Resident Evil: Bienvenue à Raccoon City

Why this casting?

Why this director?

Why this story?

Why everything in this movie.

Unfortunately, as expected, this movie sucks. While the CGI is not that bad as it was in the trailer, everything else is.

Story is a chopped up blend of first and second game, but written badly. Casting is almost completely wrong. But even worse - characters are all written and crafted wrong. That's not Leon, that's not Jill Valentine, that's not the Redfields and that sure as hell is not Wesker.

Not to say anything against actors, ironically enough - as bad as they got casted - most of the actors in this movie are pretty good actors, from Donal Logue to Kaya Scodelario. They were just given trash script and story to work with.

Zombies look like generic vampires from SyFy tv shows or whatever. Also - there's some inspired but bizzare camerawork at times.

Locations are underutilised and most are kinda bland looking. Atmosphere is eaten pretty fast by the movie's runtime so there's none of that either.

I don't get it. It's not a unknown brand or something. Even more, RE series is on a high point lately as a video game franchise - one excellent remake, one good and two fantastic sequels in the past couple of years.

Yet, movie is given into the hands of a director/writer that hadn't made a good movie in his entire career.

Such shame and wasted potential.

They really tried to cram a lot into this movie but it just never clicked. The movie had strong bones but suffered from weak writing and plot. The Redfields and Wesker were cast perfectly but Jill Valentine and Leon were horribly miscast. I don't know if it was because of Hollywood making everything diverse but not only did they not look like the characters they didn't sound or make decisions like them. Man I had high hopes but it just fell short.

The acting is average, the story is unoriginal and the whole thing amounts to very little. Many of the characters display the usual 'sassy attitude' and are constantly engaged in yelling at one another, which is a trait commonly used in poorly scripted pieces like this. It's nonsensical for the most part, and a few of the characters are moronic in the extreme, and there's not a trace of atmosphere to be found.

Welcome to Raccoon City is rather a bore and letdown. How one can make of such material such a bore feast, I dunno. The movies by Anderson starring Milla are not perfect but masterpieces compared to this reboot or whatever it is. I also don't remember that the games are such dragging and boring affairs - this is my note to all of those who boldly claim that Raccoon City is true to the games. There are a few well done creepy scenes but there is too much stuff I don't like: that cop Leon for example, the whole city is on alert and he just sleeps at the reception. The scene with the helicopter pilot at the mansion too, just silly - nobody would play a game in such a moment. So my issues are: all those moments of comedy, some characters act out of place. All in all a movie that meanders between bad and mediocre, and that fails in too many aspects to satisfy, and really does not add anything new, better or special to the franchise.

A decent Resident Evil movie with some gore, cheap jump scares and a lot of fan-service. Not everything clicks and it's incredibly easy to be overly critical of this movie but in my opinion it was certainly a lot better than the trash that was Resident Evil: The Final Chapter. I grabbed some popcorn, candy and a coke with my expectations firmly in check and I had a decent overall time. I'm a big fan of schlocky B-movies and it's nice to see something in theatres that isn't related to superheroes or overly-serious dramas. What I didn't like the most though was how Leon was portrayed but I guess that's because I got done playing RE4 on the oculus and I'm used to that representation of him.

After watching Resident Evil: Welcome to Racoon City I read a lot of the reviews on IMDB and the only reviews being liked are from people who bombed the film. Are people really that desperate to hate on a movie they haven't seen? What are your expectations going into a Resident Evil movie if you have seen it?