I’m giving Welcome to Raccoon City a 3.5 out of 5. It felt to me like there was too much happening on screen, and I also missed Alice, played by Milla Jovovich, who I thought was really badass. This is a full reboot, so she isn’t in it, and neither is anything else from the earlier films. It goes back to the source instead and sets everything in 1998, in a Raccoon City that’s a dying company town with Umbrella packing up to leave. I went in curious to see how a version that sticks to the games would feel, and the answer is a bit mixed.
The reason it feels so full is that it takes the first two games and stuffs them into a single night. Claire Redfield hitchhikes back into town to warn her brother Chris that Umbrella is poisoning the place, because there’s something wrong with the water. Chris is in S.T.A.R.S., the police special unit, and Leon S. Kennedy is a rookie who’s just started his first night at the police station. That’s already a lot of characters to keep track of, and the film keeps adding.
The mansion and the station
Chris, Jill Valentine and Albert Wesker head out to the Spencer Mansion to find their missing Bravo team, which is the first game. Meanwhile Claire and Leon are holding the Raccoon City police station as the town falls apart around them, which is the second. It cuts between the two, and the mansion scenes recreate specific moments from the game: the first zombie turning its head, the piano, the dogs coming through the windows. If you’ve played it, those are fun to spot, and it’s clear the people who made it love the source.
The trouble is that each half could easily be a film on its own. The mansion has its own creepy, slow buildup in the game, and the station has its own siege, and squeezing both into under two hours means neither gets enough room. It starts small and ominous and then piles on the carnage, and by the second half there’s so much going on that I found it hard to keep track of what mattered. That’s where the too much on screen feeling comes from for me.
Villains, the cast and missing Alice
Wesker is selling out his own team to Umbrella for their research. Dr. William Birkin injects himself with the G-virus and mutates into a monster, and a disfigured test subject from the mansion’s past called Lisa Trevor turns out to be on Claire’s side. Kaya Scodelario plays Claire, with Robbie Amell as Chris, Hannah John-Kamen as Jill, Avan Jogia as Leon and Tom Hopper as Wesker, and Neal McDonough is Birkin. It’s a good line-up of names, and the film is more faithful to the games than any of the earlier ones, with the exact locations and characters’ roles all in place.
But I kept thinking about Alice. Milla Jovovich had been the constant for six films, from the laser corridor in the Hive, through the clone-filled facility in Retribution, to her last stand in The Final Chapter, and she was really badass in a way that I missed here. She’d been through so much that seeing a new group of characters start from scratch felt like a step back, even if it’s a faithful one. I’ve liked her in this kind of role since The Fifth Element, and the reboot doesn’t try to replace her.
The ending has Umbrella’s plan to wipe the town off the map at dawn. The survivors flee through the tunnels under the police station to an Umbrella train, fight what’s left of Birkin along the way, and get out as the city is destroyed. There’s a scene in the credits where Ada Wong revives Wesker, which promises more to come. The setup is clear enough that a sequel looks likely, whichever way this one lands with people.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5. It’s faithful to the games, and there’s plenty that will please people who love them, but it felt to me like too much was happening on screen, and I really missed Alice. I’d still say it’s worth seeing if you’re a fan of the series, and it’s a very different beast from the Alice films. Just don’t go in expecting her.