After Burn

3-D action punches through staggering dullness
by
Morgan P Salvo

Be Warned: Resident Evil: Afterlife really isn’t a movie it’s a great big huge video game that you can only watch.Shot in Real-D, not the horrible post-shooting conversion process 3-D, these state-of-the-art effects are the Avatar-in-yer-face kind and are a welcome dose of visual improvement to the fourth installment of this franchise.
Milla Jovovich returns as Alice, the genetically altered superwoman, to do battle in the T-Virus apocalypse land, waging war on the Umbrella Corp. Alice goes to Alaska to find an elusive zombie-free paradise known as Arcadia, and then to a prison-turned-fortress where she plots to escape to safety.

Writer of all three and now director of two Resident Evils, Paul W.S. Anderson (AVP/ Death Race) returns to the feel of his original with a blaring soundtrack, over the top special effects and high-end overblown Matrix-style stunts. The high tech action just keeps getting better, successfully outdoing its predecessors.

Though technology has come a long way, the same can’t be said for inventive storylines or acting. Jovovich is on cruise control here failing to bring any kind of new life to her character. At one point she resembles Amelia Earhart with guns. The promising supporting cast is even worse, muttering extremely juvenile by-the-numbers dialogue.The grinding industrial rock score provided by “tomandandy” forces techno beats and crunching guitars into every action scene.
3-D Highlights included the bullets whizzing through zombies’ splattering heads into your lap and the monstrous hooded-executioner-butcher-dude chucking a combo anvil/axe at your face. In addition there are mutant zombie split-dogs, zombies with regurgitating mouth talons and exquisite head loppings. There’s also burrowing zombies; a first. !! There’s an ingenious nod to Peckinpah’s Pat Garret Billy the Kid where Alice shoots zombies with a shot gun loaded with quarters (bigger barrels I suppose)
Unnecessary was the over use of freeze-frame, stop action and the transition from slow to kinetic super fast motion amidst all the hyper reality. Ludicrous was that, in an entire city of zombies to shoot the brains out of, we’re stuck with mindless adventure saga jibber jabber. But most annoying was the evil villain: a sun glasses-wearing evil clone of Guy Pierce and Val Kilmer.
But amongst all the head-banging entertainment, right when Resident Evil Afterlife starts to get good and some major shit is about to hit the fan, it blacks out to credits, making way for the next installment. They just don’t make whole movies anymore. It’s all about the sequel. Even though this Resident Evil tries real hard to valiantly rise above its dullness, the 3-D action only serves to make it humorously watchable but then pulls the rug out, leaving you with a 3-D hangover and a bad taste in your mouth.

Resident Evil: Afterlife
Starring Milla Jovovich, Ali Lauter, Kim Coates, Boris Kodjoe
Rated R
2 stars