In the fourth instalment, Alice is fighting back again big time and reunited with some familiar faces that saw her through thick and thin in the previous instalments. The last movie, Resident Evil: Extinction was a disappointment for me as it [spoiler alert!] killed off one of my favourite characters in the movies franchise (although that character was quite annoying in the video games) and the tension was just not there. Also the abuse of certain characters in the video games translated into the movie didn’t really help either. So I was having quite a bit of reservation when I went into the theatre to watch Afterlife. Fortunately, Paul W S Anderson seemed to take notice of the flaws in the last movie and tried to make things right again with this one.
The movie set in LA that was already transformed into a zombie capital in which a small bunch of survivors tried to stay alive long enough to go to Arcadia, originally thought as a save haven in Alaska but turned out to be a travelling cargo ship picking up infection free survivors. Alice (Milla Jovovich) has reunited with Claire Redfield (Ali Larter) on her search for Arcadia and together they went to LA to search for survivors where Claire was reunited with his brother Chris (Wentworth Miller). The movie then played out as a survival horror as they battled to get out of LA and board Arcadia.
As with the other instalments in the franchise, the main characters are strong headed and they were help by a cast of disposable characters to ensure their survival. Performance wise, the three leads were up to their job and Milla as Alice has already established herself outside the video game franchise as the spokeswoman for Resident Evil on the big screen. Ali and Wenthworth as Claire and Chris Redfield actually provided a surprisingly great chemistry that really brought these two characters from the video games’ fame to real life (I didn’t like Claire in Extinction). The scene between them and Albert Wesker (Shawn Roberts) was great and it did temporarily steal the limelight from Alice (especially when they threw in lines from the original video games). For all the other characters, they served the purpose of their roles in the film and they fulfilled their duties as they should.
Resident Evil: Afterlife is based on a video game, so it is an order to have the influence of the video games to satisfy fans. This is one of the weaker aspects in Extinction but in Afterlife, that was also redeemed. The movie was littered with homages to Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil: Code Veronica, Resident Evil 4 and Resident Evil 5. The fact that now the plagas in Resident Evil 4 and Resident Evil 5 had taken a more centre stage has modernised the zombie franchise to a different level as the games are now more than just zombies. The Executioner from Resident Evil 5 was just a pleasure to watch and his fighting scene with Alice and Claire was strongly influenced by Code Veronica. The movie also has a number of jumping moments that keeps you going like the game, which is nice.
Resident Evil: Afterlife is not your average horror movie. It is actually not a horror movie as actions have taken centre stage when it was translated to the silver screen. However, it is still extremely enjoyable if you are looking for an entertaining action movie with enemies running around stupidly in hordes and getting their body parts blown off by magnums and machine guns. The gore meter is not that high in Afterlife to be honest but they are more stylised, which I personally preferred. There are still scenes that didn’t really make sense but then making sense out of everything is not what the Resident Evil movie franchise best known for. Further with all your favourites from the video game franchise (protagonists, villains and enemies alike), it should be a cool night out with friends in the cinema.
No comments:
Post a Comment