We should be more adventurous with our meals

Each Day, A Film:
January 30th 2012

Let's just get down to business, with Resident Evil: Afterlife.



Before we do, though, let's take a moment to celebrate the fact that Kim Coates is in the goddamn movie, and given that they let him play an asshole, it's automatically a 12% better movie without having to do anything.

Other than that, it's downhill, but an interesting downhill. In a funny kind of way, it's an uphill from the previous installment.

So let's just run with it, because the character development is oddly clinical and economical. Remember all those clones? Yeah, they take on Umbrella's Tokyo faclity, and go boom, because Wesker does like to blow things up. Remember those psychic abilities? Well, goodbye to them too. But Alice does get a lovely plane to fly.

At the same time, this is the first of the films I could actually imagine being a video game in it's own right; I can actually see the fight sequences playing out, along with the vehicle section where you have to land a plane on a hospital roof. My favourite, though, is whenever the Axeman turns up. There's a point where the survivors are standing in the yard, and hundreds of generic zombies are battling aimlessly against mankind's greatest defence - the solid steel gate - when suddenly, the Axeman turns up, and I could almost feel the quicktime event happening;

[Press (X) repeatedly to move police car towards gate!]
[Press (O) to open up garage door!]
[Press [Y] to groan when you realise the engine has been removed from the urban pacification vehicle you needed not to die!]
[Press (X) to change characters. You have selected: Tig]
[Press (O) to shoot another character, steal the plane, and abandon everyone else to their own devices.]

That's pretty much all I got from the prison sequence.

Let's talk about the 3D aspects, though, because while I'm sure - well, kind of sure - they were amazing in the cinema, all the relentless shit-flying-towards-the-screen-in-slow-motion gets really old when watching the film on the small screen.

Let's also talk about how Umbrella have evolved from total arseholes to just complete idiots, because that's always fun.

Correct me if I'm wrong - and, frankly, I'm often wrong, that's the nature of the beast - but Umbrella began life as a Corporation. As in, a business enterprise that, really, needs a world to function in. Now, at some point, Umbrella presumably thought that the world was frankly just a hindrance - so through a series of actions including:

- Creating a virus with a 100% mortality rate and the ability to reanimate those it kills into hyper-effective carriers
- Releasing that virus into the population of Raccoon City
- Trying and failing to contain the virus by nuking Raccoon city
- Hiding underground to avoid the virus but continuing to experiment on even worse versions of it
- Nuking Tokyo to kill hundreds of Milla Jovoviches
- And setting up a fake distress call to round up the few test subjects left alive

- Umbrella is, frankly, the first post-human corporation. By the end of Afterlife, everything is utterly, completly fucked. The world is gone, baby, gone; there may be pockets of life knocking around, but as we saw in the last film, they're either extremely clever or rape-hungry rednecks who keep zombie dogs as pets.

The zombies, too, are evolving; instead of just being mindless flesh-hungry walking plot devices, now they can tunnel through rock given enough time, and the trailer for the next film shows them flying. Also, there's basically not enough ammunition left in the world to deal with what's going on. There's also the apparent complete environmental collapse - as stated in the last film, fresh water sources dry up, plants die, and the ecosystem goes to hell in a handbasket, although this isn't actually mentioned that often in Afterlife.

And, unexplainedly, someone's running around giving people the worst accessory ever; a bloodsucking, spider-ruby-esque brooch, that removes your memories and makes you into a violence-crazy person without the need to zombify you.

So when you get to the Arcadia being a giant floating experimental vessel for Umbrella rather than a place to hide from the fucked-up world you're forced to live in, it's kind of a surprise that nobody just commits suicide rather than go on, because frankly it's that bleak.

Then you have Wesker, who has become super-fast, super-strong and a tentacle monster whenever he feels like it. And his 'death' is kind of strange; the heroes pin him down and shoot him repeatedly in the chest, as if nothing from the previous films has elaborated on the value of headshots, then evacuate the survivors from the room and seal the door. Of course, Wesker seemingly doesn't die, because he comes back to life with the specific purpose of killing Kim Coates, in the weirdest bit of karmic retribution ever.

Because, let's face it, Tig has the best plan out of the entire movie. Instead of participating in trying to leave a prison that's been compromised by concrete-chewing zombies using the urban pacification vehicle that has no engine while the Axeman pounds at the gates, Tig decides, basically, fuck this, I'm out of here. Sticking together is admirable, loyal and wonderful, but if it's the choice between sticking together in a soon-to-be-zombie infested prison and getting the fuck out of dodge as quickly as possible, while teamwork is wonderful, so is not having your organs eaten.

This brings us to the ending, which is just as fucked; Wesker-as-monster is still sealed in the lab below, but if there's one thing these films have taught us it's that zombies are a door's kryptonite, so he's getting out eventually. Meanwhile, on deck, an apparently mind-controlled Jill Valentine - who I didn't actually recognise, because she's not wearing a glaringly impractical outfit - is leading a host of Umbrella helicopters to the Arcadia because, dammit, if you don't wear the fashionable brooch, you don't get to live.

Death below, death above - in the form of a seemingly endless wave of Umbrella helicopters, which begs the question; how do they still have fuel? And, more importantly, where are they going to land? - and then, the film ends.

And soon, there's going to be Resident Evil: Retribution.

*

Here's a side note to explain all this bad craziness. I've been feeling burnt-out with film school recently, and so I decided to try to rekindly my creative side - yes, pretentious, I know - by taking a day off and having a film marathon, but one of films I'd never seen before.

Co-incidentally, I got talking to the aforementioned bad-movie-loving friend, who must have mentioned it in passing. Because then I got on to Amazon, and found Resident Evil 1-4 for £8.07.

This means that watching each film cost me £2, approximately, with seven pence for postage, +/-.

So when I sat down yesterday and watched them back-to-back, I know that I got my £2-per-film worth of value.

Still no word on the burnout, though.