Title: Resident Evil: Afterlife
Starring: Milla Jovovich, Ali Larter, Spencer Locke, Boris Kodjoe
Director: Paul WS Anderson
Certificate: 15
Duration: 97 minutes
Despite being highly derivative of everything from The Matrix (bullet-time), Blade (reaper strain zombies), 28 Days Later (rage infected zombies) and Dawn of the Dead (stuck in a building besieged by zombies) to pinching other little bits and nuances from classics such as Terminator (Tiltrotor aircrafts) and Aliens, Resident Evil: Afterlife is still an enjoyable addition to the Resident Evil series and a pretty decent film in its own right.
Afterlife is set after the events of Resident Evil: Extinction which I didn’t see but I understand that Alice (Milla Jovovich) was not only infected with the T-Virus making her stronger and faster but she was also cloned and the opening scenes are of a group of Alice clones trying to kill Albert Wesker (Shawn Roberts) at the Umbrella base in Japan.
Alice is unsuccessful in killing Wesker and upon hearing emergency broadcasts she heads for Arcadia in Alaska, where she hopes to find other survivors including Claire Redfield (Ali Larter), K-Mart (Spencer Locke). She finds Claire but Claire is being controlled by some Umbrella device and has also lost her memory. They fly to Los Angeles and find a group of survivors holed up in a prison besieged by zombies.
Luther West (Boris Kodjoe) is a former basketball star and celebrity and he is de facto leader of a small group of survivors. There are new tunnelling zombies (which are a bit daft) and also The Executioner – a giant axe-happy ogre looking zombie (really, really daft) that Alice and Claire must kill before fleeing from the overrun prison and escaping hopefully to safety.
Some elements of the Resident Evil 5 videogame such as the inclusion of Wesker have been incorporated but you don’t really need to be an aficionado of the games to enjoy the film. The direction is good, without ever being anything special. The music is pretty irritating and the script is reasonable for this sort of film.
Resident Evil Afterlife was reviewed by The Sun newspaper as being ‘the best Resident Evil sequel yet’, which is probably about right, it’s not really got the suspense or originality of the first Resident Evil film but it certainly beats Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004) but as I said I’ve not seen the third instalment – Extinction – so I can’t comment on that.
It’s a fun film, with some good fight sequences that despite being very Matrix-like are still entertaining. In terms of it being a horror film, it’s about as frightening as a box of fluffy kittens but if you watch it just as entertainment it’ll still pass the time fairly nicely.
