Resident Evil, or The Editors Kids as we like to call them, has proved to be saving grace for director Paul W S Anderson having been lambasted for many of his films unfairly so in the case of Alien vs Predator and after some of his earlier films such as ‘Soldier’ he needed a hit and found it with what has turned out to be the successful game to film adaptation ever with the current 5 films having made over $1billion on their modest budgets. In fairness Anderson was the obvious choice for the franchise having proved himself with Mortal Kombat one of the best game to film adaptations. Having written every film in the franchise he’s still savvy enough to have a prologue that explains everything that’s gone before to draw in new audiences
So what we have here is a world ravaged by a virus concocted by a Corporation that turned the population into zombies save for a few pockets of humans hiding out. It’s here that Milla Jovovich as Alice is alerted to the antivirus that can cure everyone the only hurdle being that it’s in the bowels of the Corporations Building.
It’s from here that as she makes her way to their HQ she meets up with a squabbling ragtag of fighters who assist in her quest for the antidote. With the likes of the ever lovely Ruby Rose and the oddly voiced Fraser James who has a constant pained look on his face, all of them are really only there to be picked off one by one in some decent set pieces involving a zombie siege, a battle against a huge wind turbine and assorted zombie attacks. With a villainous Iain Glen as Dr Marcus, who at times looks like he was the next choice as lead in The Matrix, being bumped off only to return intact because of a seemingly endless queue of his clones and a fantastic array of monsters it’s all gloriously exhausting and is so pacily edited that you struggle to catch your breath though it also helps to gloss over several plot holes.
Director Anderson is at the top of his game here and revels in the world he has created with some stunning visuals, impressively bleak landscapes, and some quirky touches such as the undead zombies hung by the neck from a bridge yet still twitching with life.
Milla Jovovich has been in the franchise since it started in 2002 but at 42 years of age still looks supermodel super and it would be wrong to say that she’s getting too long in the tooth for this type of role when Schwarzenegger, Stallone and Willis are still doing these action roles and even Harrison Ford who is 75 this year and will be playing Indiana Jones again.
Quite whether this really is the final chapter is anyone’s guess as there’s room for more and if this proves to be as successful as the previous five films its highly unlikely that the studio will turn its nose up at making another stack of cash.
Here’s the trailer…….
