“My Name is Alice, and I remember everything.”
That’s the tagline for “Resident Evil: Apocalypse,” the new sequel to 2002’s surprise horror hit “Resident Evil,” which was itself based on a popular franchise of shoot-’em-up video games.
The basic plot of the “Resident Evil” universe revolves around the evil Umbrella Corporation, which has engineered and released a virus that’s turned the happy citizens of Raccoon City into a bunch of flesh-crazed zombies. In the first film, heroine Alice (Milla Jovovich) used her know-how as Umbrella’s former head of security to help a team of zombie fighters combat the infected scientists, mutated animals, and malfunction supercomputer that had overrun corporate headquarters. The operation failed, and only Alice survived to keep up human resistance in the face of the zombie holocaust.
“Apocalypse” resumes the action where the first film left off. Alice is still wandering through Raccoon City in a towel, a trusty shotgun at her side. All over town survivors are running for their lives, but Umbrella bigwigs have quarantined the city and smell an opportunity to test out a slew of new bio-weapons on a captive audience, even going so far as firing live ammunition into a crowd of would-be escapees. Oh, the humanity!
One character sums up the disastrous turn of events like this: “We thought we had survived the horror, but we were wrong.” I know the feeling.
Back in 2002 I suffered through the first “Evil” film, secure in the knowledge that I wouldn’t have to slog through a sequel. Time makes fools of us all, and here I am in 2004 trying to put into words my bitter distaste for “Apocalypse.” The first film was just boring; the sequel achieves new levels of viewer discomfort.
The film’s being distributed by, ironically enough, Screen Gems, and it’s the sort of cinematic black hole that only comes along (thankfully) once or twice every year. It’s a loud, messy, ugly action film, in which the laws of physics, common sense and smart filmmaking simply don’t apply. Inert, incompetent, and incoherent, “Resident Evil: Apocalypse” is one of the worst films this critic has seen in a long time.
The script, penned by sci-fi hack extraordinaire Paul W.S. Anderson (“Event Horizon,” “Alien Vs. Predator,” the first “Evil”), is a wasteland of clichs and brainless gunplay. Cryptic catchphrases are punctuated with gun cocks. Dopey characters refuse to put infected friends out of their misery until it’s too late. The Euro-trash villain sneers through unintentional howlers like “Computers. So unreliable… Just like people!” Extras cower and stutter through rote action chestnuts like “Sir, you better take a look at this” and “Hang on to something”!, the latter of which turns out to be great advice for surviving a nuclear explosion.
Anderson has passed helming duties on to first-time director Alexander Witt, who orchestrates the chaos with all the subtlety of a jonesing crack addict. Witt seems to have graduated from the school of modern horror filmmaking that mistakes loud noises and frenetic camera work for thrills. He manages one genuine jolt in the film’s first five minutes, but after that it’s all cheap tricks and false alarms. Scenes meant to be tense-at an unsettlingly quiet church, at an unsettlingly quiet junior high science lab-peter out with disconcerting flatness.
Witt throws everything but the kitchen sink at the audience, and none of it works. He rips off his action style straight from “The Matrix,” all slick and slow motion and CGI and soulless. Characters fly through the air and sprint down the sides of buildings, guns blazing and harnesses firmly in place for moment after moment of dull green-screen stunt work. Loud heavy metal accompanies every punch, bite, and bullet. Witt also tries to jazz up his zombies by shooting them in herky-jerky slo-mo and amping up their growls until they sound like lions with mics shoved down their throats.Which brings me to a point about zombies. Zombies are simply not engaging characters. They don’t have complex motivations. They don’t experience much growth, and they never sit around delivering soul-searching monologues or talking about their dreams. Good zombie films (“Dawn of the Dead” and “28 Days Later”) aren’t about the zombies as much as they’re about how average human characters deal with zombies in interesting and realistic ways.
No such luck in the “Resident Evil” films. They’re as cold and one-note as the games that inspired them. Perhaps that’s the point. Anderson and Witt offer up a digital world where heroes can defy gravity and out-jump flames, a celluloid shooting gallery where everything that moves becomes a target.
Characters you don’t really know or care about kill or get killed. Watching “Apocalypse” is like playing a particularly frenetic video game, without the interaction or the blisters.
No wonder then that the acting in the film is so synthetic. Milla Jovovich and Jared Harris (as a wheelchair-bound scientist in search of his missing daughter) are above this schlocky material, but their stiff performances do little to elevate it. And don’t get me started on Mike Epps, who takes a poorly-written comic supporting role and turns it into a master class on how to flog mildly unfunny material into abhorrently unfunny material.
“Why are you still here? You shoulda got out while you had the chance,” asks one character halfway through the film. I wondered that myself. What kept me glued to that theater seat aside from the paycheck I hoped to get by submitting this review? What kept me from walking out when all the explosions and demon dogs began to become overwhelming?
Cheap laughs. “Resident Evil: Apocalypse” is brimming over with unintended humor, from cheesy dialogue to bad performances to a graveyard set that looks imported straight from Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video. Try to sustain a giggle when the solemn words “Hive Entrance – Beneath Raccoon City” flash across the screen. Or when you begin to notice that every shooting location seems to have at least one prominently-displayed flaming automobile. Or at the insane notion of zombie hookers. Or anytime Nemesis is hulking across the screen.
A few words about Nemesis. Umbrella has created this monstrous Orc-looking creature called the Nemesis that’s designed for combat and, well, I never could understand what else. Basically, the filmmakers set up Nemesis as the big boss that Alice will have to fight at the end of the movie, sort of the M. Bison of “Resident Evil: Apocalypse.” Trouble is, Nemesis is far too goofy to inspire much dread. He growls and bares his latex fangs, lurching around slowly and clunkily with all the panache of a beached whale. Plus, he’s decked out in lamentably silly body armor, and his weapon of choice is a rocket launcher. And we’re supposed to take this seriously?
OK, so “Resident Evil: Apocalypse” isn’t as apocalyptic as it could be. It’s like the fabled four horsemen showing up in a hail of thunderous hellfire, only to stab at humanity with sabers made of cardboard. As bad as the film is, it’s too harmless to inflict irredeemable casualties. And at a brisk 90 minutes, it’s nowhere near as soul-crushing as early summer’s 120+ minutes “Van Helsing.” “Apocalypse” ends with the promise of another sequel. Last-minute plot twists reveal that the virus may once again see the light of day and that zombies may once again mosey down the streets of Raccoon City. When all this happens, I won’t be anywhere in sight.
My name is Gabe, and I remember everything about the “Resident Evil” films. And, man, oh, man, do I wish I could forget!