I didn’t love Resident Evil Afterlife, and I’d put it at somewhere between a 3 and a 3.5. It isn’t a bad film, and there’s plenty in here that I enjoyed, but it isn’t up there with the first, second and third. It was shot in 3D and built to show it off, and that gimmick just didn’t work for me. It opens in rain-soaked Tokyo as the first infection spreads, then cuts to a squad of Alice clones storming Umbrella’s underground headquarters, and all the way through it things keep flying at the camera. That shtick sits on top of the whole film, and once I’d noticed it I couldn’t stop noticing it.
The bigger problem is what they do with Alice. We spent three movies building her into a superhero, and then Wesker escapes by aircraft and injects her with a serum that strips her powers, and that’s that. She’s human again, quickly and easily, and after everything that came before it felt like a bit of a copout to me. The story had painted itself into a corner with how powerful she’d become, and pressing a reset button was the way out. I’d have liked to see them deal with it in a way that felt earned, because the powers were the whole reason the last two films looked the way they did.
Arcadia, a prison and Chris Redfield
With her powers gone, Alice flies a small plane to Alaska to find Arcadia, the safe zone from the last film, and finds an empty airfield with just Claire Redfield on it, who has no memory and a mechanical scarab clamped to her chest. They fly south and land on the roof of a prison in Los Angeles that’s surrounded by thousands of the dead. Inside is a small group of survivors led by an ex-basketball player called Luther, and in one of the cells is Chris Redfield, Claire’s brother and the lead of the games, who finally turns up four films in. From the roof they can see that Arcadia isn’t a place at all. It’s a ship anchored off the coast, broadcasting for survivors.
The prison is the closest the series gets to the old feel of being stuck somewhere with a few people and something terrible outside. The dead dig under the walls, and eventually a giant hooded monster with an enormous axe breaks in, which comes straight out of the games. The survivors have to escape through the sewers to the ship, and not all of them make it, and one of them grabs the plane and leaves everybody else behind. Things flying at the camera stay a big part of how it’s shot, from axes to coins, and for me that was more distracting than exciting.
The baddies still work
What I’ll give it is that the villains are still a good match for the games, which I liked. The Executioner looks like he’s walked out of one, and the fight in the flooded shower block, with Alice and Claire against him in slow motion, is one of the better ones in the film. Wesker turns up in his sunglasses and black coat as the new face of Umbrella, and by the end he’s half monster and fast enough to dodge bullets. Alice, Claire and Chris take him on together in a fight that’s clearly modelled on the games, and that’s a piece I enjoyed even with the gimmick working against it.
Some of the fights are fun in their own right, and I did enjoy those. When the survivors reach the ship they find that Arcadia is a trap and Umbrella keeps people on board as test subjects, and they free the prisoners, including K-Mart from the third film, before it all goes wrong. The film ends the way this series seems to end every time. Umbrella gunships appear on the horizon led by Jill Valentine, who has a scarab of her own stuck on her chest, and it stops on a to be continued.
Rating: 3 to 3.5 out of 5. It wasn’t my favourite of the series. The 3D didn’t work for me, taking away Alice’s powers was a copout after building her up for three films, and the good parts, the baddies matching the games and some of the fights, weren’t quite enough to lift it any higher. If you’re a fan of the series you’ll still want to see it, and I’m glad I did.
