Resident Evil: The Final Chapter - review

2016 (UK / France / Germany / South Africa / Canada / Japan / Australia / USA)

2017 Sony Pictures Blu-ray R(Free)

Contains mild spoilers.

  

Well it's been a long ride for Alice (Milla Jovovich). Resuscitated with memory loss, attacked without mercy by the scourge of the undead and their corporate overlords, then over the decade hunted and beset by all the increasingly monstrous and depraved super mutants that director Paul W. S. Anderson could conceive. She's been shot, stabbed, sliced, diced and blown from the sky. She's been cloned, watched good friends die, learnt the dark secrets of her past and witnessed the world she knew torn a sunder. To say she's due a break is an understatement but with this instalment, it would appear Anderson might just be finally letting us, and her, enjoy some kind of rest to the madness.

Over the ten years and six chapters we've slowly but surely witnessed a profound cinematic transition to style over narrative, characters, or any real attempt at substance. It's as if someone gave control of the crazy dial to a young excitable boy and then kept ploughing him with coke long after he'd definitely had enough. From a gritty, claustrophobic and earnest debut, success turned into cash, then into budget, and finally unfettered approval to bring life to the most fantastical scenes and effects, and thus did story, congruence and any concerns for character arcs, in turn, fall to the way side. Part five was the epitome of action surplus; a cacophony of battles and over the top and never-ending lunacy that failed utterly to actually be engaging or rewarding precisely because of this deficit accrued. With The Final Chapter I'd argue that while the giddy young fella seems relieved from his sugar purgatory, this is for all intents and purposes the grand finale, and as such, why is there a want to temper things now. Whilst one can see a whisper of desire to return with Alice and the entourage to Racoon City, and to the intimacy and cinematic authenticity of where and when it all began, there's too much water under the bridge; too much superficial silliness to ever really think they could.

By now we understand that it's not the gold star action and cinematic wizardry that will let a Resident Evil film down but the downtime, the moments of peace between the double back flip, the Matrix style kung-fu, or the triple barrelled shot gun into the giant toothy flying mutant of doom (I think a Kipepeo). Yet I've seen The Final Chapter come in for a lot of criticism about how it's all been cut and spliced together. Ultimately I think it comes down to personal taste, as I didn't mind the frantic and chaotic shaky cam approach; in many ways recognising it as a nod to the perils and confusion of war. The fact that so much of it was shot in near darkness however, I did, especially as Anderson to his credit does manage to return the simple un-mutated zombie back to the forefront for a large swathe of the film, and it would have been nice if we could have really seen them in all their glory.

Another recurring problem I have by now, is Alice's invulnerability. I'm all for the epic hero, the Thor or Beowulf blessed by the Gods with incredible fortune as well as strength, but as all about her fall and as buildings tumble, one never get the feeling, not for one second, that's she's actually in any real danger. The problem with winning the no-win scenario, is how do you follow it but with an equally implausible one. It's the magicians conundrum. Day one it's escaping from a box, Day 100, it's escaping from a box suspended over the Grand Canyon, on fire with a rat in your underpants. Watching Alice, yet again dancing with the big Resident Evil brute +1, or the next CGI enhanced video game inspired super boss, there's nothing really new, never any real tension and no tangible threat. Yet again, dare I say, it's all a tad stale and insipid, and no, adding another rat or maybe a cat to the pants won't ever really fix the fundamental problem.

The Final Chapter isn't as bad Retribution but that would have been a hard thing to have accomplished. At least here there is a semblance of a narrative to make sense of the carnage, even it deviates on what we've been told before, and makes a mockery of all the heroes and villains that have come together to give her a final send-off, with what in effect are short meaningless cameos. Through in truth, if anyone is really watching Resident Evil for any semblance of a coherent narrative or intelligent by this point, they're way off the mark. With action this undeniably good I'd be hard pressed to say there isn't something of merit watching Milla's perfect death bringing choreography, or any of the big picture perfect explosions; and I did find some nostalgia in the final scenes despite them ending up an insulting mockery. So as I said, better than the last, but I had very low expectations - 4/10.

Steven@WTD.

Zombie Driller Killer (Dark Souls) - review

2010 (Norway / France)

2012 Lions Gate Home Ent. UK Ltd DVD R(2)

Contains spoilers.

The 2010 Norwegian film Dark Souls, subsequently re-released as Zombie Driller Killer no doubt to take advantage of new tidal wave of zombie affection, is a dark, macabre, brooding tight little budget horror competently made and acted with some delightful little scenes. It's also a rather hard one to review for as much as I respect what director and writers César Ducasse, Mathieu Peteul have put together it really does fail to hold up to any serious scrutiny in any way, with a narrative full of suspect decisions, and an explanation and ending that unravels just when it should be delivering.

I feel some clarity is needed. The driller killers(s - as we later discover) are a group of orange jump-suit Jason wannabes that have set siege to Oslo; jumping unsuspecting passers-by, drilling into their skulls and implanting something that leaves them, albeit after a small period of deadness, vegetative black bile spewing degenerates. These zombies of the piece are for the vast majority exactly this. Sickly with epileptic seizures, neurological disorientation and fast growing cancerous metastasis that's spreading through their central nervous system; the only dangers they present is someone slipping on their spewed bile or tripping over them as they lay lifeless and in the way.

There's none of the usual biting, chasing or gut ripping; the protagonist of the film is the driller killer and he's real, alive and a tangible target for both police and wannabe super sleuth. Johanna Ravn (Johanna Gustavsson) is victim number one and her gruesome (though off camera) end sets the narrative on its way not only for her sub-story focus that sees her slow macabre transformation, but also for her father, Morten Ravn (Morten Rudå), old and portly, single father, music teacher and unlikely hero of the hour. Not only faced with twenty-four hour care of a vegetative daughter who is constantly oozing black bile, he has also decided to take it upon himself to investigate the ever increasing number of attacks and track down the culprit.

There's a patch some one hour in, a five minute interruption where the vegetative rise from their beds and set upon the living, and it's good; I mean really good with tension, horror and an eerie unnatural atmosphere that Fulci would be proud of. Yet that's it. The first hour is the double investigative story, on Johanna and by Morten, and even the final twenty minutes when one thinks, with the zombies out of the closet so to speak, things are likely to get undead and spicy, it again slides back to Morten just running about an industrial factory from semi-zombie henchmen armed all armed with varyingly sized drills; obviously compensating for something. All this build up isn't bad per se; it's a tad meandering but fairly interesting in an x-files investigative drama kind of way. The problem is one of believability and I just never truly bought into the podgy cello teacher as entrepreneurial investigator, never mind swashbuckling hero. And it's not the only inconsistency I found in the story; from a random homeless man happening to know the origin story for the whole oil-based zombie death cult, Morten happening across the driller killers' lair, or the fact that despite the whole city being on lock-down because orange jump suit mask wearing maniacs were drilling all indiscriminately, they were able and quite happy to drive around in broad daylight without garnering any attention. Oh, and we're also supposed to buy into a totally incompetent police force… okay, this one's not so hard.

The driller killers are kind of zombies too though they're more chosen tier one zombies, and not the fetid oil oozing mindless tier two drones that make up their victims. All identically donned, they might be unselective in who they attack, but they're very focused on how. Under orders, control or necessity they jump a victim, drill into the cranium, suck something out then push something in, all for the 'old man' (Gustav-Adolf Hegh) who lives atop the factory rewarding them for their work with a sip of the old black stuff. The origin story, which we learn, conveniently from a chance encounter, is one of a deep oil well and drill (spot the clever parallel) and a mysterious evil let into the world, but beyond this I'll be fucked if I know what's going on. What they're extracting from people, what are they putting back in, why they're doing it, who the 'old man' really is and what his motives are? It's some ancient evil, something to do with hydrocarbons, life and oil and I think the total subjugation of mankind.

An interesting hour and a half, and whilst not convinced at all by zombie driller killer I've certainly had less celluloid fun. The investigative pacing was intriguing and Johanna's degenerative journey enthralling. Some choice decisions aside, introducing the zombies earlier, then seeing through their promise and I think Ducasse and Peteul could have produced that most rare of undead beasts, a budget zombie film that's interesting, original and intelligent. As it is though, zombie driller killer just makes too many wrong turns to off-set all it does get right - 5/10.

Steven@WTD.

Resident Evil: Retribution - review

2012 (Germany / USA / Canada / France)

2013 Sony Pictures Home Ent Blu-ray R(B/2)

Contains mild spoilers.

Twenty Five minutes in, watching Alice (Milla Jovovich) in full black leather glory leap, spin, slash, kick and shoot her way, with sumptuous control and style through one group of slobbering flesh eaters to another, to only finally come up against the equally resplendent Ada (Bingbing Li) ready for another whirlwind CG cat-fight, it came to me director / writer Paul W.S. Anderson had finally, metaphorically and literally lost the plot. One very much for style over substance I'd noticed a general decline in actual coherent content as the budget rose and technology caught up with his flamboyant far reaching designs, and with Resident Evil: Retribution, he's finally reached a new high (or low depending on where we start) in cinematic superfluous superficial silliness. There's no attempt any more to try and provide any rational reason for the series of high octane combat sand box set ups, no attempt whatsoever to reign things in, and totally no remorse for any of it.

This is where I'd normally talk about the story but honestly I could put it all down on the back of a postage stamp. Alice, captured after the fight at the end of Resident Evil: Afterlife gets some help and escapes. That's it. Ok, I'm being a little trite, but if I embellish, adding her escape involves traversing and fighting through a series of connected virtual cityscapes with a vindictive computer AI throwing increasingly absurd and implausible bioengineered opponents at her, it doesn't make it sound any more rich in narrative. Don't get me wrong, it looks spectacular; with grand sweeping virtual camera pans and some jaw dropping virtual sets and ideas, it's just the endless grind of combat and gratuitous drive for the most extravagant of set pieces on the biggest baddest scale, it just all ends up coming across flat, and dare I say all too precariously close to feeling like a series of rehashed scenes all done before.

The problem with with this all action approach is there's no longer any real emotional engagement, character depth or sense of danger. Watching the now seemingly invincible Alice plough through a set of zombies, a pair of executioners and even a gargantuan Uber-Licker one never feels she's ever really in any trouble and the experience feels sterile and even mundane. I'm not sure who's to blame; but whether it's Jovovich or Anderson finally tiring of their cash cow there's a very humdrum and by the book feel to the film as if (re)producing a series of sterile high staged action scenes with CG abandon would be good enough.

Anderson does try, with arguably the best set of sequences of the film; a genuinely engaging ground zero scenario played out with 'real' people in suburbia and it is one ray of hope in the wash of tedium that the series can be saved. Jovovich is now mum and wife and not the uber-fighting killing machine we're accustomed to, and the siege of their little safe world is the one heart pumping moment where there's real dread and anxiety. Her movements to desperately make sense of the whirlwind she finds herself in all the time keeping her little girl safe, with palpably intimidating and chilling, real traditional zombies smashing their way through her living room, is moving and utterly absorbing. Ok it's not Alice's memory, it's those of a clone grown to research and showcase Umbrella's biological weaponry, so it's not a real part of her story any more, but it demonstrates that should Anderson ever feel the need to return Resident Evil to its roots he could do so quite admirably.

By now, five films in, we understand that alongside your more identifiable fast moving Boyle-esque flesh eaters there will be an assortment of other undead / mutant proponents Alice and crew will have to fight. Majini zombies (the ones with the parasitical face thingie) are back along with the executioners I mentioned, but all new are a rather macabre army, literally, of machine gun toting, rocket launching and chain sawing Las Plagas aka Red Army zombies who pack a real mean punch and look like something that could have crawled straight out of Outpost. As said, the connected biodome / narrative of Retribution grants Anderson licence to finally play as much as he likes, so each area is filled with the rafters with all the zombie types the series and games are known for. Yes, it's probably closer to the games, but call me old fashioned, I liked it all better when the main enemy simply wanted to rip into a bit of flesh and hang out in number.

An undoubted CG showcase, cinematically Resident Evil: Retribution is off the scale with lavish effects, perfect make-up and spectacular fighting choreography, but big dial up to eleven effects alone just won't cut it. With a woefully superficial story the whole film comes across as a lazy half-arsed way to include all the daft over scripted fights he could think of, and while the story has never been central to Resident Evil at least with the previous films it tried. The action itself it so sterile to be uninteresting and tedious, and with no real danger, or cause for any of, the audience is utterly unable to engage or care with what's happening. Arguably the worst of the five, Retribution is not style over substance, but style instead of, with a narrative so contrived and perfunctory to be an insult to the viewer, 3/10.

Steven@WTD

Mutants - review

2009 (France)

2010 Momentum Pictures DVD R(2)

Contains mild spoilers.

Moody, brooding, unpleasant; director / co-writer David Morlet certainly doesn't hold back painting quite the depressing picture of what life might actually be like should a viral pandemic sweep the country turning people into uncontrollable violent monsters. Maybe it's a French thing, as like The Horde, there's no sugar coating, no salvation, people aren't nice to each other and if you are attacked it's going to be down right unpleasant.

It's months after the viral outbreak and a pandemic has decimated what was France. The film opens with Sonia (Hélène de Fougerolles) and her partner Marco (Francis Renaud), two paramedics, desperately speeding through the desolate wintry mountain paths of Northern France (it was shot in Picardy though location is never explicitly mentioned in the film). With them and calling the shots somewhat is Perez (Marie-Sohna Condé) a cold military type who is helping them locate Noah, the last controlled stronghold and the only glimmer of hope.

Morlet has a pretty poor opinion of how people would react come the end of the world. I can understand a little utilitarianism and Perez's early action to throw someone who's been bitten from the ambulance and then shoot them in the head is understandable given the circumstances. However her initial cold indifference then open hostility when stopped looking for petrol at the suggestion from Sonia and Marco that they should perhaps look to help a young autistic survivor is just downright self-serving and shitty. Then again the theme is bleak and survival 101, and months of confusion, starvation and little hope would I'd imagine, tend to focus the mind on to doing whatever it takes. Anyway, the upshot to the disagreement is the young autistic kid, who it appears was infected after all, gets shot, Marco gets shot and Perez gets a lot shot.

Mutants is another zombie film which has the protagonists virally deranged but definitely alive. The obvious parallel is 28 Days Later and they certainly have much in common; fast, rabid with a single minded drive to not only beat the living shit out of anyone they notice but sink their teeth in and kindly pass on the virus. I'm not going to go in, yet again, to the rhyme and reason why I now think physical death isn't a mandatory requisite for zombification suffice it to say the poor souls of Mutants have their will and self taken from them by the virus and the people they were are now dead even if they do happen to still have a pulse. There is one big differentiator though between these crazies and Boyle's and it's important not just as a zombie-lore observation but as the key narrative device of the film.

Taking refuge in an abandoned hospital cum isolated forest building, Sonia tends to Marco's wounds and looks to get a radio message to Noah. His initial prognosis is good except for one small thing. It would appear during the earlier struggle he got some of the infected blood in his mouth and he's showing all the early symptoms of the virus too. Mutants may be visceral, violent and unpleasant but it's also calm, gentle and full of affection. The main differentiator between I mentioned is incubation time. There's no immediate reaction; the process is slow, painful to endure and even more painful to watch especially if you're a close loved one. The bulk of the film is watching Marco's painful deterioration and Sonia's beautifully portrayed attempts to never give in despite the weight of inevitability.

The journey from self-aware cognizant individual to rabid primal zombie is uneven, relentless, haunting and explicit. Whether it's watching Marco vomit or piss blood, rip out his hair or teeth or violently convulse, Morlet doesn't hold back letting us watch one of the best cinematic transformations play out with real honesty and starkness.  From fevered dream to paranoia to psychosis; Marco's mental deterioration is just as distressing, and as you watch the man swing in and out of himself there's a pervasive uncomfortable feeling you're intruding into something deeply personal and private.

Mutants is a remarkable film; unremittingly bleak and evocatively shot with moody slow sequences and a brilliant unobtrusive score. It's violent and gratuitous, full of head shots, brain smashing, shooting and some powerful exploitative themes played around with, yet it's also tender, and a desperate personal love story. There's a lot going on with the infected though I'm not sure all of it works. By maintaining they're alive, there's the added complication of exactly how they're staying alive given the long winter months and lack of food and shelter and there's also pseudo psychic sequence that while I can see what Morlet was trying to do comes across a bit clumsy and overly-artistic. They're small gripes overall, and I can't help but be quite enamoured, recommended, 7/10.

Steven@WTD.

Zombie Lake - review

1981 (France/Spain)

2013 Redemption Blu-ray R(All)

Contains spoilers.

Director Jean Rollin thought Zombie Lake so bad he tried to hide his role in it and used the pseudonym J.A. Laser, and he ought to know. And I actually didn't mind the whole thing for thirty odd minutes or so. The gratuitous and totally unnecessary exploitative ten minute (well it felt that long) naked skinny dip was at least pleasing to the eye, the first couple of zombie deaths were amusing and original, and the picture of a small rural French town physically and psychologically recovering from the occupation and what they had to do to resist was taking shape. Oh, I'm not for one minute going to say what I was watching was good. The acting was wooden, the narrative pedestrian and the zombies bizarre and unconvincing with appalling make-up and the death of the second victim resembled more of a zombie slobber than a gore but it had a certain European low budget je ne sais quoi. The problem with Zombie Lake though is that this was as good as it was going to get.

With the other hour or so watched I can frankly say I honestly don't know what Rollins who I understand only arrived on set a fortnight before filming, the writers and the crew were thinking when they put this drivel together, but I wished they hadn't.

There's a dark secret to the so called Lake of the Damned town mayor (Howard Vernon) tells reporter Katya (Marcia Sharif) looking for the inside scoop on the bizarre tale of ghosts and the spate of recent disappearances. The dark secret we learn through a convenient if not entirely convincing flashback, was an ambush, ten years earlier by the local resistance on a back peddling patrol of Nazis, with their bodies thrown in the water. For an oppressed persecuted nation I'd hardly call it a dark secret and more a reason to hold a yearly festival; but anyway, this isn't the whole story. We also learn that one of the soldiers (Pierre-Marie Escourrou) was in love with local girl (Nadine Pascal), who nine months earlier had thanked him for saving her from a mortar strike by taking her kit off in the hay barn and letting him impregnate her with a daughter he briefly gets to learn of before being shot.

Ok and I hear you. What does this all have to do with zombies coming out of the water at night to prey on the towns ample more attractive lady folk? Well nothing. But... and this exemplifies Zombie Lake for the incompetent, incoherent, farcical, convoluted nonsense that it is, a few centuries before all this, and apparently this wasn't important to know until near the end, and in fact I get the feeling no one involved in the writing had any inkling either, the 'Damned Lake of the Damned' was actually the site of black mass, sacrifice and all manner of satanic jiggery-pokery and souls thrown into the water were condemned to eternal damnation or something or other. The undead soldiers you see, are up and at 'em because of the combination of all these things.

I don't care to be honest. It's all nonsense and it doesn't come together in any reasonably coherent fashion. The zombies are rubbish, the acting is poor, the music sounds like someone with extreme epilepsy had been put in front of a glockenspiel and they'd turned the strobe lights up to 11, the pacing is all over the place and the story as mentioned is a babbling brew of bunkum and baloney. I understand Rollin isn't adverse to a little titilation but the constant nudity on show here is feeble, contrived and unnecessarily gratuitous. Multiple times the use of the lake is exploited with excessively objectifying up-facing underwater shots concentrated a little too much on the girls crotches with their heads not visible above the surface to be comfortable or ever erotic. I really don't know what Rollin was aiming for as the narrative ends up being an incomprehensible horror, thriller, love story all wrapped up as a European-art house, soft porn Benny Hill style, grind-house/exploitation mess. It never at any time aludes to a singular identity and switches its narrative and presentation style frequently with no reason or consistency and its portrayal of the zombie as the protaganist is no better.

The first thing I took from Rollin's interpretation of the now reasonably established zombie, was the fact they were incredible-hulk comic-book coloured green. Ok, they'd been under the lake for ten years so it could be algae or something but they weren't exactly fetid oozing bloated pustules of slime. There is an attempt to present some of the background undead as a bit dirty and fetid but on more than one occasion, either the love-forlorn main hero-zombie or the zombie nazi commandant made an appearance with clean well tended hair, a dry well pressed uniform and spray on green tan that didn't completely cover all his wrists or neck. The second thing was what a large incoherent mish-mash of ideas were being played around with. From the first zombie emerging from the watery grave to successfully skulk, stalk and take down his prey, to the esoteric uncomfortable zombie-daddy daughter love pact resulting in zombie on zombie wrestlemania, to the random, brazen full-on sieges of the town, there's never any convincing or cohesive reasons for why any of it happening. They're mindless dead thirsting for flesh and blood, they're loving and protective, they're taking order off their old leader, they're sharing a bucket of blood, passing a bowl knowingly between themselves, they're a bit of this, a bit of that and a right bloody cacophany of ideas from people who didn't know what they were doing.

I could honestly go on criticising Zombie Lake all night, really I could. A real stinker of a film with little to no redeeming quality I'll probably only remember it for the out of place nudity and terrible green make-up. The Redemption Blu-ray is clean and crisp though, if the sound is a tad muffled and muted at times, and presents all Rollin's daftness as well anyone would want. Whether anyone would want it though is another question, 2/10.

WTD.

Resident Evil: Afterlife - review

2010 (Germany / France / USA / Canada)

2012 Sony Pictures Home Ent. Resident Evil 1-4 Collection. Blu-ray R(All)

Contains spoilers.

Now I've unapologetically given this series a lot of slack. In fact I'd go one further and say that I've been positively enthusiastic about the previous three entries, acknowledging their place in the zombie story and praising Director/Writer Paul W. S. Anderson's lavish reliance on larger than life effects and often over stylised production. Often lambasted by the zombie crowd for being too shallow and Hollywood, I've personally found them, as long as you don't take it seriously, fun, dramatic and flicks you want to whoop at, and throw your pop corn in the air to.

The Resident Evil series has always acknowledged its video game roots with daft boss fights and ridiculous zombie-hybrid mutations, but at heart it's still been unashamedly about zombies. Whether it was the tight claustrophobic first entry, the escape from the city survival second, or post-apocalyptic expansive mad-max third, the main protagonist, albeit increasingly less now I think about it, has always really been our gnarly flesh eating friends. Here we are with the fourth effort and all this seems to have been forgotten. It's thirty minutes till we even see a zombie and fifty before our first encounter and even this is one of the evolved Las Plagas parasite, video game ones. In fact other than the roof top fight and escape I don't think our straightforward, no nonsense undead really make an appearance, other than as background noise. Instead Alice (Milla Jovovich), Claire Redfield (Ali Larter) and brother Chris (Wentworth Miller) are generally pitted against the faceless uniform soldiers of the Umbrella Corp and their boss Albert Wesker (Shawn Roberts). In many respects these soldiers have replaced the role of the zombies for Afterlife as mindless do as they're told automaton cannon fodder. The problem is they neither as interesting or as good at providing tension.The whole first sequence which should be a cinematic tour de force as Alice and her army of clones storms the Tokyo umbrella research base ends up dare I say, feeling a little flat and that's the problem that follows the film through to the finale.

There isn't much plot, then again there never really is. Alice, brings the fight to Wesker then goes looking for the Alaskan paradise mentioned at the end of Extinction. Unable to find it she bumps into some survivors holed up in a Los Angeles prison, discovers the real location of Arcadia (the haven), lets all the non-main characters die and gets into a few boss fights. Oh, and on the way she loses her superhuman jedi powers, yet still manages to survive a nasty plane crash unscathed. It's all a little tame and empty and that wouldn't normally really matter too much, I mean I enjoyed the last three. The problem as we've said is that it seems to be missing something...

Let's look at the zombies; though there's not a lot to say. The actual zombies are as we've seen in previous instalments; they're fast, hungry and driven by instinct, and they like to hang out in as large a group as possible. What we see far more of in Afterlife though is the majini game enemies, who if I recall my Resident Evil game knowledge are humans with their minds and bodies parasitically controlled. In the games I'm pretty sure the parasite only appears once their host is shot in the head (up till then the host is alive). Those on display here look more dead to begin with, so perhaps they're some new zombie-mutations Anderson made up; still it's all pretty daft stuff and I'm beyond thinking think too much about it at this stage. The other big zombie Anderson decided to bring to the party is the Executioner Majini who's straight out the game. Whilst all this pays great homage to the games I'm not quite sure this far into a film series that's already gone significantly off on its own it all quite works and comes across as a little implausible and silly. As I've said I've always taken the boss fights and fantasy of the films with a grain of salt and treated them as something to smile through after an hour or so of great zombie fighting and tension. Afterlife seems to be big daft boss fight after big daft boss fight without any of great zombie story stuff and it misses it. Ok, there's fifteen minutes or so, in the prison where it all seems to start working again but it's all over before it really begins with Anderson preferring to move on to something bigger and more ambitious at the first opportunity. As for the big finale against Wesker, Anderson manages to reach even new heights of absurdity, even for Resident Evil, takings things off the scale, giving him vampire like speed and agility and filming a sequence that would feel right at home in The Matrix. It's all too much.

Definitely the weakest in the series, Afterlife is the perfect example of style over substance. Anderson seems to have lost the essence of what makes a good Resident Evil film crafting a series of high intensity highly scripted action sequences and forgetting to include much narrative or any of the zombie survival story I like. It's not all bad and Afterlife is still big and bold like its predecessors with expansive panning shots, crazy-scale numbers of zombies on screen and great choreography, and you can't help but be impressed at times. It's just all too shallow and derivative though and never really captures the feelings of tension or excitement we've seen before. Disappointing, 5/10.

Steven@WTD.

The Horde - review

2009 (France)

2010 Momentum Pictures Home Ent DVD R(2)

Contains mild spoilers.

After the warm and fuzzy Warm Bodies and rather timid by today's standard The Plague of the Zombies I felt the need for something, as they say in the film, a bit more hardcore.

La Horde or The Horde as it was called for a US audience that probably got confused, is an unreserved comic book action film with zombies. In a good making of documentary extra, French directors and writers Benjamin Rocher and Yannick Dahan were unabashed in their aims, declaring they wanted foremost to make an action film from the 80s that was over the top, excessive and foremost very European centric. Whilst they loved zombies they cared little of established genre traditions, especially the US Romero flavour, they would make the zombies work for the action and not vice versa. I'm in the camp that says genre conventions are there to be broken or else there is the danger it would all become stale and look forward to seeing new things being tried, and in all honesty having now watched some of the most visceral, brutal zombie scenes I've yet seen, I really don't think they don't care about zombies.

La Horde doesn't waste time. Four Parisian police offers covertly infiltrate a dilapidated, high rise on the outskirts of town to take revenge on a crime boss who has killed one of their own. They get it hopelessly wrong, get captured and then without warning the end of the world falls down on all of them a like a proverbial ton of shit-bricks. It's visceral, impactful, shocking and sudden. One second they're at odds, police vs gangsters, and I'd even had to quickly check the box to see that I'd got the right film, that it wasn't an action cop film, the next the world is literally trying to break their door down and brutally slaughter and eat them.

The zombies in La Horde are mean, nasty, gnarly bad-asses with teeth like piranhas. They're as quick as those in Boyles' 28 Days Later but stronger and more vicious, sadistic and unrelenting and whilst I'm used to the-shooting-them-in-the-body-has-no-effect - got-to-shoot-them-in-the-head trope I've never seen it played out quite so extremely. Rocher and Dahan weren't kidding when they said they wanted over the top comic book action, and from their first appearance every encounter is frantic, on the edge, visceral and very, very bloody. With frenetic camera work with shake, speed-ups, breaks and strobe effects the feeling of panic and desperation is pervasive and adds to the brilliantly to an unremitting pace. It reminded me a lot of Rec which came out while they were shooting.

For all the blood, gore and genuine attention at making up the zombies to look as evil and dangerous as possible, the comic book over-tone somehow makes the film not actually that scary. The over the top fight scenes and heavy reliance on hand to hand combat, with excessive use of head butts, speeded up and repetitious hit-sequences give it all an almost surreal, comical feel. You know those sequences in tom and jerry when jerry would hit tom with a frying pan over and over in a loop; they're like that. The film really is also, when all said and done, just a sequence of these scenes too, with the time spent in between just short breathers before moving us quickly onto the next. It's all highly stylised with original touches of flourish, and immaculately shot but it's all a little shallow and you wonder whether they should have been a little more ambitious.

A tight, claustrophobic high intensity action zombie film La Horde is a relentless assault of the senses. As bloody and gory as anything else out there its comic book feel dampens the scares to leave more of a smile on your face than a feeling of discomfort. With some ludicrous over the top scenes and an audacious finale it's certainly very enjoyable though-out with much memorable characters and dialogue. La Horde is a recommended bloody roller-coaster ride that taught me two things. One, that whilst I entertain a longing for the zombie apocalypse, in reality it probably wouldn't be very nice and two, never fuck with a Nigerian, 7/10.

Steven@WTD.

Resident Evil: Extinction - review

2007 (France / Australia / Germany / UK / USA)

2012 Sony Pictures Home Ent. Resident Evil 1-4 Collection. Blu-ray R(All)

Contains spoilers.

Well, here we go again. In the opening scene Alice (Milla Jovovich) wakes dazed, confused and once again dressed like the day she was born. Adorning her trademark red dress and black boots that are carefully laid out for, she finds herself in familiar territory faced with deadly obstacles from the past. Successfully past the crisscross laser room of doom with the reflexes of a cat, everything seems normal she's in control and ready to kick ass, then bang! She's dead. Enter two scientists and her body is tossed out onto a pile of identical doubles in the middle of a fenced up desert compound with instructions from head Umbrella scientist and all round general bad guy responsible for the previous instalments Nemesis program Dr. Sam Isaacs (Iain Glen) to take a blood sample so they can go again.

Yes we're back in writer and producer Paul W. S. Anderson's pop-corn, adrenalin fuelled mind full of zombies, apocalyptic-viruses, secret corporations, mutation and mayhem for a third instalment.

It's now five years since the t-virus outbreak and the Earth is dead, mankind are on the verge of extinction, what rag tag people that have managed to stay alive are surviving on the edge, moving from place to place seeking whatever scant resources they can. Even the Umbrella organisation, headed by Albert Wesker (taken directly from the video game franchise and played by Jason O'Mara) are struggling with dwindling food supplies and are pinning all their hopes on the good Dr. Isaacs to find a solution. However with the failure of his plan to domesticate the zombies; captured in a brilliant scene paying obvious homage to Bub from Day of the Dead, all his attention has returned to the aforementioned Project Alice.

Meanwhile the undead are everywhere; they've assumed total control of every built up area and despite five years show no sign of weakening and fading away. One such group of survivors on the verge of death from a t-virus Alfred Hitchcock-esque birds attack, and coincidently containing previous heroes Claire Redfield (Ali Larter),  Carlos Olivera (Oded Fehr) and L.J. Wayne (Mike Epps) are saved by the now evolved tremendous psychic ability of Alice but in doing so she gives away her position to Umbrella.

Directed by Russell Mulcahy, Resident Evil: Extinction is once again highly stylised and full of spectacular and relentless action and combat sequences. Gone is the now claustrophobic feel of the first two films, the first in the tight confines of the Umbrella compound, the second in Raccoon City. Resident Evil: Extinction has our heroes traversing the vast expanses of the Mojave and Vegas now half returned to the sands of the desert. It oozes atmospheric and evokes the feeling of expanse found in films such as Mad Max.

Say what you will about Paul W. S. Anderson's approach to zombie cinema, especially when held up against more political, satirical, intelligent or funny endeavours, but it knows what it is trying to do and how to pack a punch. And while it may fail to compete with the highbrow and the lowbrow genre has to offer it excels in the pop-corn niche it has carved for itself. Anderson's zombies are relentless, quick and nasty, as is Alice's speed at dispatching them. Her constant spinning, shooting and leaping as she slashes monster after monster with unnerving control and poise is high octane stuff and if I'm honest brutally entertaining. With a big budget they also managed to capture some of the largest undead gatherings I've seen on film though I couldn't help but notice the uniformity of the zombies during several of the fight scenes as if there were only ten or so masked actors, all the same height and weight who needed do the job of fifty. Maybe I missed a point somewhere that they were zombie clones but I doubt it... But I'm nit picking.

Okay it has its daft zombie-mutant-super-monster hybrid boss fight again and the whole psychic stuff turning Alice into a bit of a Jedi is a bit daft but it's true to the video games and keeps the adrenalin pumping. I'm well aware it's not for everyone but I'm always happy for a bit of leave the brain behind entertainment now and again. Compared to the first two; it's definitely safe to say it's more of the same but that's not a bad thing in my book. Within it's own series though it has still managed to forge it's own distinct identity and voice and felt fresh. Films like this make me happy, 8/10.

Steven@WTD.

Resident Evil: Apocalypse - review

2004 (Germany / France / UK / Canada / USA)

2012 Sony Pictures Home Ent. Resident Evil 1-4 Collection. Blu-ray R(All)

Contains Spoilers

Whilst I felt I should come at the Paul W.S. Anderson's second instalment in the fun popcorn flick franchise expecting to be both dissatisfied with it as a coherent action movie and also with its zombie credentials, in truth I was actually looking forward to just being entertained with more of the same. For some reason the Resident Evil series whilst being a huge commercial success, has failed to gain the respect or acknowledgement from zombie film fans; maybe it's that old adage that makes niche and publicly successful mutually exclusive, or maybe I'm just easily satisfied. I mean the zombie genre if we're honest doesn't necessarily demand the highest levels of narrative control or strict serious portrayal of its subject matter, and quite frankly often and successfully plays with this fact. I've watched and enjoyed many a cult classic that under closer scrutiny fall apart, so why Resident Evil should be singularly picked apart so mercilessly is beyond me. I really didn't see much wrong with the first film. It remained true to its video-game roots as well as forging a new narrative branch of its own, its portrayal of zombies was authentic, brutal and didn't stray from established zombie canon, and I felt it satisfied my zombie itch as well as being a good fun kick-ass action film.

And more of the same I got. Directly following the events of Resident Evil Alice again played again Milla Jovovich and again naked to start with, wakes up in a secure Umbrella hospital in Raccoon City. Pulling out her wires and tubes she stumbles out into a city ravaged by the escape of the T-virus from the Hive alone and confused. It's all very apocalyptic, I Am Legend, and very reminiscent of 28 Days Later which was released a couple of years earlier. Slowly regaining her memories Alice learns that during her incarceration she has been experimented on and now possesses superhuman strength and agility; hold on I hear you say, isn't that like the first film and well yes it is but this time she's an even more kick-ass superhuman than before and is aware of the fact pretty much from the off.

On the other side of the city police officer Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory) attempting to help evacuate the remaining survivors through an Umbrella checkpoint witnesses firsthand the mega-corporation's callous disregard of law and human rights as they close it off condemning those left inside to certain death. Seeking refuge in an abandoned church with Sergeant Peyton Wells (Razaaq Adoti) and news reporter Terri Morales (Sandrine Holt) we learn that as well as facing zombies they have to deal with overwhelming supermutants, but fortunately, and with a dramatic entrance, they have Alice on their side.

Alice and the gang soon get offered the chance of escape but only if they can locate and rescue the now isolated and trapped daughter Angela (Sophie Vavasseur) of Dr. Charles Ashford (Jared Harris) the Umbrella scientist responsible for T-virus, which was originally intended as a cure for her rare genetic illness. Ashford also extends the offer to Carlos Olivera (Oded Fehr) and his team of Umbrella soldiers who have also been abandoned in the city after setting down to defend innocent citizens from the zombie onslaught and the two groups team up against all that Umbrella head honcho Timothy Cain (Thomas Kretschmann) can throw at them, which includes the latest subject in the Nemesis project.

With the virus out of control, the city designated for nuclear destruction and Alice on the loose Cain sees the perfect opportunity for a live combat experimentation. Taken straight from the video games Umbrella unleashes Nemesis project; a huge, hulking, monstrous humanoid born from perverted T-Virus experimentation uses powerful heavy weaponry and computer controlled guidance on Alice and the gang and in true video game style this even leads to highly styled, action packed and rather contrived boss-fight ending to the film.

 Yes it's all a bit far-fetched and unsubstantial, and you feel what narrative there is, is really there just to drive the many action sequences, but it's all relatively coherent does a good enough job to hold it all together. Gone is the tight claustrophobic feel of the first film; now replaced with the large urban sprawl of the city and a focus on big budget expansive scenes and action. Make no mistake Resident Evil: Apocalypse isn't a horror film and other than a few scenes in the school that you feel were put in for something to talk about; the film is unashamedly an action flick. There's explosions, gun fights, martial arts, helicopters, hordes of zombies getting shot and a big kick-ass climax and it all flies past at quite a pace, Anderson obviously reluctant to give anyone a chance to stop and question what exactly is taking place.

Now I enjoyed the first film and I can say I enjoyed this as well. It is what it is and pulls it off with style and aplomb. Jovovich shines in the role once again as the rest of the cast struggle to impose themselves, but there's no bad performances and her interactions with them feels genuine enough. There's also the question of whether it's really a zombie film. Unlike the first film where the main protagonist was most definitely the zombies throughout, this time the central battle is really Alice against Nemesis and the zombies take a bit of back-seat; it's more an action film with zombies more than a zombie film per se. This being said the pandemic is still very much real and the undead horde still play a very prominent part; there's gruesome deaths, dramatic expansive sequences in Raccoon City, lots of biting and head shots and they are still the ever present constant. It's still very much a zombie film in my book.

Just because one rarely sees an entry from the Resident Evil franchise in top zombie film lists doesn't mean one should ignore them; if you watch them for what you'll find they're competent, compelling and extremely well put together additions to the genre. Like it's predecessor Resident Evil: Apocalypse is fresh, fun and a great action pop-corn zombie flick; just don't think too hard, 7/10.

Steven@WTD.

Resident Evil - review

2002 (UK / France / Germany / USA)

2012 Sony Pictures Home Ent. Resident Evil 1-4 Collection. Blu-ray R(All)

Contains spoilers

Now if I've read the dedicated Resident Evil fans correctly, I've gone all about this the wrong way. You see I'd watched all the films either on or at least within a year or two of their initial release way before being introduced to the games. I've now played 4 and 5, in the wrong order I might add and I'm very much of the mind set they're two branches of the same tree, complimenting each other and idealistically twinned but not necessarily needing to follow exactly the same rules or tell the same stories. I mean from where I'm sitting the whole RE world is a bit far fetched and incoherent so what's in a bit of artistic licence. 

With this in mind I went back to Resident Evil (1) with some trepidation.  As well as having generally low expectations of it, just as a film, because I'm now more immersed in the gaming side of RE I expected to be outraged at writer and director Paul W. S. Anderson's total betrayal of its origins. However, now I've watched it again, whilst I'll happily acknowledge it's definitely a different take on the universe, I also think the film does work as a worthy tribute to the franchise and is a well written, well acted, bloody good claustrophobic sci-fi action zombie romp to boot.

Under Raccoon City the all powerful Umbrella Corporation conduct highly dangerous and hugely profitable top secret biological, chemical and genetic experimentation. The research facility known as the Hive is manned by 500 people and after the genetically engineered T-virus gets loose, the facility's artificial intelligence kicks in and controls the situation by killing all those contaminated and sealing itself off from the rest of the world.

So to the star of the show; Alice (Milla Jovovich) regains consciousness naked in the shower of a mansion above The Hive with no memory of who she is or what she's doing there. She stumbles into Matt (Eric Mabius) an investigative journalist who's trying to find evidence of The Umbrella Corporation's illegal and immoral work just as a crack group of commandos sent to investigate the situation storm the building.

Taking Alice and Matt with them they infiltrate The Hive, uncover fellow amnesiac Spence (James Purefoy) and explain they work for Umbrella and have been sent to investigate why the computer AI known as The Red Queen has killed everyone and how Alice and Spence have been gassed by the Red Queen causing them to forget they also worked for Umbrella as a married undercover couple protecting the mansion.

After a few mishaps getting past the AI's defences, the depleted group get themselves to the core of the Red Queen and successfully reboot her despite her warnings. With her defences down the depleted gang learn the hard way that she was the only thing protecting them from the effects the T-virus has had on the staff of the facility.

The T-virus is of course the zombie virus and the staff have all been infected. As we're introduced to Anderson's zombies we find they adhere to the established traditional western model; they're mindless and driven by impulse and a primal desire for the sustenance of human flesh, they require severe head trauma (read:  bullet to the noggin) to put them down permanently and they seem to prefer to roam in packs. As we've seen before the T-virus is transmitted through blood so a bite or a scratch and you're in trouble. What's interesting here though is that if treated quickly, I'm assuming before the victim dies, there's actually an anti-virus.

With the zombie threat released the film becomes a battle for survival with the group desperately trying to make their way out before the automatic defences kick in and the facility is locked down for good. On this journey Alice starts to regain her memories and the fact she's not a helpless pretty young thing but actually a kick-ass ultimate fighting champion. As she kicks, jumps, weaves, punches and shoots with pin point precision through many tight action-packed zombie sequences we realise the suspense and horror of the first half of the film has made way for something else but it's no big loss; Anderson seems at home with the high octane stuff and it's meticulously constructed and highly stylised.

Anderson has done a fantastic job of producing a coherent tight claustrophobic sci-fi experience full of suspense and great action scenes. The soldiers are a bit formulaic and there isn't much depth to the characters but there's enough there for the film to get by. From Alice waking alone and confused in an empty house her journey overcoming her amnesia is used to drive the narrative, and the film does a good job of aligning this with the pace of action. A slow intense start builds to a frenetic action based climax and whilst I didn't particularly care for the super-mutant that's pitted against the survivors I didn't actively dislike it and it produced a fist-thumping good ending.

As I've said before I think Anderson has done a good job of paying homage to the franchise as well as crafting a solid zombie survival story that stands up against the genre. I don't see Resident Evil on many top zombie film lists and this is a pity as there's really nothing really very wrong with it. Strong, stylish and a little different, 8/10.

Steven@WTD.