So You Won't Have To: Resident Evil - Afterlife (in 3-D)

Folks, I know what you're thinking. Before the chants of "no duh, of COURSE Resident Evil: Afterlife" was a waste of time from start to finish, allow me to make my case. I hated Resident Evil, and I haven't been able to watch even part of it since the first, unfortunate, time. Resident Evil: Apocalypse and Resident Evil: Extinction are loud, stupid, vapid entertainment, but at least they succeed in entertaining on some level. The sequels are the kind of films you feel bad having watched and hesitate to tell your friends about, but as high budget schlock goes, you get what you pay for. I've certainly seen better made films that were less amusing.

Resident Evil: Afterlife, on the other hand, was a waste of time, money, and brain cells.

Of course, the missing link in all of this is why Resident Evil Apocalypse and Extinction work and the first and fourth films do not: Apocalypse and Extinction were written by Paul W.S. Anderson, but not directed by him. Resident Evil and Afterlife were written and directed by the same hack that brought us Soldier, Event Horizon, Alien vs. Predator, and Mortal Kombat. To date, the only movie he's made that I found remotely re-watchable was a remake / sequel to Death Race 2000, which works in spite of his inability to tell a story visually.

For a horror / action / video game movie, Anderson fails to generate any tension, atmosphere, or scares. This shouldn't have been a big surprise to me, since he's never been able to do that, but I thought the sheer desperation of 3-D would provide some chuckles. Instead, the 3-D gimmickry is used for no apparent reason other than to demonstrate how the pointless use of technology can be in the hands of a creatively bankrupt "auteur" (by the fourth time Alice shoots someone with a shotgun full of quarters and the coins fly at you, the gimmick has lost even a rudimentary charm). When James Cameron said this:

I tend almost never to throw other films under the bus, but that is exactly an example of what we should not be doing in 3-D. Because it just cheapens the medium and reminds you of the bad 3-D horror films from the 70s and 80s, like Friday the 13th 3-D. When movies got to the bottom of the barrel of their creativity and at the last gasp of their financial lifespan, they did a 3-D version to get the last few drops of blood out of the turnip.

I really wish he'd been addressing Resident Evil: Afterlife 3-D, because unlike Piranha (which it was directed at), RE:A actually utilizes Cameron's specially developed technology, cameras, and projection methods. But it's all gimmick, servicing a film that barely has a plot and is most certainly deserving of the "bottom of the barrel of their creativity" moniker.

Resident Evil: Afterlife is an incoherent mess of a narrative. For what it's worth, the Cap'n will try to explain what passes for a plot:

Alice (Milla Jovovich) is continuing her assault on the Umbrella Corporation, headed by Albert Wesker (Shawn Roberts). Umbrella was responsible for unleashing the T-Virus, which turned most of humanity into bloodthirsty zombies. After Wesker foils the attempt by Alice and her clones (it's a holdover from the end of Extinction), Alice escapes and seeks out Arcadia, the "last refuge for non-infected survivors," but instead finds Claire Redfield (Ali Larter, reprising her role from Extinction) with some sort of jewel on her chest that stole her memories and renders her semi-feral. Alice and Claire fly down to Los Angeles from Alaska for some reason, land on a prison where survivors have holed themselves up, including former sports star Luther West (Boris Kodjoe), Hollywood Agent Bennett (Kim Coates), and soldier / prisoner Chris Redfield (Wentworth Miller). They then discover that Arcadia is a boat, have to wander around the prison, and discover Arcadia's horrible secret just in time for the final boss fight, followed by an obligatory tease for an epic battle between our heroes and former "good" character Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory), who has a jewel on her chest.

See how that sounds more like a synopsis? There's no overriding story or motivation for much of anything that happens in Afterlife. At the points in the film where exposition is desperately needed, or connective tissue would make all the difference in the world, W.S. simply dissolves, cuts away, or jumps ahead without bothering how, why, or even what it means for the characters to move from one point to the next. Bennett, for reasons of plot convenience, steals Alice's plane and lands on Arcadia. By the time we next see him, he's working for Wesker and looks like he's been infected with... something. Only Anderson never bothered to get around to that part of the plot. It's enough that we know he's EEEEEEEVIILLLL now, so that his death at the hands of Wesker is semi-ironic.

Resident Evil: Afterlife is astonishingly willing to leave audience members behind. The first film, while narratively sluggish, insulting, and utterly without tension, at least made sure the audience had some idea who the characters were and why anyone should care about them. Apocalypse and Extinction went the next step and periodically integrated characters from the games with some modicum of personality. Afterlife has no such interest: Chris Redfield (a fairly major character in the series) is introduced in a way that doesn't make sense (he's being held in a makeshift cell in the bottom of a PRISON!) and the when's and why's of his release and relation to Claire Redfield are irrelevant. He's really just there so that Claire and Alice have someone else to fight Wesker with. The point at which Claire goes from not remembering that Chris is her brother to being best pals isn't something we're privy to; it's only important that Alice saves them in time to shoot Wesker, Boondock Saints style (pay attention to that; it'll come back later!).

Speaking of which, if you haven't played Resident Evil 5, almost nothing about the character of Wesker is going to make sense (he has a cameo in Extinction, but otherwise is introduced wholesale in the film). The easy argument is that "you probably won't be seeing the movie unless you play Resident Evil," but the truth is that you can easily watch the first three films without knowing anything about the games and do just fine. Not so here.

What you can do, however, is marvel at a section of the movie where Alice, Chris, and dispensable female character (Kacey Barnfield) need to travel underwater through the prison in order get to the secret military armory. I guess it's supposed to be tense, but Anderson is such a terrible director that all of the shots are close-ups on the characters faces, or mid-shots where they appear to be WALKING underwater. They also hold their breaths for what I'd consider to be an unreasonably long time, but who cares, right? They also come out of the water and are able to fire their weapons with no problem at the dozens of zombies they somehow missed while walking underwater.

Meanwhile, Claire and Luther are standing at the prison gate as a Axeman (that's what the character is listed as), a giant wielding a half axe / half spiked mallet is pounding away at the only thing keeping hundreds of zombies out. Considering that it takes five minutes before they make any effort to stop him at all, it should come as no surprise that he appears just in time for a mid-level Boss Fight with Claire and Alice, which is really just an excuse for more "quarters in your face!" 3-D shenanigans.

Professor Murder was so disgusted with Afterlife that he took his glasses off halfway through the film and announced "It's sad when I have to say that Troy Duffy (The Boondock Saints) would have made this a more entertaining movie than this piece of shit." I'm astonished by the level of enthusiasm for Afterlife on IMDB's boards, because I can't understand how anyone would be willing to put aside a movie where nothing works at all (down to the 2003-esque score by Tomanandy and seven year-old A Perfect Circle song remixed with the title of the second Resident Evil movie).

It's not often when I can't find anything nice to say about a movie, but Resident Evil: Afterlife sucks. It just sucks, for all the reasons listed above and many more. I was bored well before the film was over, and both of us were angry we wasted time watching this movie. Paul "What Script" Anderson, there's no chance I'll ever pay for another one of your movies, and especially not the idiotic sequel that's no so much implied as assured in the credits. This puppy learned his lesson, and that lesson is you couldn't make a movie to save your life.