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Rating:  - Another bad zombie movie.
It's another bad zombie movie. Compared to the majority of thhe others, the only difference here is the main character is a female. The plot is the same. The action scenes are not engaging. Special effects are so so.
Rating:  - Breaks the mold. By far the best movie of the three.
While I felt the first and third movies in this trilogy were entirely average, this second part of the trilogy is nothing short of excellent. Here's why.
This movie breaks the mold of survival horror movies. The usual formula places a group of characters together and kills them off one at a time over the course of the movie. In Resident Evil: Apocalypse, the story progression is much more open ended. We follow the stories of several different groups of characters in different parts of a city sealed off from the outside world to contain the outbreak of a virus. While many characters do die, in this case, it is happpening to unique groups of people all making their own way to survive in a city over-run by zombies. Their storylines eventually converge of course, but the storyboarding developed to bring about this connection is stellar. As icing on the cake, all of these characters feel excellently cast and developed.
There are special effects in this movie, but they do not overpower the realism of human acting. The zombies, and most importantly, the Nemesis monster, are real actors in elaborate costumes and makeup.
The directing and set design are also excellent. This movie feels like a horror movie whereas the other two simply pass as alright action movies. The sets are intricately designed, with the very smallest attention to detail throughout. They are dark, filled with well placed streams of light and shadow, and dirty looking, in direct opposition to the clean, slick nature of the first movie. Everything really feels much closer to what the games envisioned in this outing. The directing is outstanding, filled with inspired camera angels, and the knowledge that true horror does not come from throwing scary beasts at us, but through the unknown about any scenario. The church scene is particularily inspired, giving us only the smallest glimpse of three attackers stalking the characters being portrayed. The level of suspense is masterfully built slowly to a climax around wonderful camera angels and the mood of the set. It is also no wonder why the acting in the movie feels so superb as well. It may not be the stuff of oscars, but it is outstanding by action/horror standards. A great director can bring out the best talent from their actors and actresses. Another classic scene portrays frantic citizens of Racoon city trying to leave through the one exit in the barrier surrounding the city until one man at the front of the line succumbs to infection and the exit is shut tight for good.
Resident Evil: Apocalypse is an A grade movie, and by far the best of the series. If only all three were this good, and the director of this movie had been brought back for the third installment. It isn't a perfect film, but it is excellent in all the most important places. If you only buy or see one movie out of this trilogy, see this one. It is expertly crafted.
Rating:  - Its good
The movie itself is good, but the to see a zombified children in school was not good.
Rating:  - Better than the first in the series
If you want to get at the heart of what keeps all three films in the RESIDENT EVIL series from being very good it is this: the assumption that surface is everything. The mark of good movies is the number of subtexts that they generate, but with the RESIDENT EVIL franchise, there is a powerful resistance to subtext. For instance, even if you want to do an analysis of the tropes that attach to the main character of Alice, you will find resistance at every point. Why? Because the film itself has lingered in every frame on surface alone, completely resisting imbuing the film with more than just a succession of glittering images. There are entire visual sequences that have no function whatsoever but to merely paint a pretty picture. As a result, human elements are left entirely aside.
This obsession with surface and spectacle is unfortunate because Alice is potentially a fascinating character. Very occasionally the films in the series almost begin to toy with character development, but always pull back immediately after toying with it for a brief second. At the hand of more gifted filmmakers, Alice could have had the potential to become a poor man or woman's Ripley or Buffy or Max Guevera. At the hands of only moderately gifted filmmakers, we get little or no sense of her character, no real idea of what makes her tick, utterly no hint of what she wants, and very, very little about how she feels about things. Milla Jovovich is so gorgeous that she manages to make us forget how poorly drawn her character is. But the weak writing and poor direction never allows the films to ascend above slick spectacle.
These first two movies tell the first two parts of Alice's descent into her own nightmare land. The Alice in Wonderland imagery is reinforced at several points, not least in the original by naming the Hive's computer The Red Queen. And in the third movie in the sequence, EXTINCTION, a version of "White Rabbit" by Collide plays over the closing credits. During these films Alice, who initially suffers from amnesia, first learns from physical memory that she is a surreally gifted martial artist and weapons user, then recalls that she was head of security at the Hive, and later learns that her blood bonds to the virus that is killing everyone else, enhancing her strength, reflexes, and senses to absurd levels. What keeps the series from being very good is that the films continually focus on what these powers mean for what she can do to the bad guys, never on how it is affecting her. Contrast this to the way that this would have been done by any of a number of men (and why is it always men -- why haven't women helmed movies or TV shows with female heroes?) like James Cameron, Joss Whedon, Luc Besson, Ridley Scott, or Ron Moore. Under any of these there would have been as much or more about what all of this was doing to Alice. But then, all of these writers/directors/producers are more (or at least as much) concerned with the inner as the outer.
In short, these are extraordinarily superficial films. All surface, no depth, no interesting characters (mainly because of no character development). Having said that, the film does present superior surface. Once you accept that the films have nothing to offer but sheer surface, you can moderate your expectations and just go with that. Once I realized that these films would not/could not be more than a succession of spectacles, I surrendered and moderately enjoyed them. Was I ever truly entertained? Of course not. Was I bored? Not really.
This second film is, in my opinion, marginally better than the first film. It feels less tied to the strict gameplay narrative that hobbled the first film. On the other hand, I really didn't like the feel of Raccoon City in it. It never really came to feel like a real place. It just felt like a succession of sets, whether indoor or outdoor. Contrast this with THE MATRIX, where the city of the construct felt much more alive and actual.
I will add one last observation. The three films that make up the RESIDENT EVIL trilogy (soon to be a quartet, with the addition of RESIDENT EVIL: DEGENERATION) easily comprise the most interesting films ever made based on video games. That would be a more impression achievement if there had been some really good movies based on that source, but it is unlikely for some time that another game will produce such a film franchise.
Rating: - A Dramatic Improvement
Those who are praising the first movie and turning their noses up at this one must have either been asleep or very high for both films. While I felt I was generous by rating the first one as a 5/10, this film is easily a 7/10, perhaps even a borderline eight. Everything in this movie, from the acting, to the writing, to the direction, to the scope of the story and its execution is miles better than what we saw in Resident Evil, the first film.
Raccoon City is taken over by zombies and becomes sort of a playground for the Umbrella Corporation. They see the apocalypse of this town as a chance to test out some of their most recent experiments, such as the genetically altered Alice and the hulking monstrosity called the Nemesis. Watching a new cast of much more interesting characters--with Milla Jovovich returning as Alice, of course--deals with the zombipocalypse already ups the ante of this film, giving the team a chance to flex their special effects muscles and expand the scope of the story.
Another thing is that the melodramatic triteness of the first movie doesn't pop up as much here. In fact, there is quite a bit of comedy, making this film a much more watchable and enjoyable--and even believable--movie than its predecessor. Everything from the lighting, to the directing, to the colorization of the picture is an improvement. From the chaotic beginning to the intense climax, fans of the game and/or movie series will be captivated.
Are there negative aspects of this film? Yes. Some of the acting was bad (particularly Razaaq Adoti's stilted performance as Peyton Wells), and Jill Valentine's (Sienna Guillory) was beyond gratuitous. It made her look very video gamey, which--admittedly--was probably the point, but the whole 'female empowerment' theme of the film takes a blow because of the overly sexualized portrayal of Jill and, to a lesser degree, Alice. Also, the way Alice meets Jill and her crew was laughably ridiculous. The whole motorcycle-through-the-window scene was unforgivable, but thankfully there's enough good in this movie to gloss over the really bad parts.
7/10
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