I know I am doing three reviews today in a category that does review a day at a time but I am catching up, so sue me.
I’d like to start out by congratulating Milla Jovovich (Alice) and Paul W. S. Anderson (director) finally getting married. Yep, that is right. The star of the RE films and the director of the RE films. They got married about a year before the fourth film was released and that is what this review is about. Can I just say though, that in practically every single movie Jovovich has ever been in, that the audience always gets to see a little something something? I mean her breasts are in pretty much every film. Not that I’m complaining I love Jovovich, she is a fantastic actor, I can see why she is a model, and from the music I’ve heard of hers, her singing is great too ( to check out more visit http://www.millaj.com/) I just bring it up because it makes me laugh and smile a bit that the man that loves her has her nude in almost all the films (except this one, the only one so far they have done after being married….could be just a red herring) he has done with her. I mean I think it is great, be proud of your body but on the other hand it makes me think Anderson is saying, “Yep, that’s my girlfriend (well now wife)”. Kind of like how Brad Jones (Cinema Snob) is always showing off his wife’s “rack” (his word, not mine). I got nothing against it. And Brad, if you’re reading this, you know more than anyone that people poke fun at the things they really love. Furthermore, Jovovich said herself in an article in Hustler magazine that she loves that she "is the wet dream of nerds everywhere" And to be fair anderson does like having strong female leads which i think is great.
Anyway, it is review time. I do not usually start a review with nit picking but apparently, some plot from the previous film has been retcond leading to some continuity holes. Now, if you are like me and saw Extinction on DVD when it came out and maybe on cable once or twice and then saw Afterlife in the theater, you probably were not aware of this problem. It is a small problem but a problem nonetheless. At the end of Extinction Alice makes the treat to Wesker that she and all her clones are coming to tear down his evil empire and indeed, in the opening of Afterlife, they do. However, also at the end of Extinction, it is implied that Alice, with the help of the White Queen, was going to synthesize an antidote to the T-Virus, a cure that could have repaired the world and rid it of the undead, but apparently, this never happened. Like I said, small problem.
SPOILER ALERT! Once Alice destroys the Umbrella labs in Tokyo, she goes after Wesker who injects her with the anti-virus meaning all her special powers (healing, agility, super strength, and psychic abilities) are all gone. Now, at first it is clear it is working and I do realize she had commando training before the shit hit the fan, but throughout the rest of the movie, it seems like her body was so strong and her DNA so perfectly matched with the T-Virus, that it fought back and came back after the anti-virus had done its thing. That is just me.
So she then goes to Alaska to find Claire and the other survivors, turns out even that was a trap set by Umbrella. We also find out that the sanctuary was a boat, not a town.
Alice meets up with another group of survivors who for the last five years have been living in a prison. This sort of makes sense, I mean it is a secure facility but I’m not sure I believe there was enough food in there. I am going to assume the army left some rations as they did in the mall in Romero’s Dawn of the Dead. Turns out the military was in fact using the prison as a strong hold. We find this out when we meet Claire’s brother Chris Redfield, another character from the game. His back-story has been changed a bit. In the game, he was a “Class A” S.T.A.R.S member who Claire was trying to find. In the movie, he is sort of the same thing: National Guard.
The rest of the movie involves people dying while the group tries to get onto the boat where they believe all the other survivors must be. Obviously I am skipping a great deal of details but I figure if I explain the whole movie A) I’ll bore you with a very long review and B) You won’t need to see the movie since I told you everything that happens. This movie has some suped up mutant zombies, the kind found in RE 5 the game. Also from RE 5, is the Executioner. He is the mutant villain in this movie, the Umbrella villain being of course Wesker.
They get onto the boat and end up fighting Wesker. The thing you should watch for is a scene during the credits. Jill Valentine is back and under Umbrella brainwashing tech control. I am not sure what happened to her after Apocalypse or the girl for that matter. I assumed Jill would have stuck with Carlos and LJ but I guess she went off to do her own thing. At least Extinction tells us why Alice left the group (obviously, she fell in with them again). I assume the girl is dead. We know she had something like polio and that the T-Virus kept in check, made her healthy. Without access to the T-Virus and antivirus, she would be fucked. If the last thing she took was the virus, she would eventually die and become a zombie or possibly not die and become a mutant. If the last thing she took was the antivirus, eventually she would start to get week and not be able to walk thus becoming a liability. I know it sounds harsh but she would have gotten everyone killed. I love Jill in the games and the movie.
Resident Evil 5: Retribution comes out September 14th, 2012. You know I will be in the theater that day.
This film’s CGI was at times crappy. Even the hordes of zombies were CGI. Speaking of zombies, there was little zombie action at all in this movie. At least Extinction had that going for it. Afterlife is more about Umbrella and Wesker (and the Executioner who takes up a chunk of time in the movie) than about the zombies, but it is still a zombie movie. Like I said in the Extinction review, I am not really a fan of the whole 3D craze and some of the scenes that used it sucked but others were fairly good. I give Afterlife 2 ¾ stars out of 5
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