Snarky internet commentators have snidely referred to Paul W.S. Anderson as 'Worthless Shit' Anderson. While that nickname may be a little harsh, Anderson hasn't impressed with his brand of generic action/sci-fi flicks. His most successful work has to be on the Resident Evil franchise, which is like that annoying rash that just won't go away. The series limps to its fourth installment (not including the animated Resident Evil: Degeneration) in Resident Evil: Afterlife. Anderson's wife, Milla Jovovich, returns as lead heroine Alice while Anderson himself returns as director. He helmed the first installment while acting as writer/producer on the other sequels.
In the first film (a high-tech take on the haunted house movie), Alice is an amnesiac and, along with a team of commandos, tries to survive in a mansion whose AI security system attempts to kill them at every turn. In the sequel, Resident Evil: Apocalypse, takes place immediately after with the survivors battle a zombie outbreak. The threequel, Resident Evil: Extinction, was a Road Warrior knockoff with Alice leading survivors through a post-apocalyptic desert. Since everybody is extinct, it is only apropos that the title of the film is Resident Evil: Afterlife. I suppose Resident Evil: Resurrection is next.
Afterlife opens with a slick and frenetic action sequence as Alice and her army of clones invade the Umbrella Corporation's underground headquarters in Tokyo. Umbrella's CEO Albert Wesker (Shawn Roberts) does what any good supervillain would do and activates the self-destruct. The base blows, leaving only Wesker and the real Alice who is injected with a serum that negates the superpowers she was given via the T-Virus. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, it doesn't matter. Anderson negates nearly everything that was carried over from the previous movies. Good for newcomers, bad for anyone who actually spent money on them. On the other hand, being deprived of her powers makes no difference as Alice is still capable of pulling off outlandish stunts.
Anyways, Alice jacks a plane and makes her way to Alaska in search of the survivors from Extinction. The only person she can find is her friend Claire Redfield (Ali Larter), rendered an amnesiac by an Umbrella Corp. device. Together, they make their way to Los Angeles in search of Arcadia, a supposedly zombie free refuge. They find a small band of survivors hold up inside a maximum security prison. The group includes Luther West (Undercovers' Boris Kodjoe), a former star basketball player, and Claire's brother, Chris (Wentworth Miller). With the zombie hordes crawling at their doors, the remaining humans must find a way to escape.
For Afterlife, Anderson utilizes the same Fusion Camera System used in James Cameron's Avatar to create his 3D effects. As such, it is definitely the best looking of all the Resident Evil movies. There is a distinct depth of field and the images aren't too dark so it's light years ahead of slapdash conversions like Clash of the Titans and The Last Airbender. Anderson embraces the 3D process, but aren't we passed the point where everybody is awestruck by objects thrown at the screen? There really isn't any dire need to see the film in 3D since they add nothing to the already derivative action scenes. Anderson blatantly rips off The Matrix at every turn with bullet time shots that went out of style ten years ago. It's hard not to notice when Alice (clad in a shiny vinyl outfit) dives out of a window while two fisting machine guns ala Trinity or when Wesker (in his dark shades and trenchcoat) dodges bullets in super slow motion.
Admittedly, the movie did have a few cool bits. A fight scene in the showers with Alice and Claire versus the monstrous Executioner was halfway decent in a hot, wet chicks kind of way. Alice loading her shotguns with quarters was also unique.
The supporting characters are simply a collection of entirely dispensable stock characters there to be nothing more than zombie food. Save for Boris Kodjoe, they're instantly forgettable. Shawn Roberts is utterly wooden as the lead villain. In his first post-Prison Break role, Wentworth Miller spends most of the movie trying to escape from prison again. Time to find a new agent?
Going in, Resident Evil: Afterlife had two strikes against it being both a Paul W.S. Anderson movie and a video game movie. To no one's surprise, Afterlife is a failure on every front.
Rating: * ½
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