Hello again, 'Resident Evil' franchise, how happy I am that you are back in my life. I of course say this sarcastically as I think this franchise is one big pile of horse manure and I regret ever commiting to watching them, but such is life and here we are. 'Resident Evil: Afterlife' (2010) is the 4th installment in the franchise and Paul W.S. Anderson, who directed the original film, is back at the helm. Naturally, this meant I was a little bit excited that the dumb fun of the first film may come back in full force. These hopes were quickly dashed and I retreated back into a 'here we go again' state of mind. I will give it this though, it is better than 'Resident Evil: Apocalypse' (2004) and 'Resident Evil: Extinction' (2007). The film again follows Alice (Milla Jovovich) who is still fighting to take down the Umbrella Corporation, whilst also attempting to find Arcadia, the safe haven which the group from the last film were trying to find. Alice doesn't find Arcadia, but does find Claire Redfield (Ali Larter) who has had her memory wiped and does not remember Alice. The two soon come across a small group of survivors who are using a prison as their base and who are also attempting to get to Arcadia, that they have discovered is a ship. The group must face the zombie horde to get to Arcadia, although what they find there is not what they were expecting.
Just like the last film this one started promisingly with a really dumb but really fun action scene. At the end of 'Resident Evil: Extinction' Alice finds a laboratory full of clones of her and decides to use them to take out the Umbrella Corp. and this scene is that threat being followed through on. It is a whole group of Alice's, all superpowered up, storming the Umbrella Corp. headquarters in Tokyo and it is a load of ridiculous fun. I mean it is a full on rip off of the Matrix, we'll get into that more later, but it doesn't stop it from being dumb fun. The superpowered Alice action scenes are always the best pat of these films and this film is no different. Well, Paul W.S. Anderson must not have got the memo because after 15 minutes Alice loses all her powers. BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Why would you take away the only part of your films that make them fun? Boo you. The film goes massively down hill as soon as this happens and dissolves into boring character moments for about 45 minutes. We're in the 4th film of the franchise, I don't need any more new characters just give me dumb action. The film gets back to the stupid action, with all the standard slow motion and gravity defining flips that you've come to expect from the franchise, towards the end of the film but for the most part it is just dull character development and I just don't care. On a technical level the film is probably the best of the franchise so far. It has some decent production design with fun sets and the lighting, sound and editing is all solid. Well actually there is one moment of editing during a fight scene where it looks as though the editor took out every other frame. It seems like a creative choice but it is a really bloody odd one. The CGI is just as shit as ever and I have pretty much given up on it ever looking good so I won't bother talking about it much more here.
The acting in this film is about as bad as I have come to expect from the franchise. Milla Jovovich is fine as Alice but I think this is mostly some sort of bizarre stockholm syndrome which makes me like her performance. Other than her this is monotone the movie. No one shows any emotion other than apathy throughout the whole film and these performances make all the character moments more boring then they already were. There is only one memorable performance in this film and this comes from Shawn Roberts as the villain Albert Wesker. This performance isn't memorable because it is good, but because it is just a blatant imitation of Agent Smith from the Matrix. The cadence of his speech, the facial expressions, even how he is dressed is just a discount Agent Smith. It is so blatant and only served to make me want to watch the Matrix. It is a performance that would look at home in 'Resident Evil: Apocalypse' which was full of terrible acting, whereas the rest of the performances are disgustingly bland but not that level of terrible. In some ways I wish all the performances were awful, it would at least make it somewhat fun to watch.
I am never going to be a fan of this franchise and 'Resident Evil: Afterlife' did absolutely nothing in making me come around to it. Yes it does have some fun moments but like the majority of this franchise it is just crap and too boring to be a so bad it's good kind of watch. But it is a franchise that has a huge fan base and one that people do genuinely love and so they must be doing something right. Fuck me if I know what it is though.