Resident Evil: Apocalypse



Resident Evil: Apocalypse follows up 2002's Resident Evil, which I thought was a fine way to waste some time. The sequel is in the same vein, with everything just amped up to the edge of shrillness.


"For the last time, I'm not going to tell you what the fifth element was."

As Resident Evil ended the T-virus had escaped the lab and devastated Raccoon City. Apocalypse goes back a little. We see the Umbrella Corporation open the Hive, releasing the virus in the form of a bunch of shambling zombies. (What did they think would happen?) Umbrella rushes to get its scientists and their families out while quarantining the city. One scientist's daughter is left behind because of a car accident.

Alice (Milla Jovovitch, the only player from the first movie in this one) wakes up in the abandoned city and goes to work killing zombies, a task made easier by the fact that Umbrella gave her super powers in between movies. Alice finds a few heavily armed survivors, including Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory), and is contacted by that certain scientist and directed to rescue his daughter. Meanwhile everyone has to dodge Nemesis, a mutant soldier that Umbrella released into the city just for the sheer heck of it.


They made Tomb Raider a cop?

Resident Evil was pretty dumb, and Apocalypse follows that trend, but Resident Evil had a certain glossy attractiveness to the production and the action. That's missing in Apocolypse, which is instead fairly ugly and sometimes the action scenes devolve into shaky cam. I wish there were more powerful images in Resident Evil: Apocalypse, especially at the end when Alice gains a power upgrade. Alice, now totally beyond human concerns, leaves an Umbrella facility naked but for a sheet pulled around herself for modesty, which seems completely unnecessary for the character. And c'mon, it's Milla Jovoitch. It's not like she's ever needed a reason to take her clothes off, as her long modeling career has proven.


"I have ULTIMATE POWER! But you can't see my boobs."

Posted: Mon - September 13, 2004 at      

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