Last time we left Alice waking up in the hospital of a zombie infested Raccoon City, grabbing a shotgun and heading for the ruined streets for sequels’ sake.
So obviously this was setup to loosely mirror the plot and setting of Resident Evil 2, while keeping the Alice and Red Queen subplots, meaning you could expect Alice to wander around Raccon City and tag along canon named characters called to intervene on the pandemic situation of the city and trying to escape it when they hear of Umbrella’s plan to just nuke it all.
And you would assume correctly, though it’s made a bit confusing as she’s instead joined by Jill Valentine and Carlos Olivera, the protagonists of RE 3, and they’re followed by the Nemesis mutant of RE 3 as well, which is even odder when you remember RE 3 is basically taking place at the same time of RE 2, let alone that RE 3 was originally conceived as a spin-off entry.
But i kinda get why staple together the two plots and basically “skip” to RE 3 for this second RE film, and it fits in line with the script for the first one, fittingly so as Paul W.S. Anderson did remain as a writer for all the sequels, but for Apocalypse (and the direct sequel, RE Extinction, too) he did not return as director, being busy with the 2014 Alien Vs Predator movie, leaving the director’s chair to be filled by Alexander Witt, whom mostly worked as a cinematographer and second unit director for Ridley Scott, here making his directorial debut.
DeWitt can handle direction fine (for this kind of material, anyway), he definitely manages to keep it fairly consistant with the first movie’s, but it’s a bit more composed direction, lacks that precise kind of stupid bombast of Paul W.S. Anderson, otherwise fully present in the script that further dissociates any interest of having any fidelity to the source material, and losing any pretense of survival horror to push it into full action horror.
And pushing the stupid too, leaving one how to ask questions we already know will never be answered.
Why re-infect Alice again while unconscious? She already got infected at the beginning of the first movie, why double or triple infect her? Is she immune to the T-Virus? Not Really? Who knows?
Also, gotta love how even the games didn’t have characters wait around a goddamn CEMETERY during a zombie epimedic, because of course this means zombies show up out of nowhere, like it’s a Zombi 3 with the DEATH ONE virus.
Didn’t the virus had to be inhaled or got pre-death for it to work? Guess it “evolved” itself somewhere between the first and second film.
Not as dumb as the Umbrella main boss dejour shooting one of its top main scientist in the brain just to make himself look powerful (or something), or having Alice fight Nemesis in duel, almost a bare handed one too for fuck’s sake.
Which is peak stupid but also the best part of the movie, to be utterly blunt.
Sure as hell isn’t the acting, with only Sienna Guillory as Jill “Master Of Unlocking” Valentine as the only actor seemingly giving any effort, Jovovich looks even less enthused than before in the role, but she does kick ass, which is good enough for what this kind of movie requires to function in all his dumbass but kinda fun glory.
Getting back to Nemesis and friends, the CG for the monsters is slightly worse than before, just slightly and only for the Lickers, Nemesis himself it’s done practical and it looks as you’d expect, no much to complain about here… at least in terms of looks, for HOW it’s used… it kinda disappointing, like, you got a big hulking monster with weapons, you could have written in a chase scene without even changing much of the script, instead of basically introducing Nemesis and then later just make him appear alongside other Umbrella forces.
THEN you can have him do the aforementioned dumbass duel against Alice.
Regardless, i hate that stupid “fake slow mo” effect they use here a lot, it’s shit just and even if it’s kind of a mark of action movies of that era…it’s still shit as hell.
Plus, while the plot remains mostly “grounded”, overall not much worse or better than the first one, and not overly stuffed with random ass bullshit, the ending does plants the seeds of convulted crap to come, with Alice dying in an elicopter crash, then waking up alive in an Umbrella Lab, remembering everything… and using her new found esp power to escape, alongside her allies that conveniently survived offscreen the elicopter crash.
Worse, she is purposefully let out by the head scientist, whom activates some kind of cyberprogram in Alice, all in pure “early 2000 futuristic plagiarism” style.
Is Alice now a Terminator or Robocop? Is she now a Diclonius from Elfen Lied?
Has she found herself in the sea of data and escaped her bio-mechanized shell?
Find out in Resident Evil: Extinction!
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