Resident Evil: Isla de la Muerte

I had never heard about this 2023 CGI animated foray into the "Resident Evil" franchise. But of course I had to sit down and watch it as soon as I had the opportunity to do so.

However, I must admit that I wasn't really harboring much of any grand expectations for it, since the majority of the released CGI animated movies have been mediocre at best. But still, I opted to give writer Makoto Fukami and director Eiichirô Hasumi's movie a fair chance.

The storyline in "Resident Evil: Death Island" was simplistic and straight forward, and thus it requires zero interaction from the audience. You just simply lean back and watch Chris Redfield, Leon S. Kennedy, Claire Redfield and Jill Valentine take on yet another outbreak of T-virus infected. So it was pretty much a copy-paste job from the numerous of previous CGI movies in the franchise. Except "Resident Evil: Death Island" takes place on Alcatraz island and includes a new method of infection.

So yeah, the storyline was pretty shallow and not overly innovative or refreshing. And the movie did suffer from that. And let's just not venture deeper into the plot holes or questionable things that just happened to be there to further the narrative, such as the conveniently placed rocket launchers, plasma rifle, and what not.

Visually, however, then "Resident Evil: Death Island" was quite nice. The CGI was pretty good and definitely helped to keep "Resident Evil: Death Island" afloat. And of course you have some massive mutation that the gang comes face to face with, gee, where have we seen that before? I have to say that the mutation in "Resident Evil: Death Island" was pretty laughable.

"Resident Evil: Death Island" is just another notch in the "Resident Evil" franchise's belt, though not as abysmal as the God awful Netflix series.

My rating of "Resident Evil: Death Island" lands on a less than mediocre four out of ten stars.

Ah, resident evil!

From low-tech horror to sci-fi garbage. It sure is fun to see Chris repeatedly punch a giant boulder, or fight against the law-defiant Wesker in the video games! But it's no secret the franchise has nowhere to go and can only keep chasing its tail with a variation of the same premise! The initial Raccoon incident and exploration of the source of the problem were interesting and different at the time.. Now I'm honestly REALLY tired of these churned out products that amount to nothing!! At least it finally seems like they are connecting the stories somewhat, with reference to events from Vendetta, RE6 and previous game entries. Death Island continues to give a simplistically boring premise, and a continuation of pointless B Stories where the good guys stop a disposable villain that hates the world and makes a new iteration of the "virus".. while ultimately being nothing but a nuisance for a while. Lows takes, repeated stakes!

But worse of all is how insulting it ends up being to me as a viewer. For example : 1. The dialogue being atrocious! And it's very strange to see Jill Valentine groan at Leon's one liners and even insults Chris' heavy handedness. I wonder what the point of that was.. 2. The introduction of a foot soldier becoming a trafficking tech-villain capable of creating a new virus that doesn't spread and turns people rather quickly.. except when it doesn't. There's no tension, and repercussions are easily fixed.

3. It was nice to see Maria Gomez again, the powerful killing machine that can't kill anyone. Very representative of the whole thing.

4. An "Avengers moment" with all the known cast in service of nothing, being rather lame to witness.

5. Contrived confrontation with final threat with a convenient Armory around (Plasma Rifle included).

Sure, these continue to be visually impressive (from the models, the movement and the choreographies).. but the line "Looks like us suckers win. Again" being followed by "And they'll keep coming back for more!" was rather depressing. To top it all with "But we sure did kick some ass, didn't we?" was enough to feel like being bullied and kicked in the balls for liking Resident Evil!!

But I'm definitely sure that countries like Svetlana's wagging BOW wars against one another for power.. and for characters to become super powered beings while slugging it out wouldn't be any better. Whoever is in charge of these better change his perspective instead of being considered a joke.

While Infinite Darkness looked a bit dated, they dialed up path tracing to the max here.

It really looks good most of the time and styled like recent RE game remakes.

That's about it.

Although, you could say the "movie" is very efficient... short is maybe a better word for it. Action kicks off right away and it's dumb, so dumb.

Plot is on par with previous non-game entries, nothing really important to the overall plot. A side mission if you will, against some random evil doers. Zero horror, all the action. No stakes. Life saving chekhov's gun is mentioned 10 minutes into the movie and is used at appropriate time. No surprises.

It really is a placeholder, a franchise promo so you don't forget for five minues it exists.

Is the plot relevant? No. Is the action engaging? Somewhat. Are the characters immersive? No.

Listen, Resident Evil is here a long time and when you look at it, starting from the first game there is something Resident Evil almost every year since - so I'm not expecting someting mind blowing, given the way whole franchise jumped the shark multiple times during these almost 30 years. But, I'm still hoping to see one solid, good RE movie or at least above average animated feature. And it's just not coming.

Could you watch this? Sure. Should you watch this? Maybe, it's your time, do with it what you will but don't expect top tier horror animated action movie. It is schlock with dumb script and it looks good.

I have watched all the previous animated films that is at home since they were direct to video. This is the first film I have watched at the cinema. The previous movies were not at all as good as this one and it shows. They put a lot more care into the characters this time.

And the story is pretty decent for a resident evil movie. Much better than the forgettable Netflix series and the live action movie from a couple years ago.

Good voice acting, which is expected considering they are mostly the same from the resident evil remake games.

There were some cheesy one liners from leon which was nice, a few dumb jokes but enjoyable ones.

Pleasing action thats over the top that would be satisfying for any fan of the franchise.

And overall a decent ending to the movie.

It's not too long and is an enjoyable movie if you like the games.

Would definitely recommend seeing it.

I'm not too familiar with the Resident Evil game franchise, however I have seen all the movie adaptations and thought most of them are stupid fun. I was never a huge fan of animated stuff but since I rather enjoyed the animated movies from Resident Evil I thought this might be good. Also the title death Island sounded promising to me and with the movie taking place on Alcatraz, I thought you would be able to make something interesting from the setting. Well after seeing this I felt like we've seen it all before. The usual recipe for the animated Resident Evil franchise but with an even more massive fight at the end and an interesting new way to infect the people. Also the movie was definitely more action than horror. All in all it was just nothing new and had the same cool action scenes but also weaknesses, like our heroes surviving everything and didn't even get a scratch which made you not feel worried about them for a second. Another thing is, in the end fight there are conveniently placed weapons everywhere, which was not logical and only served the plot. I think for fans of the franchise this movie will not disappoint but also definitely is no masterpiece. [6,3/10]