Official™ Renophaston review of Resident Evil: Afterlife

I saw Resident Evil: Afterlife 3D last Friday, but I enjoyed it! Alice is back, and she’s here to change the world! (This may sound like a reference to Captain EO, the first 3D movie I ever saw, but really she just has a gun that shoots coins.)

Spoilers ahead, but they might be inaccurate because it was a few days ago that I saw this, and my memory sucks.

The Good:

You all remember that my biggest problem with Resident Evil: Extinction was its lack of water. Well, this movie made up for that with spades to spare! Paul W.S. Anderson, the director of the first Resident Evil is back, and he brought with him what made the first movie great. I mean, this movie starts in the rain!** There’s a beach, burst water pipes, a lake. This one time, the main characters were underwater for like five minutes, and also there was a boat. And it wasn’t just some throwaway boat reference; it was a major plot point! It’s obvious Anderson understood where the franchise went adrift after he left, and thankfully he returned to set it back on course. Aquaman ain’t got shit on this movie, other than his powers.

** Not to be confused with Rain Ocampo, Michelle Rodriguez’ character from the first Resident Evil movie… or is it? Aside from RE, Michelle Rodriguez is best known for her role on Lost, a TV show about an island (surrounded by water, of course). Coincidence? Let’s examine the rest of her oeuvre. She followed up Resident Evil with a surfer movie called Blue Crush. Then she played Chris Sanchez in S.W.A.T., “Sanchez” of course coming from the Spanish for “sanctified”, which to Christians brings to mind the Baptismal rite, cleansing the soul with water. Later she voiced a Marine in the popular video game Halo 2. Then in 2005, she played Katarin (in the same year that Hurricane Katrina flooded the Gulf Coast) in another video game adaptation called BloodRayne. Then she starred in a movie called Battle in Seattle, Seattle being known colloquially as “Rain City“. It’s hard to believe the director was unaware of these facts during filming. Oh, and the last movie I saw in theaters before RE:A? Machete. Who was in it? Michelle Rodriguez. (“Michelle”, incidentally, is the feminine form of “Michael”, a name which comes from the archangel Michael, who is known for (among other things) drawing water from the rock at Colossae.)

Also: Zombies! I didn’t know this movie was gonna have zombies! If someone told me this movie was gonna have zombies, I’d have believed them, but nobody did because I don’t have any friends.

The Bad:

Iron Man 2. What a piece of shit. If I had a dollar for every time I saw this “film”, I’d still be out five bucks.

Water and co-star Ali Larter in RE:A

The Ugly:

They introduced Chris Redfield in this movie, which was exciting for some reason. He spent a good chunk of the movie locked in a jail cell. I thought it was funny because in an infamous line from the first game, Barry calls Chris “the master of unlocking“, and here he was locked up. Ha! But then I remembered that it’s Jill Valentine who’s the master of unlocking. So pfft. Nevermind. Chris was in that game, though, and with Chris’ appearance in the movies, we’ve finally come full circle, and ended up in a completely different place.

Aside: I gotta admit, you guys–references to the past take me back. I can’t believe I beat that game. Everything about it was annoying. I give it an “F” for Effort. “Survival Horror”? More like “Survival Horrible Game”!

Still, it had Zombies.

Alaskan water... brr!

The Verdict:

Lets go down the list:

• Zombies? Check.
• Action? Check.
• Dimensions? Check, check… and check. (that’s 3; last one had 2)
• Multiple Jovoviches? (Jovovichlones?) Check.
• Water? More than you can count!

This movie has everything for everybody, and unlike the those big shot “movie” critics, I think that’s enough. I want to say it’s the best Resident Evil movie with the initials REA, but I can’t really remember Apocalypse. Maybe it was good? And what if the next movie is called like Resident Evil: Attrition or something and it’s great? Can’t take that chance! But I’ll give this one four tens out of five!

Out of a hundred.

Full disclosure: I tried not to let it color my review, but I should mention that there was something wrong at my theater, and stuff kept falling out of the movie. Ba-ding chang!

The final word: Resident Evil: Afterlife brought the rotting corpse of the Resident Evil franchise back to theaters!

water + beach = match made in heaven (except I hate beaches)