31 Flavors of Horror #6: Resident Evil: Afterlife

 I know what you're thinking:

"Another one?" "Four in a row?" "Tedious, Jay. Tedious..." 

Well, for whatever it's worth, if you're going to watch them - and why not, they're fun - you may as well see 'em all, and see 'em in sequence.


This one adds a couple of pretty boys to the line up of pretty, slender gals who kick zombie butts, and was released in 3D... so there's that... anyhow, I promise I'll split up full-series reviews in the future, mmmkay?

31 FLAVORS OF HORROR #6:
RESIDENT EVIL: AFTERLIFE

Paul W.S. Anderson returns to bring the style over substance for the 4th Resident Evil. Right from the get go he brings green-glass candy lit city buildings and fashion victims standing in the Tokyo rain.

I'm not sure about the "Four Years Later" title we get as, at one point in movie three it's stated it's been five, but no matter. Not important. No need for logic here considering our story is set in the largest, most impossibly impractical underground Hive yet. It'd be easier to just build it and slip in in sideways under Tokyo than drill this puppy out

Let's get to the important stuff? How's are Alice. This go round she's sleek and sexy, clad in black leather and all Ninja-style. Her balletic, slo-mo slash-fest of an introduction is worth watching twice. This time Alice is also an army of clones. She's her own comic-book style sexy Suicide Squad and it's a pleasure to behold. The CGI is impeccable this go round and bullet-time has thankfully been given enough of a rest that it seems fresh again.

The special effects fest really is gorgeous - an opening that sets up the rules, then breaks them, returning Alice-Prime to her humanity, eliminating much of the Umbrella Corporation, and then taking us to the survivors of Arcadia. White the third film's desert parched look pleased the eye, this installment adds color and the softness of nature in places. It also let's Jovovich play something a little closer to a human being again, though she's still primarily an ass-kicker.

(Lots of spoilers ahead) 

31 Flavors of Horror #5: Resident Evil: Extinction

 Another bloody video game zombie movie with waify chicks who kick ass in combat. It's a thing. I kinda love it. This one, like the rest, won't make you want to adopt a Rottweiler, nor will it make you want to visit Las Vegas. 

It will, however, make you hope you're a gorgeous, genetically-engineered model-slash-actress-super-ninja in the event that there ever IS a zombie apocalypse. Because, let's face it... I wrote this and you're reading this, meaning, my darlings, the chances that we are BOTH first-line cannon fodder in the event up an uprising of the undead are probably pretty stinkin' high...

31 FLAVORS OF HORROR #5:
RESIDENT EVIL: EXTINCTION

The first thing you notice is that, like all of us, Milla Jovovich's face has changed over the years since the first Resident Evil (2002). It seems leaner, longer. It suits her well.  The second thing you notice is they re-framed a shot from the first film to excise her nipple from the proceedings...

We roll through a quick rehash of some footage from the first film so we can get to the third point. The third? Eww, there's a whole bunch of dead Alices and a slew of parched, dessicated zombies in the middle of the desert. Is that what happens when you eat the silica gel packs in shoe boxes? They even take a piece of footage from the last film, the CG satellite shot, and re-dress it for a parched Earth. I appreciate the frugality.

At this point in the storyline - and I've no idea if it echoes the video games - the very Earth is dying, and Alice roams the vast, parched wastelands looking for survivors. The sleek steel of the first film and jittery city grime of the second are replaced here with sun-bleached, parched lands of the American west. The red dress swapped out for a long duster. The sweaty browns remind one of the look of another grim third film, Alien 3. The first gang she encounters are a family of survivors in the Sawney Bean tradition of scavengers. Sadly, at this point, Alice's humanity has morphed into something along the lines of a "super-soldier" (her acrobatic ninja skills now supplemented with telekinetic skills) and she makes short work of them and their devil-dogs. Seriously, they devil-dogs are MORE than a little overplayed at this point - though the devil-ravens are beautifully cinematic touch.

(Lots of spoilers ahead) 

31 Flavors of Horror #4: Resident Evil: Apocalypse

This big month of horror flick reviews carries on with another in the Resident Evil series. While I didn't have that much I wanted to say about the first flick, I get a little more in-depth here... along with some sidetracking about outfits and the evils of smoking... but sidetracks are about par for me, so I just go with it.

31 FLAVORS OF HORROR #4
RESIDENT EVIL: APOCALYPSE 

Number two in a possibly endless series of Milla Jovovich movies where she kicks zombie butts, Apocalypse picks up right where the first one leaves off. This time, instead of letting us in with no knowledge like the amnesiac Alice, we pick up multiple plot threads with Dr. Ashford and Jill Valentine: a cop in a tube top who shoots four people, albeit zombies, in the head prior to our seeing her face. We also expand the setting from the underground "Hive" to a walled-off Raccoon City.

The story is so opened up, in fact, it feels less like a continuation of the first film than a character from it shoe-horned into a new, different zombie movie. They also sacrificed the crisp, clean aesthetic of the first film for a muddier, less focused look here. However, before long, and faithful to the video game roots, we've established a game board of locations, a set of loosely-drawn characters, and some goals - though nothing headier than "find the girl" and "get out." There's a reporter, a pimp, a child, some evil scientists and a bunch of cops. No one gets much in the way of personality, but it's not important.

(Lots of spoilers ahead) 

31 Flavors of Horror #3: Resident Evil

This week I continue the 31 Flavors of Horror with four from the same family - kinda like if one were chocolate, another chocolate chip, a third perhaps double chocolate, and the fourth... who'm I kidding? I have never been a huge fan of chocolate and it's a little early to pound the ice-cream allusions into the ground as I have a whole slew of Friday the 13th reviews coming up. 

Anyhow, let's roll through the Resident Evil series. It's my favorite series of video game-based zombie movies that feature the under-rated, seemingly always game Milla Jovovich.

31 FLAVORS OF HORROR #3:
RESIDENT EVIL 

I'm not a gamer. I've never played Resident Evil and some days can't tell an Umbrella from a Raccoon in real life, much less as part of the mythos a best selling series of video games. I do,at least, admire the massive construction project that "The Hive" would be.

Not knowing anything about the backstory kind of leaves the viewer in the same position as Alice in the beginning of the film. She wakes up with memory loss and has to put the plot-exposition pieces together along with the audience. (We, sadly, make no discovery that we're capable of flying roundhouse kicks.) A terrible bio-terrorism weapon has been let loose in the giant underground complex known as "The Hive," and only a singing model, a group of crack soldiers and Ugly Betty's boss can stop it from spreading and turning the whole world into zombies. Needless to say, they do a crap job of it or there wouldn't be three sequels (with a fourth pending).