If the Resident Evil movie series is good at anything, it’s at providing great looking images like this, set pieces that sacrifice logic for looks. Here we supposedly have patient zero infecting Tokyo with the T-virus, the first zombie to hit Japanese shores, but you would expect that after the destruction of Raccoon City and the subsequent spread of zombies over North America, Japan would be slightly more prepared for a similar outbreak, or that Umbrella would come clean about it. But no.
At the end of the last movie Alice promised Umbrella she’s visit them in Tokyo and she’d bring some friends. This is them. Alices and clones attack, loads of mooks die, not least from friendly fire as head baddie Wexler is not choosy in who he kills. It all ends with everybody from Umbrella and all the clones dead and Alice free to persue her quest for Arcadia.
Which turns out to be some sort of honeytrap, as she finds a lot of planes but no people, with the exception of a brainwashed Claire Redfield. They set off by plane along America’s west coast and come across a prison, surrounded by thousands of zombies, inhabited by a motly crew of survivors, most of whom won’t make it to the end of the movie.
What struck me this time is how well groomed all these survivors are; Alice and Claire in full make up and pretty boy over there has kept his beard neatly trimmed. The Resident Evil movies always had a sense of style, but by now style has definately won out over substance. This is btw roughly were I first came in with the franchise, one late night after the football had finished. Back then I hadn’t realised how disjointed this movie was, one sequence stitched to another, or how much it was making up on the fly.
Case in point. This fucker. Suddenly there’s a supersized zombie king to make things interesting, a supernatural creature not seen in any of the other movies. This is something the movies have done before, when regular zombies are no longer enough, but it feels like cheating. Here it does what the run of the mill zombies couldn’t and break down the prison walls, functioning as catalyst to trigger our heroes frantic escape.
They escape to the Arcadia, which Alice and co had learned was actually a ship sailing past the west coast, picking up survivors. It is of course a trap and of course it’s Wesker, who died in the first twenty minutes of the movie, who’s the mastermind, having infected himself with a new strain of the virus, keeping at bay with anti-serum and willpower. Cue massive boss fight including both the Redfields, Claire’s brother Chris having been introduced in the prison; a bit late, considering he’s once again an important character from the videogames not given his due in the movie series.
A happy ending? Of course not. Umbrella, for all its incompetence in actually keeping a world worthy to rule over, are very good at having plots within plots and just as everybody is freed and the Arcadia is ready to become a haven for non-infected humans, up pop their gunships again. And who should lead the Umbrella forces but Jill Valentine, proving that a turn to evil always comes with a worsening taste in clothing, as she has her tits out and wears a not very comfortable looking leotard/fishnet combo.
