Producers: Hiroyuki Kobayashi, Hiroyasu Shinohara, Takashi Shimizu
Director: Takanori Tsujimoto
Writer: Makoto FukamiThe third CG film in the series advertises a ‘new tone’, and, well… it really isn’t all that different from the last two. The plot begins as usual — someone’s got a BOW, Chris and a team of soldiers go to a creepy looking house to investigate, and most of them get killed off in a sequence that’s less interesting than watching someone play a Resident Evil game (which, as far as video games go, is not very interesting to watch). Leon and Rebecca Chambers (of RE0 fame) are his co-stars, and Rebecca has apparently found a new job as a virus researcher and magically developed a personality.
The main villain is a BOW dealer who’s mad because somebody drone bombed his wedding (he was the only survivor). I’d be mad too. Rebecca, coincidentally, looks almost exactly like his dead wife. After she does one of those cliched ‘explain the villain’s plan to them in great detail’ scenes, he decides he’s going to recreate his wedding with her and the reanimated corpses of his friends and family. He also decides he’s going to replace her arm with his dead wife’s and turn everyone in the world except the two of them and a couple of his friends into zombies. ‘Maybe this is what I’ve always wanted… a world in flames where only the dead remain.’ Fun times!
Once again, the CG looks amazing and shockingly real at times, but the ages of the characters make no sense. The Resident Evil series follows the real world’s time line, meaning Chris and Rebecca made their first appearance more than 20 years ago and should accordingly be older, but neither looks like they’ve aged a day — all three of these characters are eternally at their physical peak. The villain even comments on how young Rebecca is, even though she can’t plausibly be any younger than 40. I don’t know why they keep using the same characters when the core RE cast seems to only be consistent in name — their personality, voice actors, look, and even age can change at any time to suit the story, making the whole series seem like fanfiction. Leon is no longer a smartass wisecracker, and instead is filled with pathos, living at the bottom of a bottle and constantly pondering how long he can keep doing this. At least Chris consistently lacks any sort of personality.
The final act features some of the most ridiculous action sequences ever seen in the series, including slow motion gunfights on a motorcycle, ridiculously high speed zombie murder with flashy stunt moves, and plenty of collateral damage. There’s also a scene where Chris and the bad guy are having a fistfight while trying to shoot each other at obscenely, unrealistically high speeds. Being a video game movie, there is naturally a final boss — a really big guy with 2 heads and a glowing heart (so idiot Chris knows where to shoot), plus pointy fingernails that can grow really long and stab people at his will. He has one line of dialogue — ‘I’m gonna spill your guts all over!’. Could use a little work on the menace, buddy. The movie has some trouble following its own rules towards the end, but whatever, it’s a video game movie. Every one of these movies so far has been a standalone story, but this one ends with a little sequel bait. We’ll see if they actually follow up on it.
Rating: 6.5/10 — This was a pretty entertaining dumb action movie. I liked it about as much as Degeneration, and prefer it to Damnation.
[Originally posted on 8/4/17]
