Resident Evil: Apocalypse

Cafe Society
1

Eh. I liked the first one better.

At least it went all balls-out and stayed focused on what it was supposed to be doing: showing people getting killed to loud thumping techno music, while the camera showed as much of Milla Jovovich as possible.

This one is all over the place. It’s not bad, it’s just not particularly remarkable. It was nice they included Jill Valentine, finally, but after seeing shot after shot of her doing her Sultry Cop routine, I just wished they’d cast Parker Posey and let her have fun with it. I wanted comic relief guy to die, and die early. And Oded Fehr could’ve been super bad-ass, but they just didn’t have enough for him to do.

Milla Jovovich is indeed awesome. She is hotter than a black leather carseat in the Saraha Desert’s impound lot. (I’m tired; that’s the best I can come up with.) And she’s one of those women who’s game for just about anything, and who’s so confident she’s hot, she’s comfortable spending most of the movie all bloodied and dirtied up. After this and the last Resident Evil movie, I’m almost willing to watch The Fifth Element again.

Spoiler: you do get to see her nude, so don’t despair. It’s in the denouement. Nipples like the valves on an inflatable raft. (Or, “Like Rolos” as a friend described it). I was afraid that they weren’t going to go for the topless shot, since earlier in the movie they had two topless zombie hookers.

They definitely went more cheesy action movie – complete with effete villain with indeterminate European accent – than cheesy horror. It holds together well enough, but on the whole it just sat there.

2

Ah, Milla’s titties. I have to say, first we get shaven beaver pate, then the titties (thankfully, they made sure the water was nice and cold so they stuck out but good). What’s next, penetration (note to producers, I’ll buy two tickets!)?

I like how they dispensed with the plot entirely after the first few minutes and then brought everything together for a nice clean ending with everything entirely tied up.

Heh.

Some of the things I liked about this movie: zombies weren’t too much trouble, although they popped up just enough to make sure you didn’t stop and say, “Hmm, sure could use some zombies right about now.”

No traffic at all in the sleepy metropolis while the important scientists are being collected, except for that giant cement truck that doesn’t stop…

Sassy black sidekick (he’s the chauffeur too! I’m surprised they didn’t have him hotwire the truck)

Zombie with bazooka. Who learns to love. Or at least redirect his hate.

Special forces agents who have managed to survive being dropped into the city for no reason (“hey, we’re sealing up the town because everyone’s turned into a zombie.” “Send in the Marines!” Why they thought that a half dozen marines and some left over police could kill 700,000+ zombies is beyond me). They decide to hole up in a…cell phone store?.. to wait out the situation. But they leave the door open. And their vaunted defensive tactics against the zombie with the bazooka is to run right in front of it and shoot. “They’re the best of the best…” No wonder the freakin’ zombies took over.

As the film goes on, the elite soldiers get weaker and weaker.

Generally the characters in these sorts of movies stick together in order to not wander off and get killed (no morons they). Here, they purposely tell each other to go and get eaten because there’s been about five minutes since the last person was killed. Hey, why don’t we split up to find that little girl who may or may not be an homage to Aliens in this school that’s probably full of zombies and zombie dogs? Untrained people get the tough areas, I’ll hang out in the kitchen. Boy am I hungry.

One thing that did really bother me is that when one fires off the last round from a semi-automatic pistol, the receiver (?) will slide back because there is no bullet being pushed in the chamber to force it back, therefore, it will be obvious when the gun’s out of ammo. Once or twice is overlookable, but it happened about five dozen times in this movie.

And we were cheated out of the zombie money shot. When they ate that dude who looks like Raphe Finnes (or Schindler for that matter), they gave him hickies insted of tearing his flesh and seeing his organs slop all over the ground. Lame. Priest with sister: lame. Zombie strippers: not that lame.

All in all, the little homages really added up to make this suck.

3

The thing that pissed me off the most was the graveyard scene. Supposedly in this universe zombies are only created when a living person is infected, then it takes a couple hours for the virus to do its work. But suddenly in the graveyard zombies come bursting out of all the graves, all decayed and stuff like they were raised by black magic from an old horror movie. That’s not just a plot hole, that’s a blatant violation of the premise. Way to go guys.

Also, I had trouble caring about any of the poorly developed characters, and the rapid cuts from one group to another didn’t help matters. I don’t remember Jill Valentine being a Lara Croft clone in the original game, either.

4

Where the first movie was more “scary movie” with pop up zombie scares on characters in a smaller enclosed area…this movie was balls out “guy” movie with ridiculous explosions in a nonstop warzone area, drastically different style if you ask me.

I definately did enjoy it for what it was and thought it was probably the best of this rather shallow genre. And is it just me or has the subject of topless strippers never really been dealt with in zombie movies:)

5

Well, I’m reluctant to defend a movie like this too much, but:

They had to work hard to get all the references to the game in there. For a Resident Evil story, you’ve got to have STARS, Jill Valentine, Raccoon City, Nemesis, zombie people, Umbrella Corporation, a church, a police station, zombie dogs, genetic mutations, CGI fly-throughs, and lots of guns. So as a plot for a real live movie, it didn’t work so well, but as a videogame adaptation, it managed a good bit.

And yeah, I’d forgotten the priest and his sister bit. That was just lame, and not the least bit scary.

6

Well, not to really argue, but apparently some semi-autos don’t lock back after the last bullet is fire. I haven’t seen it yet, so I have no idea what guns were used and if those are the kinds or not. Just saying…

7

My comment regarding the cemetary scene as I was leaving, directed to the folks who I watched the film with : ‘Was anyone else imagining ‘Thriller’ during the cemetary scene?’

Mmm. Milla Jovovich.

8

So where are all the annoying and irrelevant puzzles and riddles?

9

While everyone in here has torn this movie apart, there doesn’t seem to be any real animosity towards its suckiness. I just hope none of you who saw RE:A were people who talked massive amounts of shit about AvP. And if you were, I don’t see how you could have done it with a straight face.

10

Forget Aliens versus Predator or S.T.A.R.S. versus zombies; the real battle appears to be Milla’s nipples versus Naomi Watts’ nipples.

OK, so I have a two-track mind, and one track is permanently occupied with sex…

11

No need to apologize, you hit the nail right on the head. Unless you would want to add " that is burning with the heat of a million suns" right after “lot”.

12

My only real complaint was the terrible cinematography during the fight scenes. The cuts were so fast and the camera shook so much that I literally could never tell what was going on. It was actually nauseating to watch. The first thing I said to my husband when we left the theater was, “If I could rip the throat out of their director of cinematography for those scenes, I’d do it.” He agreed. There was one scene during which I remember thinking, “Why’d they even bother to turn the camera on? You can’t even tell what’s going on.”

13

Probably because Aliens vs. Predator was considered a massive insult to two popular series of films, whule Resident Evil: Apoc(If it really is that bad) is a zombie movie based off a video game. Video game movies aren’t usally that good anyway, and zombie movies are generally hard to screw up. People go to see zombie movies usally aren’t looking for much more then lots of zombies(I say this as a zombie movie fan).

In short: People had high expectations for AvP, while the same is not as true for RE:A.

14

Actually, I plan to see it so that I may leer at Milla Jovovoich.

So, based on these reviews, I expect it will satisfy my expectations.

Especially when released on DVD, so that I may pause playback during her nekked scenes.

15

How could you possibly have high expectations knowing who the director is?

16

Yes, but as pointed out in the AvP threads, he had not only the comic books to point out the way, but several video games. He’s a video game director, he should have at least looked at them. I think all the checking he did there was fire up the ol’ Goldeneye and go into that last level.

17

Eh…I liked it for what it was, although I thought the first one was much better. The first movie had a few kinda creepy scenes, and some surprises. This one didn’t really have anything but people blowing up zombies. And I don’t even think the nudity quotient was high enough to off-set the terrible camera work. Mila was much more naked in the first one…and with 3 hot women to choose from, one of the other lead characters really aught to have gotten a bit naked. All in all, I think they took a fairly solid first movie, and turned it into a barely entertaining sequal. I hope they do better with the third. (I’m assumming that the ending was a blatant set up for the third instalation)

One other question, is it just me, or did it seem like this movie changed around a lot before it came out? I seem to remember previews from last spring sometime, and I don’t recall them looking anything like the final movie, and I thought the first release date was back in August…then I thought it was September 17th, only to really see it released on the 10th. So was there a lot of changes going on? Or am I just getting old and can’t remember shit?

18

If that’s the case and the previews were for a different cut, it seems like we got the good version.

19

Because because AvP came out, P.H. Anderson hadn’t stepped on nerely every Alien and Predator fan’s toes and the movies he had made before were sometimes good.

Then AvP came out, and people started screaming for blood.

20

I thought Mortal Kombat was good…when I was 12 and didn’t know any better. And the preview for the first RE alone was enough to make me scream for blood. I only saw AvP because of my absolute devotion to the two franchises. But you don’t even have to see the RE movies in their entirety to know that they shit all over the story and concept of the games, so I just don’t see what the point in giving that man anymore of your money would be.

The fact that people are seeing this movie, despite that “it’s alright for a zombie movie” is the reason why shit like this will continue to be produced for decades to come.