Was That Film Really That Bad??? - Resident Evil: Afterlife

Or, as it should be called, Resident Evil: The one where they gave up trying and just copied everything from other, better films. Yes, gentle reader, another Resident Evil film but take heart, we're in the back half now and there's only two more to go. Wor Paul returns as writer, director and co-producer in this 2010 release and, to be honest, it shows. Oh dear Lord, does it show. But is the film really that bad???

You'll be wanting the plot which, given this a Res Evil film, is about as thin as cheap bog roll. Oh, it starts off reasonably well, Tokyo before the T-virus spreads, then cuts to four years after the devastation, with Alice (Milla Jovovich) and her clones attacking Umbrella's HQ in Tokyo. She fights Wesker (Shawn Roberts), who injects her with an anti-virus that removes her powers and narrowly escapes a bomb that destroys the HQ and all of her clones. She survives a plane crash (no idea how) that apparently kills Wesker. Six months later, she's flying up to Alaska in a two seat prop plane, looking for the survivors in a mysterious place called Arcadia and completing a video diary of her search. She doesn't find the town but she does find a load of abandoned aircraft and a wild Claire Redfield (Ali Larter), who has been tagged with a red spider implant on her chest. Alice removes this and together they travel to Los Angeles where they find a bunch of survivors in a city centre prison surrounded by legions of the undead. We get an introduction to the survivors and the last prisoner there, Chris Redfield (Wentworth Miller). It turns out that Arcadia is an Umbrella ship and they've been harvesting the living for experiments. The undead breach the prison, the survivors make it to the ship, Alice and co fight Wesker and the film ends with the people held on the ship being released just in time for a mind controlled Jill Valentine to arrive with load of Umbrella VTOL's ready to take on Alice. 

You can't have an RE film without these bad boys. Sadly.

Now you've read that, you don't have to watch 97 minutes of uninspired, cheap looking, copycat action that doesn't have an original bone in its body. After a small, brief (relative) rise in quality in Res Evil: Extinction, we're back to the by the numbers nonsense of Wor Paul. It can look good at times, the opening scene in Tokyo before the T-virus escapes is not bad, all slow motion rain and shit, but once that's out of the way, we have another Alice monologue recapping the events of the first three films and every other trope the series has used so far. However, it's not just the repetition of the in-series tics that grate. Oh no. Wor Paul has been trawling through his DVD collection looking for stuff to "homage."

Agent Smith, I mean, Wesker, I presume.

The Matrix first and the attack on Umbrella's Tokyo HQ, doing a very poor rendition of the Lobby gunfight, with obvious wire work and shitty CGI. The Alice clones are all ninja'd up, with throwing stars that highlight another pointless film-making aspect - this was filmed in 3D so expect lots of slow motion objects heading directly at the camera. Robert's Wesker is a take on Agent Smith, with growly voice, Desert Eagle and emotionless delivery, though he gets to rock the "Neo" look at the back end of the film. They've also activated the infinite ammo cheat in this movie, seeing as it's full-auto ahoy and never a mag change to be seen - indeed, the Alice clones each seem to have about 900 rounds per 30-round mag. Oh, and that wire work - there is one part where Alice jumps into the air, loses all forward momentum and flips without in place. I know it's sci-fi but for fuck's sake, can we at least has some physics in the room, or just help Milla when her wire rig gets tangled, cos that's what it looks like - an outtake. Naturally, things don't get much better.

Like Trinity in Revelations, but two of them... twice as good? No!

As the film has already "homaged" the shit out of the Matrix series (there's a water filled slow motion fight in a shower room that copies several fights across that trilogy and the use of bullet time is both horribly naff to watch and ignores physics on a whole different level to previous RE films), it shouldn't be a surprise that the middle half of the film seems to want to similarly "homage" the Aliens films; from direct quotes ("No offence. None taken") and claustrophobic survival against an external threat, to swimming creatures, proving that nothing sacred from the wandering scriptwriting pen of Wor Paul.

Homage, my ring piece!

Speaking of scriptwriting, the plot makes little sense. There are gaps in logic so big you could drive the good ship Arcadia though them. How does Alice survive the crash when she no longer has her powers. How can she fly to Alaska then to LA as the film shows that it's all one flight? Who is the video diary for? How does she keep the camera battery charged? How...how...how... There are so many questions about how this world continues to exist considering that the ecosphere is dead, there's no replacements for any consumables used and the undead are everywhere. I understand that there will be sites out there with people explaining the convoluted answers to many of these questions but let's be honest here, the Resident Evil films have never been strong on internal logic and world-building. And that's before we get to Alice's coin-filled shotgun. You don't have to know much about ballistics to see that it's a shit idea that exists only to look and sound cool when she uses it. 

This is bullet time... apparently

Of course, you might not care and just want to watch a film with less intellectual activity than the undead in it. It certainly won't be for the characters who are walking stereotypes. You don't care what happens to them. People do stuff for no reason nor explanation: it's just to make the action look cool. Even Jovovich looks bored. At least she gets to speak using her natural voice - Miller has a husky whisper that screams for someone to give him a Strepsil. As for the rest of the cast, they turn up and act to varying degrees, but between Wor Paul's script and direction, the only comfort I feel is that, like previous entries, the cast were paid. Take the money and run people, it's at least gonna pay the bills.

Oh dear...

Production values are dire too, with the roof scenes obviously studio  bound, the CGI being passable at best and downright Warehouse 13-style bad at worst - Alice's swing from the roof top a fine example of the Dr Malcolm declaration  just because they could doesn't mean they should, and the bullet time effects, as already mentioned, are embarrassing. Where as the Wachowski siblings (and the rest of the crew) were pushing technology and film-making to deliver something people had never seen before, Wor Paul thinks a rendering farm will suffice to match that passion. No. Just no. Scenes are shot to highlight the 3D effect, which is great and all but that fad died out years ago, and there is far too much slow motion crap going on. Honestly, if they'd played the film at normal speed, the whole thing might have lasted an hour! That would have been to the benefit of the people who have watched this.

Superhero landing way before Deadpool did it...

Truth be told, this is a filler of a film, ditching the clones from the previous entry and setting up a fifth movie. Given a final box office take of $300m from a $60m budget, that was inevitable and in 2012, said follow up arrived. However, because there is no characterisation beyond cool looking jumps and snarky remarks, Afterlife can't even claim to the the "Empire" of the series. At least with the second Star Wars film, it played with the format to drive the story forward whilst giving fans the characters and action they wanted. Instead, RE: Afterlife is another nonsensical wank fest from Wor Paul that made some people a ton of cash but seriously wastes the audiences time. As with previous entries in the series, yes, it really is that bad.

And since it's so bad, here are some bonus screenshots just for you, you lucky, lucky people...

Agent Smith, I mean Wesker, with his Deagle.

It looks worse in motion. 

The first of many 3D (magic) moments.

It really does look worse in motion.

Zombie on the right has either gone full Thriller or bad Tommy Cooper, I can't tell which.