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Movie Review: Resident Evil Afterlife

And here comes the fourth installment of the games-turned-film series Resident Evil. This time, it's subtitled Afterlife 3D (because everything has to be in 3D these days). Always been a fan of the games ever since I played RE3 way back when, not to mention I'm a total zombie freak. So yes, it totally makes sense.

THE STORY


The film takes us right where Extinction left off -- that is, Alice (Milla Jovovich) and her clones are in Tokyo, Japan to assault the underground hive of Umbrella Corporation's Japan branch. The film's evil overlord, Albert Wesker (Shawn Roberts), manages to survive the mayhem and gore and exits the hive just before he blows it up, killing all of the Alice clones inside the facility. The original Alice, however, proves too smart for that as she is already inside Wesker's getaway plane, waiting. Wesker, however, proves even smarter and injects Alice with a T-virus neutralizer. The serum's ultimate effect is to strip Alice of all her awesome powers, leaving her human once more. Alice escapes and heads off on a plane to Alaska, where the fabled Arcadia -- safe haven -- is supposed to be located. But once there, she discovers that the town is deserted, except for a crazed, amnesiac (and dirty) Claire Redfield (Ali Larter). With Claire in tow, Alice continues to look for other signs of human life and finds one in the ruins of former Los Angeles. A group of survivors, headed by de facto leader, Luther West (Boris Kodjoe), have taken refuge in a prison facility and are trying to communicate with an offshore ship, not-serendipitously called Arcadia. Eventually, the zombies manage to tunnel under the building and attack the survivors, leaving them no choice but to turn to a lone soldier locked up in the prison basement for help. The soldier turns out to be none other than Chris Redfield (Wentworth Miller), Claire's brother. But breaking out of prison is a lot more complicated and a lot more dangerous when the undead are swarming all over the place.

REVIEW

There's lots of gunfights, bullets and flying shuriken (because, you know, Japan) and even katana like woah. The effects look awesome and crisp and steely but nothing that you can't expect in a movie like this. There's lots of zombies being blown up and hacked to bits (in 3D!!). Mostly, the film borrows elements from Resident Evil 5, with zombies not really looking like zombies. For starters, they move faster and are a lot smarter. They also have these tentacle things coming out of their mouths. They're less zombies, more mutants, which disappoints me a little bit. The Executioner, however, was a nice touch and I loved that Claire got some nice action sequences out of it. Alice, despite being without her T-virus powers at this point, is still fierce, which...I'm confused, but can't really think about that when humongous axes are flying out of the screen and at you. 3D is wooohhhhh!

The story is a little all over the place but the direction did the best it could. It could have gone every which way but everything was kept tight enough to maintain a straightforward, cohesive storyline. The movie gets a little slow after the Tokyo assault but it's all to give viewers breathing space for the next bout of action scenes.

Better to stay until the end of the credits because fans are in for a treat. A surprise guest appearance (overacted), strongly hinting at another possible sequel. LOL



THE SCORE

Story - 5
Sound - 6
Cinematography - 6
Picture - 6
Special Effects - 7
Acting - 5

Overall - 5.8/10
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