Resident Evil: Afterlife

I'm a huge fan of Milla Jovovich and the Resident Evil movies. The last one - "Resident Evil: Extinction" - I thought was a great movie and the best in the series so far.

So I had to see this latest installment, what a disappointing and mediocre movie it turned out to be. The 3D was so fuzzy and distracting throughout the film but even if it hadn't been in fuzzy 3D it still was badly directed and poorly written, with hardly any of the signature action scenes, and all the actors were very pitiable and amateurish, with an exceptionally lame lead villain. Most of the action was blah and boring, in routine slow mo cuts. Don't go to see this movie if you want good or creative action scenes or an interesting story.

Most of the actors made no impression whatsoever, with the exception of Milla and Wentworth Miller of "Prison Break" fame. And even Wentworth Miller was given little to do, he didn't have but a handful of lines in the movie and it was a waste of his considerable talent. I really hope that he does better movies and roles in the future. I think he could become a major movie star, but not with appearing in crappy movies like this.

I am giving it a generous 5 rating, and that is from a fans perspective. If I wasn't a fan I would give this movie a 3.

Please let the next Resident Evil have a different director than this sub par effort had, and please let it not be in horrifying 3D.

Fourth spectacular , action-packed and stirring installment of the ¨Resident Evil series¨ , adapted from the video games characters produced by Hiroyuki Kobayashi . Yet another noisy film rendered from a video game which never gets as eerie as a Zombie picture should . Umbrella Corp (The Hive) is the front for some genetics operations and a secret military tech . The deadly virus has decimated the world, exception a little zone in Alaska where live people no-infected . Years later , one time Racoon was destroyed , the Umbrella corporation led by ambitious Dr. Albert Wesker (Shawn Roberts) continues his weird experiments with the deadly T-virus . The deadly virus has been released and reanimated the dead , the Zombies spread the epidemic and those exposed to cruel bite suffer a complete transformation turning into meat-eating sickos . Alice (Milla Jovovich) is attempting to survive , and goes to Alaska , traveling throughout ice desert . While still out to destroy the evil Umbrella Corporation , Alice flies with Claire (Ali Larter) to Los Angeles, where she sees a group of survivors on the roof of a prison asking for help and under siege of the undead . Alice finds new mysterious survivors (Kim Coates , Sergio Peris Mencheta , Boris Kodjoe and Wentworth Miller) at a building in L.A . Alice joins a group of survivors and they must confront carnivorous hordes of zombies starving of human flesh and an evil corporation chief who creates the most horrifying creatures ever made . The survivor group is surrounded , facing the world destruction by deadly epidemic . The misfit bunch wants to relocate to the suspicious but supposedly unharmed safe haven known only as Arcadia.

Unstopped-action gore-feast that provides for high-octane escapist amusement with some eye-catching visuals and pulsing soundtrack . This exciting picture contains thrills, chills , action-filled with fierce combats and lots of gore and guts. The horror and action moments are fast moving and compactly realized. This sequel takes more , more approach , more fights , more blood and gore . The film turns out to be a crossover between 'the nuclear apocalypse of Mad Max 2', the 'George A Romero's Zombies', 'Zack Snyder's Dawn of the dead' and genetic experiments from 'Sigourney Wever-Ripley in Alien saga' and the monsters from ¨Blade¨ and ¨Lord of Rings¨. Of course, the film takes ideas from former parts as 'Resident evil'(2002, Paul W. Anderson, here also producer , director and screenwriter) and 'Resident Evil: Apocalypse' (2004,Alexander Witt) . The creepy images of wide range from the genuinely fantastic to the bizarre along with scary and amazing frames. It's predictable but we have seen the previous chapters but also its predictability is redeemed in part by the charismatic acting from the action-women, Milla Jovovich and Ali Larter. The flesh-eating mutants appearance deliver the goods, plenty of screams, shocks and tension . The make-up assistants create a truly horrible zombie cannibals . Horrifying and astonishing images about apocalyptic events with deserted and destroyed cities, such as the fantastic scenarios in Los Angeles totally inhabited by flesh-munchies creatures . Cool,luminous cinematography using Steadicam by Glen MacPherson and haunting,pulsing Techno-musical score by Tomandandy .The motion picture is regularly directed but with startling visual style by Paul W Anderson.

The complete saga is formed by the following films : ¨Resident evil¨ by Paul W Anderson with Milla , Eric Mabius , Michelle Rodriguez , James Purefoy , Colin Salmon ; this is the best , dealing with a group of containment specialists are sent in and have to fight employees who have been contaminated , while A.I. computer instigates a series of defensive measures to contain the virus . It's followed by ¨Resident evil II : Apocalypse¨ by Alexander Witt with Jared Harris , Iain Glen , Oded Fehr , Sienna Guillory . And ¨Resident evil III¨ by Russell Mulcahy with Ali Larter, Ashanti , Mike Epps , Oded Fehr and of course Milla Jovovich.

Alice (the eternal Mila Jovovich) is back and in multiple copies. Her prime target is the Umbrella Corporation and the now T-virus enhanced Albert Wesker (Shawn Roberts). After a full frontal attack the Umbrella base is left destroyed, but the whole batch of Alice clones get blown sky-high, when Wesker manages to fly away unscathed and detonate the plant. Conveniently for the movie the original Alice survives unscathed as a castaway on-board the plane. During a skirmish with Wesker Alice gets injected with a antidote, that turns her back to being human (but somehow she still manages to survive a terrible plane crash unharmed and keeps her over-the-top fighting abilities largely intact). With Wesker dead and Umbrella disposed of Alice returns to the States to search of her friends, who left for sanctuary in Alaska, only to disappear in mysterious circumstances.

In general a much improved instalment of the series and if anything the whole series remains enjoyable, if uninventive. In this part Anderson actually outdoes himself and instead of thinking up something original he starts borrowing scenes from other movies. Wesker looks and fights like Neo's twin brother, the new zombies bring to mind "Blade 2", whilst The Executioner has a disturbing familiarity to Pyramid Head of the Silent Hill franchise. Nonetheless some of the scenes are very memorable with the combat with The Executioner a real highlight for the movie (especially given the abrupt ending of the final fight).

There may be a bit too many generic elements with this movie, but that has never stopped the franchise from being mindless slash-em-up fun. Even if a somewhat weakly scripted one. Also Alice remains a very likable heroine, so no matter how bad the script if she gets proper screen time and a couple of intriguing fights, than the movie just never seems to feel like a waste of time.

I liked this compilation of scenes. I liked the soundtrack; I liked the acting; I liked the settings; I liked the effects. As a game, it works greatly. The movie is a sum of chunks of stories. Most of them are action stories. A few are horror stories. Another few are mystery stories. And none of them are connected to each other. They just share common characters.

Honestly, the plot is just an excuse for great action scenes. And I liked the action scenes. I rate it zero for the story, ten for the technical quality. And I have to admit it: in the end, I liked it as a whole.

This fourth Resident Evil instalment was only ever going to be worth seeing if it featured lots of amusing gore and entertaining action scenes that utilised the third dimension successfully. Evidently, director Anderson must've known this too, because nary a second is wasted on anything else. From the get go we're embroiled in a mass raid on Umbrella's high-tech underground headquarters by dozens of Alice replicates. It's Matrix-y slick, features a massive body count and is a great way to kick off proceedings, even if the CGI is occasionally substandard.

The remainder of the film becomes grubbier once it relocates to an abandoned maximum security prison surrounded by thousands of the "infected". Alice, and the ragtag bunch of Los Angeleno's she meets in the jail, encounter blood-thirsty zombies left, right and centre with murderous glee. The finest sequence on offer comes thanks to the inexplicably nonsensical inclusion of an unnamed 10ft creature with a mammoth axe-like weapon, who was apparently only introduced so we could witness its gruesome demise. With rain-drenched slow motion and heart pounding music, watching Alice and Claire despatch of this demented beast is a thrill.

To mention other dispensable elements of this movie – you know, acting, character development, dialogue, plot plausibility, etc – would be redundant for two reasons, (a) because your enjoyment of Afterlife can be measured wholly on your reaction to the above couple of paragraphs and (b) we all know that the aforementioned filmic elements will be close to non-existent anyhow.

Mindless fun.

3 out of 5 (1 - Rubbish, 2 - Ordinary, 3 - Good, 4 - Excellent, 5 - Classic)