Resident Evil Afterlife 2010
Alice is still trying to bring down the evil Umbrella Corporation in Resident Evil Afterlife 2010Review.
Director: Paul W. S. Anderson
Writer: Paul W. S. Anderson
Cast
- Milla Jovovich - Alice
- Ali Larter - Claire Redfield
- Wentworth Miller - Chris Redfield
- Shawn Roberts - Albert Wesker
- Spencer Locke - K-Mart
- Boris Kodjoe - Luther West
- Kim Coates - Bennett
Constantin Film, running time 97 minutes
In a world completely overrun by a virus, turning its victims into Zombies, Alice (Milla Jovovich) proceeds in her search for survivors.
Resident Evil is here again, which is not a bad thing. I am a fan of the games, and when I watched the first Resident Evil, I was disappointed.
The games were very atmospheric and scary, and the movie didn't match up. However, putting the fun aside, they were entertaining films.
Resident Evil Afterlife 2010 is precisely that, entertaining. The acting and dialog are solid enough, there are plenty of excellent action scenes, and the soundtrack is effective.
Afterlife is visually impressive. Everything about the movie looks great.
The story is told well enough, the pacing is good, and I wasn't bored during the film. However, not a masterpiece by any means and is not remarkably faithful to the games.
Still, it's entertaining, it won't tax the brain, but it's one of those movies that can be watched repeatedly.
It has to be seen on a big screen with a good sound system to be fully appreciated. Without the sound and the visuals, it may struggle to hold someone's attention.
Review:
While the series required something fresh, and because Resident Evil Afterlife 2010 doesn't contribute anything, it was developed and released in 3D, right in the thick of the "everything needs to be 3D" mania.
This additional dimension is likely to blame for Resident Evil Afterlife 2010's disappointment. The producers emphasized the core rather than an upgrade, ignoring other vital components.
Resident Evil Afterlife 2010's narrative is as important as the film's subtitle. Alice keeps her word and sends her clones into the Tokyo headquarters of the Umbrella Corporation.
Six months later, Alice discovers Claire Redfield in the exact location where the last film's party was supposed to find shelter, with no sign of anybody else.
Claire has no memory of what happened because of a red scarab item stuck to her chest, but her memories gradually return.
She and Alice travel to Los Angeles, where they come into yet another set of survivors incarcerated.
Arcadia, the haven they were looking for in 'extinction' that holds a few mysteries, is revealed to be a gigantic yacht off the coast of Los Angeles.
They must escape the jail and reach there by surviving a variety of deadly beasts. It follows the same narrative as the original Resident Evil film.
Tomandandy's the excellent soundtrack, Afterlife's most attractive feature. The industrial, electronic sound incorporates heavy metal elements in its composition and performs incredibly well every time employed.
We could even go as far as to claim that Resident Evil: Afterlife's music is the greatest throughout the franchise thus far.
Additionally, the opening titles effectively complement the 3D medium and emphasize Tomandandy's artistry, even if they create the events behind the T virus's rapid distribution even more confusing.
Alice's talents are finally taken away, something I was first pleased with. However, except for the removal of telekinesis, it doesn't seem to have created enough of a difference.
She can survive an airplane crash with only a few scratches.
Being slammed against a wall hard enough to break the tiles but not her bones or leave bruising, being stabbed in the arm and having the wound disappear in two minutes as if it never happened, and jumping three meters into the air in just a few steps.
Even though she has lost her powers, it appears that not much has changed, creating another of the film's many story gaps.
There are some suspenseful situations, but the film might have benefited from a few more. Instead, this film sees the series shift from a horror-action hybrid to over-the-top action sequences with a few horror themes thrown in for good measure.
All of the scares are of the 'jump' sort, and there is no tension as there was in the prior two films. The new creatures featured in the game series are another of the film's few high moments.
Even if these additions have either a poor or no explanation, they are the least of the film's issues, in my opinion.
The Executioner appears out of nowhere, but I wasn't bothered by it because of the creature's overwhelming majesty—the sequence with the Monster carrying a massive ax that is supposed to be spectacular falls flat.
Unfortunately, despite being one of the film's most incredible sequences, it suffers from the same flaws as the rest of the action scenes.
The blatant errors in the sequences make it appear as though the filmmakers were too lazy to notice or care; a remarkable clip for anyone who follows the series and wonders what happened to Jill Valentine after Resident Evil.
Apocalypse can be found around thirty seconds into the end credits. She went wicked after dyeing her hair.
Alice and her clones are now assaulting Umbrella's Tokyo underground base for the horrible stuff.
An unintentionally comical Wesker, horrible wire stunts, overdone slow motion, umbrella staff who can't shoot straight, an unimpressive number of Alice clones, several continuity goofs, and lousy CGI blood are the worst of all gore sins in this segment.
There's a problem when items like these appear only 10 minutes into a movie. Except for Tomandandy's constantly strong, throbbing soundtrack, this would foreshadow the rest of the film.
A zombie apocalypse appears to be bringing the planet to an end. After all, the virus isn't that horrible for women; there's no need to put on cosmetics; it just shows up on you anytime the director is too sluggish to explain it.
I expected Milla Jovovich and Ali Larter to make some prominent commercial placement for a beauty company.
Even though they allow Alice to show a smidgeon of emotion that is otherwise terribly lacking in her character this time around, Alice's self-centered recordings grow tiresome rapidly.
The new characters we meet are either uninteresting or serve as two-dimensional Undead fodder.
The latter group is just as easy to identify as they are to eliminate. Milla's Alice portrayal is a mixed bag.
She delivers her one-liners with joy, although she can be stiff at times—and trust me, as a fan, I hate to say this—and opted to deepen her voice and sound like Marge Simpson.
There are also difficulties with the film's pace. After about a third of the way through the video, things appear to slow down drastically with a lot of talking, to start up again in a 20-minute bore. It throws everything off, and it undermines the film.
Resident Evil revenge would then go from one extreme to the other. More characters from the games are thrown in with no real relevance for anybody other than gamers, such as Chris Redfield.
Who is horrifically miscast and poorly performed by Wentworth Miller, and the comically wooden Albert Wesker, portrayed by Shawn Roberts.
We learn that the Umbrella Corporation's underground facilities continue to experiment on individuals.
The narrative line in Resident Evil, Extinction about finding a cure for the virus, is never referenced or explored, most likely because it would stop the franchise and its associated financial flow.
The first film in the series that feels like a filler episode is Afterlife. In conclusion, nothing essential has been added to the tale.
Very little has been done, leaving me with the impression that all preceding nonsense was relatively meaningless.
Albert Wesker's cheesy words in the end shamelessly pilfer from The Matrix. The action appears to be clumsy and upstaged.
Alice kicking some of the previously mentioned zombie dogs' asses and a piece of very excellent music by 'the perfect circle' playing in the background are the only things keeping it from being a complete disaster.
You're probably expecting a cliffhanger ending with a pan-out shot if you've seen any of the Resident Evil movies.
It's so over-the-top here that it loses its punch, and it's the icing on the cake for Resident Evil.
With life being the worthless film that it is, making everything before it matters for nothing.
Finally, Resident Evil Afterlife 2010 is a dismal and needless addition to the franchise, failing to pick up the first and third films.
Only Tomandady's fantastic score, some nice 3D effect shots, and a few monsters keep 'Afterlife' from being terrible as Apocalypse.
The 3D trend continued in the newly released Resident Evil: Retribution.
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