RESIDENT EVIL: APOCALYPSE (2004)

RESIDENT EVIL: APOCALYPSE (2004)

Tagline: My name is Alice and I remember everything.

(Action, Sci-Fi, Try to shoot 'em in the head) [R]

It's nothing personal. But in an hour, maybe two, you'll be dead. And moments later, you'll become one of them. You'll endanger your friends, try to kill them, probably succeed…

In this one chief security officer, Alice has escaped “The Hive” but awakened to Raccoon City being ravaged by the un-dead masses and other military-purposed genetic abominations. Alice’s memory is fully back and she sets out to escape the city recusing anyone she can along the way. Meanwhile, as the infection has reached the edge of the city it is sealed off trapping many heavily armed Umbrella security personnel behind as well as thousands of citizens. Jill Valentine, who was a member of Raccoon City's elite Special Tactics and Rescue Services team, her co-worker Sgt. Peyton Wells, a normie L.J. and even a newscaster named Terri Morales have also all banded together to also attempt to leave town. Upon receiving a call from the inventor of the T-Virus, nearly every living person is now on the hunt to rescue Dr. Ashford’s daughter, Angie, after her evacuation vehicle was in a wreck leaving her stranded. Can the uninfected survive the apocalypse?

First off, I have to get a few things off my chest. Anyone complaining about the outfits in this movie is just looking for something to cry about. I still think Sienna Guillory (ERAGON) is and might always be the best on-screen Jill Valentine we ever get. Milla Jovovich (MONSTER HUNTER) is an amazing actress and she crushes this role. Everyone else is pretty much wearing normal clothing and these two characters are not wearing anything overly racy, I don’t understand the beef. People need to get over it. The other thing Milla needs to get over is the fact that she didn’t really love this thing due to a lack of story. To be honest, out of all the films with maybe the exception of RETRIBUTION, this one probably has some of the coolest background characters and storyline. Yes, there was a lot of action but I never watch one of these flicks to see ON GOLDEN POND or something like that. It's also possible that she's changed her mind about this? After all, the movie was written by her husband Paul W.S. Anderson who she married 5 years after this movie was made.

What this movie probably goes a little overboard on is the attempt to get zombie fights in. There is a graveyard scene where T-virus zombies come out of the ground. This seems odd at first, but I imagine the producers were thinking that the virus simply mutated to a point where this was possible (because they literally state that the virus itself mutates in the first movie and that it’s nearly impossible to kill). So if the virus is this mutated, the fact that you can shoot the zombies in the head and kill them in APOCALYPSE actually starts to make “less” sense, not more. Whatever though, it’s a sci-fi movie not based in reality so do what you want. Clearly, at least the grave zombie scene had its plausibility grounded in the first film. Having said that, this series does end up having a number of issues for those that need all the “residents” to be in a row. 

If I have any complaints about this one, it’s that seemingly every time faith gets brought up in some movies it’s shown in a negative light. I kind of wish we had gotten a priest like Jacob in FROM DUSK TILL DAWN. When Quentin Tarantino is outshining you in the “don’t always make people of faith look terrible” department, now you know we’ve got a problem. Sadly 19 years later this kind of crap is still pretty rampant but certainly not “always” the case.  

Both the effects, score, and soundtrack are superior in this one compared to the first, but the horror element outside of maybe the church scene is ratcheted way down. When I first saw this, I think I kind of preferred the “trapped underground” idea better than this one which seemed to kind of run together into one giant action sequence. Now that I have seen it several times though, Valentine is a better character than Rain, and Carlos Olivera, played by Oded Fehr (THE MUMMY) is a better character than One or Matt from the first film. L.J., played by Mike Epps (NEXT FRIDAY) is also a great addition because he is the only comedic relief in the film. I also liked the overall storyline better. There is a sort of controlled chaos that is hard to really pull off in a way that doesn’t feel just like a giant tossed salad. Director Alexander Witt did a good job with that aspect. This film hits all those points and does a great job of moving the series to the next phase. 

This film surpassed my expectations for the second film and I give it a solid 6 out of 7. This movie is better than the first installment in my opinion, but it’s not quite a 7 even if we took my 1 complaint out of the movie. That comes later.  

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