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Resident Evil: Apocalypse
2004 - R - 95 Mins.
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| Director: Alexander Witt | | Producer: Paul W. S. Anderson | | Written By: Paul W. S. Anderson | | Starring: Milla Jovovich, Sienna Guillory, Mike Epps, Oded Fehr |
| Review by: Harrison Cheung |
| Official Site: www.sonypictures.com/movies/residentevilapocalypse/ |
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‘Resident Evil: Apocalypse’ is the sloppy sequel to the 2002 sleeper hit ‘Resident Evil’ which was based on a video game of the same name. ‘Apocalypse’ rehashes most of the elements from the first movie in an attempt to ride the recent resurgence of zombie movies such as ‘28 Days Later’ and ‘Dawn of the Dead.’
Milla Jovovich reprises her role as Alice - a former employee of the all-powerful Umbrella Corporation - who has unknowingly become a walking experiment to create their own Lara Croft. Umbrella, an evil corporate citizen in the same vein as The Company in the ‘Alien’ movies, makes everything from cosmetics to phones to bio-weapons. In the first movie, Umbrella had developed something called the T-virus that re-animates the dead. This is not to be confused with Umbrella’s Regenerate skin moisturizer – the product spoofed in a fake commercial in the teaser trailer.
‘Apocalypse’ picks up where the first movie left off – Alice has awakened to a city in chaos. Raccoon City (Toronto) is under quarantine as the T-virus spreads. After Umbrella evacuates its key staff, they send in their security force, STARS. With the entire city suffering from a zombie outbreak, Umbrella decides to activate Project Nemesis – a human mutation/super soldier sort of thing – to do battle with Project Alice. The city has just become a large lab experiment and Umbrella even has a contingency plan to clean up the mess – a tidy nuclear explosion that they’ll blame on a plant meltdown.
Though the first movie was directed by Paul W.S. Anderson (‘Alien vs. Predator’ director and Jovovich’s fiancé), ‘Apocalypse’ was directed by Alexander Witt, a seasoned director of photography. This time out, Anderson only has writing credit for this mess. ‘Resident Evil’ simply doesn’t work as a movie franchise. With action scenes that seem to have no plot to pull the movie into any cohesion, ‘Apocalypse’ makes the first ‘Resident Evil’ movie look like high art. Given its video game origins, ‘Apocalypse’ is more like the next game level – more difficult, more obstacles but nothing particularly different from the previous game level.
Just as in the first movie, there are zombie Dobermans and a creepy little girl with a British accent. You have the added monstrosity of Nemesis but Alice manages to fight her way through the city along with a group of one-dimensional characters – a bad-ass female cop, a bad-ass STARS sharpshooter, an annoying TV reporter, and the token black guy. Jovovich herself comes from the acting school of grimacing pain – see or don’t see her work in ‘Fifth Element’ and ‘The Messenger.’ Alice fights like Lara Croft but Angelina Jolie is much more interesting on screen.
There are also homages to other movies – the dawn scene in the suburb of Toronto looks exactly the same as the one in the recent remake of ‘Dawn of the Dead’ (which was also shot in Toronto). And there’re some gross happenings in a church, just like in ‘28 Days Later.’ It’s part of ‘Apocalypse’s’ limited appeal that you can point out scenes either paying tribute to or ripping off ‘Escape from New York’ and ‘Night of the Living Dead’ or even ‘Robocop.’ No wonder why this genre is ripe for satire. I’m waiting for ‘Shaun of the Dead!’ As far as ‘Resident Evil: Apocalypse’ – no surprise – it ends with a set-up for a third movie. What astonished me the most was that you’d think Anderson would write a really good script for his girlfriend. Maybe this is his way of telling Milla that it’s game over.
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