“I’m kinda bored,” says a character at one point during the sequel to Resident Evil, justifying the pick up of a hitchhiker. She’s not the only one. As the years go by and action films insist on topping each other with bigger explosions, more complicated fight moves and seemingly invincible heroes, something is getting overlooked more now than ever: humanity. The fact is that we as an audience get bored with a movie if it doesn’t trick us into believing that it could be us up there on the screen.
Resident Evil: Apocalypse is the latest in a recent wave of movies – Terminator 3, Ecks vs. Sever, the Matrix sequels, both Charlie’s Angels – that take the human soul and replace it with a flying back flip kick off a motorcycle being launched out of a helicopter, turned around with both guns blazing at the bad guys and completed with a small grunt as the hero lands on the ground.
The original film was a pleasant surprise, a low-profile zombie movie that introduced us to Alice (Milla Jovovich), a confused woman who needs to escape her underground work facility after a horrible biological mishap transforms her co-workers into the living dead. Sure, realism wasn’t the order of the day for the original film, but Alice seemed like one of us and was easy to root for. Like the recent Dawn of the Dead remake, which hits DVD with extra footage next month, the average Joe characters seemed to be getting better at slaughtering the zombies as the film went on, and during the big scenes we could cheer on their newfound athletic skills that were effective without getting outrageous.
But, boy, does this sequel lose track of that. This time around, Alice has been subjected to biogenic experimentation and has become genetically altered to the point where she has super-human strengths, senses and dexterity. What this means to the viewer is that instead of just getting off a motorcycle, she does a triple back flip; instead of rappelling down the side of a building, she runs fast enough down the side of it that she can keep her balance; and instead of walking from one place to another, she performs old-school Superman thirty foot leaps.
Basing a movie on a video game is one thing, but there is so little actual danger in this film for the hero that it feels like she can just hit the ‘reset’ button any time she wants and play again.
The first Resident Evil concluded with the promising sight of Alice emerging into Raccoon City at daylight, ready to take on the chaos of the infected world in a less claustrophobic, better-lit environment. That promise turns out to be little more than a tease, as night falls all too quickly on the city and most of the action takes place in churches, office buildings, laboratories and the like. Now, she and her newfound friends must get out of the city walls before sunrise, when a bomb will be dropped that will wipe out everything.
Director Alexander Witt, making his helming debut after years as a second unit man, directs his movie much like the dialogue-light, style heavy stuff he would have done for XXX, Twister and Gladiator. He seems to have gotten his videogames confused during his research, which could be the only excuse for a preposterous character named Jill Valentine (Selena Guillory), who is such a blatant Lara Croft rip-off that Angelina Jolie should contact her lawyer, post haste.
Besides her, we get a Stephen Hawking-like crippled genius doctor (Jared Harris), an Emmy-obsessed news reporter (Sandrine Holt), and a bunch of S.T.A.R.S. soldiers (security for the Viacom-like Umbrella Corporation) who we are repeatedly told are highly-trained soldiers right before they get killed. Naturally, we also get the token black comedic relief in the form of Mike Epps, who never met a joke about a Cadillac he didn’t like. I could tell you more about these characters, but that’s literally all you get; like Alice, there’s no reason to care about them.
Never in one film have so many bad accents been on display, from the wandering German of the evil Major Cain (Thomas Kretschmann), to the is-that-Russian? of two S.T.A.R.S. soldiers who stick around for a little while before they get chomped, to Harris’ Alec Guinness-light Brit. The zombies don’t fare much better, reduced to mostly secondary roles and only getting to eat flesh when they’re able to sneak up on someone.
At one point, a character tells another not to worry about the undead, that they move so slowly you can just walk around them. She’s got a good point.
So, instead of just zombies, we get a new nemesis called, well…Nemesis. I don’t remember there being a sex scene in Alien vs. Predator – maybe the DVD will include it as a deleted scene – but apparently those two arch enemies did have a night of unbridled romance at some point. How else can you explain Nemesis, such an unimaginative derivation of those two movie monsters that you expect Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sigourney Weaver to run around the corner and stand alongside Alice, guns blazing, at any moment?
The monster, created by Umbrella to do battle with Alice, is so generic that you can already imagine his action figure in the discount bin at Big Lots, and if you look closely enough you can almost see the black space between the corners of his mask and his shirt.
Witt, taking over for original director Paul W.S. Anderson (who returns to produce and write Apocalypse), never met a zooming camera he didn’t want to employ. He also has a disturbingly blunt tendency to employ religious symbolism, from Alice driving her motorcycle through a church window, to a cross being used to beat a zombie senseless.
As Fake Lara Croft runs around, trying to avoid being bitten while wearing an outfit that exposes so much yummy flesh to the zombies, you realize that watching Apocalypse will leave you with no real recollection of the film whatsoever, except a lingering headache. The five false endings don’t help, either.
Apocalypse has two things worth praising: Jovovich and one single scene that has the zombies rising from the grave. Although the film has stripped the actress of any depth of character, Jovovich still manages to command your attention while she’s on screen, and between these movies and the underrated The Messenger, she has the goods to be a credible action star if the right script came her way.
As for the graveyard scene, there’s something hollow about any zombie movie that doesn’t have at least one shot of filthy dead people in various states of decay rising from their slumber, and at least Apocalypse does give you that basic pleasure. Then, naturally, Witt ruins the scene with a barrage of absurd flying kicks and camera tricks that confuses the audience more than it scares them.
At the end of the film, Alice discovers a “secret” that sends her reeling back in horror, shocked to realize the origin of the evil Nemesis. She’ll be the last person in any theatre to figure out the mystery, I assure you. It’s actually kind of amusing to see her learn the big mystery, and the revelation possesses the same simple, naïve charm of watching a child uncover the truth about Santa Claus.
In a movie that has so little humanity, at least there is that one genuine emotion on display.
For this and other interviews, reviews and entertainment coverage, visit FilmStew.com
