Resident Evil: Apocalypse - Movie Review
6Resident Evil: Apocalypse - Movie Review
Released in 2004, the film starts with a recap of the first movie which ended with Alice and one other survivor managing to escape Umbrella’s secret underground lab, named The Hive, before being captured by Umbrella scientists and Alice waking up in a Hospital, then making her way to the streets of Racoon City, which lie in ruins where the T-Virus outbreak has already begun.
We then see some Umbrella scientists like at the end of the last movie, opening up the doors of the Hive, and a bunch of BOWs quickly overrun them, showing us how they escaped.
Next we see a convoy of 4x4s and a helicopter going to pick up important members of Umbrella to evacuate them including someone called Dr. Charles Ashford from his home, and his daughter Angie from school, This might be a vague reference to the Ashford family from Code Veronica X? But it’s more likely just a coincidence.
But then the car at the rear of the convoy with Angie in it randomly gets T-boned by a truck for some reason and none of the others bothers turning back to go help, they just leave them there to rot I guess? You could argue that she’s not important to Umbrella’s goals and that’s why they didn’t turn back, but if they really don’t care enough about Angie to do that, then why even bother picking her up from school in the first place?
I feel this section maybe could have been expanded on a little, like maybe the truck-driver could have been the guy from the opening of Resident Evil 2 who says “Why’d he bite me?” I think that would have been a cool little reference to the games, and would have shown us why the lorry crashed into them instead of it seemingly just happening by chance.
Now we see Jill Valentine and on some newspaper clippings she has we see that she has been suspended from the Police Department, and bloody hell! The actress they got to play Jill ACTUALLY looks like her! Which is apparently too much to ask for these days***pic***
Like why do we even need Alice for? Can’t she just be the main character instead? I guess maybe she’s just a no-name actress who no-one’s heard of, but does anyone really say “oh Milla Jovovich! Wow I must go see that if Milla Jovovich is in it!”? and then Jill goes to the Police Station and shoots some zombies and saves some people, I think the film’s saying the Mansion incident occurred then? But I thought they changed it in the first movie and that didn’t happen? But it’s unclear and not told to us very clearly.
Then we see a helicopter with UBCS soldiers including Carlos, I think he’s played by that guy who was in Deuce Bigalow and The Mummy Returns, and also Nicholai, who’s ginger for some reason.. Do you get Ginger Russian people? is that a thing? I’ve never really thought about it before. He’s supposed to have White hair, even the Remake got that right.
Carlos jumps out the helicopter and tries to save a woman on a rooftop, but shes been bitten and jumps off so she doesn’t turn into a zombie.
Then we’re at a checkpoint Umbrella have set up and have control over and not, say the US Army or the Police for some reason? Where they are letting people evacuate, but then some people turn into zombies and the bad guy of the movie, who’s an Umbrella Executive makes them close it, so everyone is now trapped in the city with no way out.
It’s here where we’re introduced to another character who’s a member of S.T.A.R.S aswell but I can’t even remember his name. He’s just some guy who tags along with Jill; why not instead of this guy, make him Brad instead? at least that’d make the character more interesting as it’s actually someone from the games, instead of this guy who’s kinda just there. They did a good job casting Jill so if they got someone who looks like Brad there alongside her that would’ve been cool, we could have even gotten the bit where Nemesis kills him. But no this stand in for Brad just dies by a zombie bite later, so maybe the remake of RE3 took more inspiration from this film than the actual game it’s based on? These days that honestly wouldn’t surprise me.
We then get a pretty good scene, resembling the opening of RE3, with a showdown between the RPD and UBCS with the Zombies overrunning them; crikey its actually like the games! This bit was surprisingly good and accurate.
We then see Alice going into a gun shop to find weapons, but this was also a bit of a missed opportunity too because they didn’t make it the gun shop from RE2, why not just call it The Kendo Gun Shop? It would have been cool like if Alice is scrounging for ammo, but then there could have been a jump scare where we think something’s creeping up behind her, but we see it’s Robert Kendo, and she breathes a sigh of relief, but then some zombies smash through and eat him. They coulda done this instead of the short bit with the Vicar which is coming up in a sec, and have done the same kinda thing as that but make it more game accurate.