It’s been five years since Paul W.S. Anderson closed the book on his version of the Resident Evil franchise with the aptly named Resident Evil: The Final Chapter—starring his wife and leading lady of all six of those films Milla Jovovich. While a few of those movies have some redeeming qualities, the action-heavy approach didn’t really capture what was so great about the early games. The first Resident Evil game is known as birthing the survival horror genre where ammo is hard to come by and the camera is fixed; where the sound of oncoming zombies provides a haunting atmosphere so when you finally do open a door and the screen turns black you are on edge preparing for whatever appears on the other side. By design, it’s a defensive strategy and puzzle game whereas the Anderson films are better described as sci-fi action. Years later the games would catch up to the films in terms of the over-the-top action (4-6) before recently going back to basics with Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, and that’s what Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City looked to do on the big screen…with mixed results.
It is clear from the start that English writer-director Johannes Roberts is a fan of the video game series he’s adapting right away with entire cut scenes from the first two games recreated along with sets like the Spencer Mansion from Resident Evil and the police station from Resident Evil 2. His efforts in building Raccoon City into a damp and dreary locale that never sees sunlight sets the film up for a promising start. Opening with a creepy flashback at an orphanage (backed by the sound of children lullabying) we are introduced to Claire Redfield. Claire stumbles upon Lisa Trevor, an Umbrella Corporation experiment gone wrong. Claire tries to tell her brother Chris about the encounter but he dismisses it, and years later Claire returns to Raccoon City to uncover the truth about what Umbrella Corporation is really up to. On the surface, they are a pharmaceutical company, but a woman is hit with a semi-truck and walks away, which usually means zombies.
Claire and Chris Redfield are two iconic characters from the game along with Jill Valentine, Leon Kennedy, and Albert Wesker, who all make appearances – this is where the fan service of the film truly faulters. Leon Kennedy in particular, who is the lead character in Resident Evil 4 (one of my all-time favorites) is turned into a bumbling idiot rookie cop for some reason and the rest are unremarkable at best. The complaints that came up once the trailer for this movie dropped was that it looked like a fan film and the weak cast makes it feel like that, but to be fair, the script doesn’t give them much to do. Claire is the closest we get to a protagonist and I’m not sure I can say she learned anything that she didn’t already know at the beginning of the movie or have any arc other than that she was right from day one and so she was ready for the fight.
Neal McDonough appears as Dr. William Birkin and he’s an actor that knows exactly what movie he’s in while Donal Logue who plays Chief Irons is hamming it up in a bad way, dragging every scene he’s in down with his brash performance. The characters all look the part (Claire’s red jacket and bulletproof vests galore), but aside from lead actress Kayla Scodelario (Crawl) and Hanna John-Kamen (Ant-Man and the Wasp) the actors all look plucked from a CW show. The character introductions in particular were cringe in the way they almost turned to the camera and said “remember us from the games?” in their clumsy delivery.
It’s a rare for a project to focus too closely on details but one gets the feeling that’s what Roberts was caught up with instead of carving out an engaging story out of the rich source material. He previously wrote and directed The Strangers 2: Prey at Night and both 47 Meters Down films, which also suffer from weak characters. Trying to combine the first two video games might have not been the best choice either because the haunted house of the first and the police station and sewers of 2 are two different vibes. The makeup and visual FX of the zombies were surprisingly well done for a film of this size with them having a kind of translucent marble appearance that the director describes as being inspired by victims of Chernobyl and is kind of reminiscent to the zombies in Blade II.
Overall, Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City is faithful when it comes to sets, costumes, and creature effects from the games, but those unfamiliar with the story will be completely lost with no relatable characters to grasp onto; just bodies that will be disposed of in shadow for most of the time, making it hard to see who is dying or what injury they are sustaining. I appreciate the attempt to bring the horror back to the movies, but the action lacks the pizazz, which is something Paul W.S. Anderson brought in spades. I foolishly still have hope that the definitive Resident Evil adaptation can be made one day. But for some reason movies turned into video games, and video games turned into movies just don’t translate and I’m still waiting for a truly great video game adaptation to confidently take the title of “best video game adaptation.”
Final Rating:
‘Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City’ is available now on Blu-Ray and Digital.
Rated R.
(Photos: Screen Gems)
