Directed by Eiichirō Hasumi
Written by Makoto Fukami
Produced by Hiroyasu Shinohara
The fifth entry in the Japanese animated Resident Evil movie series thankfully returns to being just a movie, after Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness experimented with splitting a normal length film into four episodes. This one is directed by the same guy who wrote Infinite Darkness and written by the guy who wrote Resident Evil: Vendetta, and it’s a direct sequel to the latter film. Ultimately, it’s still pretty standalone — this connection only affects a single reprised character who serves as a secondary villain and ultimately isn’t that important.
I wasn’t really expecting these CG films to turn into a franchise of their own, but here we are. The spin this time is Resident Evil goes to Alcatraz. Very inventive. Maybe the team had been watching The Rock. As with Vendetta, this film takes place between RE6 & RE7. It’s the first of the films to heavily feature Jill Valentine, and is somewhat themed around her recovery from the events of RE5. As such, it’s the first to feature the full cast of playable characters from the early games (Chris & Claire Redfield, Leon Kennedy, Rebecca Chambers, and Jill Valentine), plus a new villain who tears them all down and makes them question their roles.
Through this villain, the film tries to touch on some slightly deeper ideas than the previous entries — namely about all of the characters truly serving large corporations, despite ostensibly fighting one. Unfortunately, it ends up as yet another action movie where the villain espouses the film’s most interesting ideas while reaching totally cartoonish and nonsensical conclusions about what to do with them. The heroes save the day and maintain the status quo, never actually addressing the issues brought up by the villain at all. This particular trend is infuriating — I’d prefer if dumb action films didn’t bring up any topical or interesting ideas at all, rather bringing them in for zeitgeist points while effectively coming out against them. For once, can’t one of these action films have the characters actually address the good points made by the villain and maybe try to do something about it?
In this case, I suppose that could ruin the timeline — though I have no idea what plans they have for these characters, as only Chris Redfield has appeared in the games that take place after this. Still, I’m finding the way films are frequently paying lipservice to important ideas which are only ever espoused by the villain to be almost offense at this point. Marvel is certainly repeatedly guilty of this, and I wasn’t expecting to see it happen in this series. Nonetheless, the villain’s backstory is at least novel for the series, based around the trauma that came from seeing his Umbrella soldier cohort turn and getting orders to kill them. It’s not remotely novel fare for zombie films, but I don’t think it’s been explored in the RE universe before.
The environments look as great as always, and the camerawork mimics live actions films in some interesting ways, including the use of shaky cam. However, the facial animation is still stiff and uncanny, and by far the weakest part of the look here — especially on the less prominent characters. The shaky cam at the start almost seems like an attempt to hide that. This makes the beginning feel a little awkward, as do a few other things, like referring to San Francisco as ‘Frisco’. I guess this is how they think Americans talk. It doesn’t help that Frisco is an actual city in Texas.
Alcatraz would’ve made a good setting for a proper horror film, but instead this just another action movie that could’ve taken place on any island. It doesn’t do much with the setting — it’s even less interesting than The Rock in this regard, which is really saying something. What we’re left with is just another generic action film which is effectively interchangeable with the prior entries. Forgettable action movies are par for the course with this film series — I can barely remember anything about any of them at this point, and am clearly continuing to watch them purely out of a sense of completionism. Again, I’m not sure why anyone thinks it’s a good idea to translate games like these when the whole appeal was getting to interact with generic b-movies.
It all becomes too meta — movies into games into movies. Agame series which is all about cheesy b-movie tribute is now being turned into movies that are doing just the opposite and aiming for big blockbuster Hollywood stuff, modeled more after the shooter titles than the survival horror titles. They’re probably still better than the American live action films — not that I would know, for the most part — but that’s probably not saying much. If they’re going to make these, I wish they would just embrace low budget silliness and make a cheap and corny horror film, but the machine has gotten too big at this point.
