Resident Evil Retribution

Resident Evil seems to have completely lost its way. I don’t just mean these incredibly iffy movie adaptations – I mean the games as well. I played the first one when it was the only one out – importing the NTSC version because PAL regions got a version with big borders and censored cutscenes (though I don’t think eve the US one had the proper zombie introduction CG movie). It was a creepy, atmospheric game with shuffling zombies, claustrophobic fixed cameras and jump-scares, building to an action climax involving a rocket launcher. Now it seems to be running around mowing down hundreds of screaming zombies and ever-more-goofy mutant enemies – all-out action with nothing in the way of horror atmospherics.

And the Hollywood movies are even further removed. I’ve missed…probably 3 of them, from what I can remember, but I don’t think continuity means anything here. In an absurdly silly plot, Milla Jovovich’s Alice character gets captured by Umbrella, and they imprison her in a daft containment facility deep under Siberian ice, in what looks like a recycled Inception set. In a ploy to market their virus as a weapon, Umbrella have recreated Moscow, Tokyo, Shanghai and suburban American in order to simulate what their biohazards can do. Absurdly, they create and use artificial humans based on people like Alice for this, leading to the team picking up a little girl for Ripley-and-Newt-derived substitutions for character motives.

The film is terrible, and knows it. It barely even tries, and for that – it becomes enjoyable. It’s terrible, but it’s good fun to laugh along. Introducing Ada Wong allows for the film’s one interesting development, but poor ole Barry gets the shaft again, and what part of ‘Leon is a prettyboy’ translated to the casting of someone one in our party charitably said looked like Woody Harrelson in The Hunger Games but in my eyes looked like Gary Busey I really don’t know. Jill Valentine being brainwashed is absurd, the cast of The Curse of Fenric dealing with a super-pumped-up adversary was absurd and the final sequence was mainly joyous because I’d been teasing a friend about Wesker all day and whispered ‘Wesker’s the President!!’ moments before he came on and was indeed effectively the president – which I feel no compunction whatsoever about spoiling for anyone who may be reading because it was so very stupid. Fun, yes, but only because it was so stupid.