later explained to have been recorded on a camcorder in a car in the third act.

Alice emerges from the lab and gets a shotgun just like at the end of the first movie, and we get introduced to Jill Valentine, who I guess is a character from the games? She’s the new badass chick replacing Michelle Rodriguez from the first one, except she’s a cop, who definitely doesn’t dress like a cop. As the story gets underway, people are trying to evacuate the city as the zombie outbreak is happening. It’s a pretty good set up; the apocalypse has a lot of potential for spookiness. But, if you thought they were going to squander that potential and default to dumb action, then you thought correctly. There’s a scene in a church where Jill and some characters tagging along with her are hiding out, and something is lurking about. It feels cliché, is shot in a bland way, and there’s no sustained tension. The monster from the end of the first movie (the “licker”) is back, only there are more this time! Wow! Scary! They feel straight out of the video game, moving at lightning speed and made with terrible graphics.

In case you were worried the dialogue might be good in this one, let me set you at ease with this gem of a line: “We’re gonna need more ammo.” Well, it is based on a video game, don’t forget. Then Alice makes her grand entrance into the church scene, and it is amazingly bad. She blows up a motorcycle and one of the monsters along with it in one of the funniest moments of the whole franchise (side note: there are so many funny moments in these movies I’m going to do a top ten list of just those moments in November). Alice is a more hardcore badass this time (love to see it), and she teams up with Jill and the others, helping them fight their way through the zombie hordes.

Toronto is the stand-in for Raccoon City, and it reminds me of the way Chicago was used for Gotham City in The Dark Knight. It’s just…Toronto. I guess it’s hard to make a real city seem less like the real city and more like a fictional one with such a low budget (of course I don’t know what Christopher Nolan’s excuse was with Chicago as Gotham, his budget for Dark Knight was more than four times higher than that of the Apocalypse budget). This movie is visually ugly and monotonous. Everything happens at night, everything is concrete and asphalt, everything is lit the same, and it actually makes me miss Paul W.S. Anderson’s directing from the first one. Now that is sad. The action is edited to death, poorly shot, and there’s a bit of that shaky slow frame rate slow motion used that I absolutely can’t stand. There’s a part with graveyard zombies, which comes as a nice surprise, but it’s so badly shot and edited (not to mention the sound effects are pathetic) that it’s just a lame horror/action scene.

A scientist in a wheelchair makes a deal with Alice and company to get them out of the city if they rescue his daughter, who was the basis for the Red Queen A.I. in the first movie. The scientist is one of the good guys, though, at the mercy of the bad guy, who is literally just a guy with a British accent and a Bluetooth earpiece giving other people commands. He’s not worth commenting on further. The characters accompanying Alice are dumber than before, but a few of them are actually more interesting. There’s an escaped convict named L.J. who is kind of funny and enjoyable to watch, mainly thanks to the actor playing him (Mike Epps), and there’s a little flirting between Alice and a new soldier guy, Carlos, which almost feels like a glimmer of hope for future movies. And then there’s the other bad guy, who is the most entertaining character aside from Alice: Nemesis.

The Nemesis Program is activated, to help with the outbreak somehow. He’s a giant bullet-resistant brute, he has a rocket launcher in one hand and mini gun in the other, and he moves slower than a zombie with no legs. His face is frozen in a grimace and his eyes are covered in folds of flesh. The makeup looks pretty bad, resembling a Halloween mask at times. There’s an action scene with Nemesis pursuing Alice that’s so amazingly stupid it's fun and entertaining. Alice versus Nemesis is the final boss fight—I mean, the final confrontation in the third act—and there’s something very comical about this skinny woman fighting a hulking monster and somehow holding her own. I forgot to mention: Alice is extra powerful now because the T-virus mutated in her…or something…

I think we’re supposed to care that Nemesis is the cop guy from the first movie, and because of that, it makes Alice unable to “finish him” (that’s what the bad guy actually tells her to do—purposeful Mortal Kombat reference, methinks? (Paul W.S. Anderson directed the 1995 Mortal Kombat film, also based on a video game)). The group escapes the city before it blows up, then Alice wakes up in a thing that looks like a Star Wars Bacta tank and is released by an evil doctor, who acts nice at first, but you just know he’s a bad guy, which is confirmed when Alice remembers everything and recognizes him as the guy who tested on her in the first place. Her powers are off the charts by the end: she kills a guy just by looking at him! It's a ridiculous ending, but sets up the next one with more potential recurring characters than just Alice.

This first sequel escalates the ridiculousness big time, but sort of tries to follow the template of the first one, to mixed results. Downgrades include music, the horror aspects, and everything else I’ve already described. The music in the first movie was obnoxious and aggressively early 2000’s, but this score is just stock and barely noticeable. There isn't even a notable theme, which the first one had at least (and it wasn’t terrible). Zombie Dobermans make a welcome return, but don’t do anything cool. They stalk Jill and the wheelchair scientist’s kid in a kitchen: think Jurassic Park meets Dawn of the Dead, only not as cool as that sounds.

Resident Evil: Apocalypse will be the litmus test for whether or not you will want to continue watching these movies. It’s terrible, but entertaining, if you like this sort of thing. I remember disliking it the most out of the first three movies when I was younger, but watching it back now, I don’t think it’s the worst of all the sequels, nor is it one of the best either, it’s somewhere in the middle. It’s less dull than the first movie, but also far cheesier, dumber, and sloppier.