Review: Resident Evil Afterlife

Resident Evil: Afterlife is the fourth installment in the film series inspired by the Capcom survival-horror video game series.

For those unfamiliar with the story, the Umbrella Corporation was doing research on viral weapons. The T-virus got out, and killed nearly every living thing on the planet. But they didn't stay dead - the turned into mindless, hungry zombies.

The film starts out with Alice (Milla Jovovich) and an army of clones attacking the Umbrella Corporation facility in Tokyo. Victory doesn't come without a cost. Evil Umbrella exec Albert Wesker (Shawn Roberts) wipes out the clones (along with the Tokyo facility) and injects Alice with a retrovirus that takes away all of her superpowers.

Alice sets out for Alaska to search for Arcadia, a supposed safe haven for the world's uninfected humans. When she gets there, all Alice finds is a field full of deserted planes and helicopters. And Claire Redfield (Ali Larter), who attacks her while under the control of some kind of mechanical spider-like device.

Alice removes the device, only to find Claire has lost her memory. They fly down the coast, eventually reaching a burned-out Los Angeles. There, they find another band of survivors that holed up in a prison. We get more zombie battles, a family reunion and some answers about what happened to Arcadia along the way.

But I don't think anybody is really going to watch Resident Evil: Afterlife to focus on the plot details. Watching this film is like watching a really skilled player go through a video game with life-like graphics.

Directory Paul W.S. Anderson understands this and focuses on crafting interesting fight scenes. He succeeds fairly well, though I think he overused the bullet time gimmick. Alice and Claire's fight with the Axeman in the prison shower room was my favorites sequence in the film, but the opening battle in Tokyo was fun too.

The decision to make this installment of the series in 3-D was probably just made to increase the box office totals. (It's working.) I think 2-D would have worked just as well for most of the film's sequences, but at least 3-D wasn't really used to hurl zombie parts into the audience.

If you've seen the other Resident Evil films and enjoyed them, you should definitely go see Afterlife. If you didn't like them or you've never had any desire to see them, nothing about Afterlife will change your opinion.

I'm hoping Afterlife does well enough at the box office to earn another sequel - I want to see how Alice and her band will escape the cliffhanger at the end of this film.