Resident Evil: Afterlife [DVD] [2011]

Alice travels to a beach where she believes survivors are, when she gets there she finds Claire Redfield who has lost her memory but nobody else. They later fly past an abandoned prison surrounded by zombies, they amazingly manage to land the plane on the roof and join a group of survivors that coincidently contains Claire's brother Chris. They have to find a way to get from the prison to a ship called Arcadia, where more survivors are supposed to be.

The plot for this film is very thin, and seems to lose touch even further from the games on which they're based. The acting is decent from most, but Shawn Roberts seems horribly miscast as Wesker and I think he thought he was playing Agent Smith from The Matrix. Whilst I mention The Matrix, this film has far too many Matrix style fight scenes. Wesker is able to dodge bullets in slow motion, yet he gets hit by a flying knife which moves much slower. I just found it a little strange.

The film has so many slow motion scenes that Michael Bay would be proud, it's that bad that the slow motion probably adds at least 10 minutes to the run time. The opening 15 minutes is a massively over the top action sequence, that's a million miles away from the gritty realism the first film went for. Just after the ludicrous first 15 minutes, Alice is given an injection that makes her a regular human again. I was really glad they did this, but they seem to forget about it and within no time she's superhuman again. Many of the zombies have evolved, much in the way the vampires did in Blade 2 and they look very similar. There's a creature in this that would be right at home in a Silent Hill game, but it looked cool and I didn't mind it. My main disappointment was that this film loses all of the horror element of the games and earlier movies, this is just a full blown action film with some zombies thrown in.

Wentworth Miller plays Chris Redfield who first appears as a prisoner, he even says "I know a way out of here". I'm not sure if this was a purposeful nod to his Prison Break character Michael Schofield or not, but it got a chuckle from me. Paul W.S.Anderson is capable of making a really good horror film, he directed the outstanding Event Horizon. I was hoping he'd direct this film much closer to the first film, as he returned as director having stepped down for the previous two.

As a horror film, Resident Evil : Afterlife is absolutely terrible. As a brainless, summer blockbuster action film it's actually pretty good. I think it's a shame that the action has all but taken over from the horror, and I really hope that the fifth film gets back to the horror but from the way this film ends it doesn't seem possible. The picture and sound quality on the blu ray is superb, and is definitely worth getting instead of the dvd. There's plenty of extras on the disc, including commentary, featurettes, deleted scenes, outtakes and more. It had a $60,000,000 budget, so the effects are ambitious and work well most of the time, but i'd rather have a solid script over big action scenes anyday.

Resident Evil : Afterlife is not a terrible film, but it is the worst of the series so far if you're more into horror like I am. It's probably the best so far if you're after action. Milla Jovovich is made to look quite attractive again in this, they managed to make her look very ordinary in Extinction. The quality of the blu ray which boasts excellent picture and sound means this product is worth 3 stars, maybe even 3.5. Well worth adding to the blu ray collection.

Thought it would be worth leaving a review to say I've just tested this 3D disc on my PS3 connected to standard 2D HDTV and it works perfectly fine, including all features. Picture and sound are lovely too :)

In Resident Evil Afterlife we continue the revenge of Alice against the evil bio-weapon manufacturer The Umbrella Corporation. A company whose accident has turned most all of the worlds population into zombies. As Alice notes in the prologue - the T-Virus took hold and killed the world - only it didn't stay dead. The films short 97 minutes see Alice travel to Tokyo, Alaska and Los Angeles - and despite the lack of budget the apocalypse looks pretty good.

Shot with the James Cameron Fusion Camera system we find that they have been used to good effect. Thankfully they producers avoided the temptation to poke you in the eye (mostly.) A lot of the time you don't notice anything special the film just has more depth. In the action though they have clearly taken care and in 3d they look especially good. In the tried and tested way of summer blockbusters there is little in the way of plot; beyond trying to destroy what remains of Umbrella; so the film relies on the action to carry the plot forward. Its lightweight and but sometimes that is all you need for entertainment; though Zombieland is still my favorite of the genre.

The Blu Ray comes with a fair selection of bonus features with the directors commentary being particularly interesting and there are the usual making of's and outtakes features. There is also a very early trailer for the next CGI Film Resident Evil: Damnation. Its the Best 3d blu-ray I have seen; and second only to avatar in terms of its presentation.