A tired franchise

Subtlety has never been director Paul W.S. Anderson’s strong suit, and that’s why the Resident Evil franchise has been so successful, having directed all five films.
 
The problem only occurs when the latest instalment to the series, which is adapted from the video game, delivers the same complicated story, laced with eye-popping action, for the fifth time around.

I may be biased because I hate 3D films and think its use is completely pointless, but in this case, the negative correlation between enjoyment and the number of objects flying through the screen hit rock bottom.

Don’t get me wrong, the first 15 minutes had me grasping my seat with Milla Jovovich kicking monsters through the screen, zombie hordes running at you (surprisingly fast for the un-dead), as well as the blood dripping from the brutal kills Ö sounds just like my kind of movie Ö and that’s why I was so disappointed!

Picking up where the previous film left off, the Umbrella Corporation’s deadly T-virus continues to ravage the Earth, transforming the global population into legions of flesh-eating zombies.

Meanwhile, Alice (Jovovich) and her allies are stranded on the Arcadia tanker. Fighting off a recruit from the evil Umbrella Corporation, an explosion sends her plummeting into the water, unconscious.

She awakens to find herself held captive in an interrogation room in an underground Umbrella training facility beneath a remote part of the former Soviet Union, powered by the evil supercomputer, the Red Queen.

Alice tries to make her way through virtual simulations in order to break out of the complex and save the Earth from the apocalyptic plague, but the Red Queen will stop at nothing to contain her.

Ada Wong (Bingbing Li), a disgruntled Umbrella employee, helps Alice escape and together they set out to flee the enormous facility, which houses realistic, full-scale reproductions of Tokyo, Moscow, New York and Washington D.C.

The further Alice delves into the complex the more of her mysterious past comes to the surface.

Fighting off zombies unleashed by the Red Queen, Alice and her allies must fight to survive long enough to escape a hostile world on the edge of unconsciousness.
However, as the team moves from one branch of the facility to the next, new horrors come to surface.

When Alice meets a young girl who’s been bred to think that she is her mother, she suddenly finds a new reason to live.

This is the first film in the series that actually feels like you’re watching your annoying brother play a video game - and I mean that in a bad way!

The over-the-top style and Anderson’s pretentiousness of direction was all a little cheesy. The slow motion scenes and the green screen shots may have added to the game aspect, which is essentially what Anderson was trying to achieve, but it still didn’t help the film.

In my opinion, no one really focuses on acting in movies that are heavily involved in action, but Michelle Rodriguez proves that she was not put on this earth to act. She made me grind my teeth every time she appeared on screen. I simply dislike her. It was bad enough she was in the first film, but why would you bring her back after three others?

However, I still thought the movie showed exactly what it set out to - Jovovich snapping necks, shooting creatures and just being an awesome chick!

You either enjoy 95 minutes of zombies, blood and action with a ridiculous plot or you don’t, it’s that simple!