09/13/2004 Archived Entry: "Resident Evil: Apocalypse"

May contain some spoilers. You are warned.

Resident Evil: Apocalypse is a good popcorn flick. Just don't expect super depth from it. Turn brain off, eat your concession stand food etc.

PreZ liked the story better than in the first one, which he hasn't seen since we saw it in theatres, but which left him with the feeling that there were gaping plotholes of stuff that wasn't explained well enough. Mostly the stuff like why the Red Queen was nastily vindictive, rather than just doing her job. I saw the ~~butchered~~ cut-for-tv version on Thursday, and found it pretty straight forward.

I think I might agree that this one was more entertaining, it's very definitely more action packed than the first one. If you go see it for zombies, most of that takes somewhat of a backseat to the rest of the story, and it's not just strictly survival horror in the way that Dawn of the Dead (remake) was. Then again, it's probably good that they didn't bother trying to emulate that anyway.

They did pull a bit of a Sigourney Weaver/Alien 4 on Alice in this one though, which might have been a bit trite, but I'll assume this is in line with the game plotline.

There's your usual cast of superficial characters that gets divided into "they'll die" "they'll survive" and your token surviving black guy, dressed like a 70s pimp complete with bling-bling, who is also the comedic center piece of the movie. I wonder when movies will stop insulting various races in this particular way.

The plot is fairly straight forward. The movie picks up where the first one left off, a few weeks after Alice and Matt escaped the hive and were taken into Umbrella custody. Alice finds herself alone in a medical facility, and sets out to find out what happened. Through flashbacks you see what happened...

Umbrella scientists decide they need to reopen the hive to find out what happened there. Common sense would dictate that you interrogate the people who survived... but one wouldn't have a movie (or game?) if people were smart like that. And so they open up the hive, and use inadequate lighting to look around. They don't get very far until zombies and dodgy viral experiments alike catch a whiff of fresh meat and come ~~running~~ shuffling to grab a bite.

And so the T-virus is unleashed upon Raccoon City. Umbrella quickly rounds up all their important employees, including Dr. Ashford and his daughter Angie, to be evacuated post-haste. Angie unfortunately doesn't make it out of the city, thanks to a car accident. Umbrella doesn't wish to waste any time looking for her, and write her off as collateral damage. The infection reaches the gates and Umbrella closes off the only remaining entrance to the city, leaving the citizens within to fend for themselves.

Umbrella also writes off a group of special task force troops that were sent in to try and contain the infected hordes by force. Dr. Ashford doesn't just accept the loss of his daughter, and through the extensive surveillance cameras Umbrella has installed in the city, he tracks down both his daughter and various pockets of survivors, with whom he makes a deal... save his daughter, and he'll help them escape.

Umbrella meanwhile feels that this catastrophe gives them the perfect oppertunity to test out their Nemesis experiment, before nuking the entire city in the morning. And so the clock is ticking down for the survivors to survive, and escape.

The ending is also left gapingly open for Resident Evil 3, which considering the way they ended the first one wasn't a huge surprise. I guess as long as it does pretty well in the box office, and pushes decent rental units they'll cough up another RE movie. If Milla's on board I'll probably be a bum on a seat for that one too. She's pretty, I'm a sucker ;) And I think she actually pulls off being all ass-kicking well.

Now, one last thing. Someone needs to explain exactly how Milla's one pant leg stays up, even throughout mucho fighting, without actually being attached to the rest of her pants... Janet Jackson needs to talk to the RE:A wardrobe people... seeing as they manage to keep stuff in place that's not even attached to the rest of her outfit, and she has enough trouble keeping parts in place that *are*.