Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2016) Review

Time: 106 Minutes
Age Rating: Violence & horror
Cast:
Milla Jovovich as Alice
Iain Glen as Dr. Alexander Isaacs
Ali Larter as Claire Redfield
Shawn Roberts as Albert Wesker
Eoin Macken as Doc
Fraser James as Razor
Ruby Rose as Abigail
William Levy as Christian
Rola as Cobalt
Director: Paul W.S. Anderson

Picking up immediately after the events in Resident Evil: Retribution, Alice (Milla Jovovich) is the only survivor of what was meant to be humanity’s final stand against the undead. Now, she must return to where the nightmare began – The Hive in Raccoon City, where the Umbrella Corporation is gathering its forces for a final strike against the only remaining survivors of the apocalypse.

Aside from Apocalypse, I’ve generally been enjoying the Resident Evil movies, as silly as they were. At the same time though, I wasn’t sure what to expect from the last movie, I was hearing some particularly mixed things about the final instalment. Given that it was once again Paul W.S. Anderson directing, I was hoping to like it as much as Retribution, or even the original or Afterlife. Unfortunately, The Final Chapter doesn’t quite nail the landing, and although it has some enjoyable parts to it, there are just too many problems that are hard to overlook.

There were some very questionable decisions for the plot from the get go. If you remember the end of Retribution, there was a cliffhanger of Alice, her new allies and Wesker at the White House about to take on hordes of zombies. Since it’s announced quickly in the movie I feel comfortable in saying this, but basically Wesker once against screwed Alice over unsurprisingly, but the worst part is that we don’t get to see any of that happen on screen. Retribution at least showed briefly what happened after the end of Afterlife. However in The Final Chapter it’s just briefly explained away in the film in the opening recap, almost like they didn’t have the budget to show everything that happened, either that or just couldn’t get the other Retribution actors to return. You’d think that this was a decision made by a different director who wanted to take the movie in a different direction as quickly as possible, but Anderson did both films, making the choice even more confusing. The tone unlike that in Retribution took itself very seriously, probably because it’s the last film in the series. Not that I’m not necessarily opposed to that, but doing that does expose some issues and makes it even worse to watch. For example, there’s a moment where a newer character who we don’t get to really learn anything about dies, and the scene is so dramatic and tries to be emotional. It’s mind boggling, made worse by the fact that no other character death in The Final Chapter really got that treatment. The Final Chapter goes all in with the plot twists and attempts to tie things up as it’s the grand conclusion, to some rather mixed results. Some of the reveals I’m not sure about, they seem a little too convenient. They might seem initially quite punchy and effective as twists, however I know for certain that a few of them are blatant retcons and contradictions of what was established in the previous movies. I’m sure that if I was to watch these movies all over again, I’d find plenty of things that doesn’t add up. As for the actual conclusion, I guess it was fine but it wasn’t really satisfying on any level really. It doesn’t quite end on a cliffhanger, but does end on a note where one could technically make another movie if they wanted to.

Milla Jovovich is more than comfortable in the role of Alice, having played it for nearly a decade and a half, and her performance is generally reliable despite there not being much to the character. Ali Larter also returns as Claire Redfield, the only other non villain character from the movie series to return for the final film. Most of the other members of the main cast don’t really stand out, Eoin Macken, Fraser James, Ruby Rose and William Levy are other survivors that Alice meets up with and they are just sort of there, you don’t remember any of them. We have Iain Glen returning as Alexander Isaacs as the main villain for this movie (and yes this is another retcon, he wasn’t really dead three movies ago), and if you enjoyed seeing him ham it up in Extinction, you’ll want to check out The Final Chapter to see him. He’s definitely one of the best parts of The Final Chapter, and every time he was on screen made the movie even more enjoyable. Shawn Roberts also returns as Albert Wesker as a minor villain, unfortunately he doesn’t really do all that much in his screentime instead of just standing there, at the same time I wouldn’t trade more Wesker for less of hammy Iain Glen.

Paul W.S. Anderson returns to direct the final instalment, unfortunately his work here is a bit of a mixed bag. It seems Anderson did away with the 3D from the past two movies, so don’t expect anything flying at the camera. They’ve gone back to the very post apocalyptic look from Extinction, and everything looks in ruins, and I’m more than fine with that look. However, a lot of the movie is set in a lot of darkness and so it could be hard to see what was going on, especially during the action scenes. That brings me to probably the most disappointing aspect of the movie, the action. Some of the setups and sequences look about as entertaining as some of the previous movies’ but the editing is absolutely horrible and flat out ruins them. Now it isn’t quite some of the worst editing I’ve seen for an action movie, but after seeing the previous movies it’s such an incredible drop in quality watching The Final Chapter. Thankfully, the second half was at least somewhat better with the editing in the action scenes.

As someone who enjoyed most of the movies in the series, Resident Evil: The Final Chapter is rather disappointing. Although it’s not as bad as Apocalypse and I had fun in certain moments (mainly in the second half), the mix of horrendous editing and very questionable plot decisions make it a very mixed bag indeed. If you watched through the series to Retribution, you may as well watch the last movie as well. There have been talks of a Resident Evil movie reboot, and I while I enjoyed most of the movies in this series, I’d be open to an interpretation that has actual horror and is much more faithful to the games.

Advertisement

Resident Evil: Retribution (2012) Review

Time: 95 Minutes
Age Rating: contains horror scenes and violence
Cast:
Milla Jovovich as Alice
Sienna Guillory as Jill Valentine
Aryana Engineer as Becky
Li Bingbing as Ada Wong
Johann Urb as Leon S. Kennedy
Boris Kodjoe as Luther West
Kevin Durand as Barry Burton
Oded Fehr as Carlos Oliveira
Colin Salmon as James “One” Shade
Shawn Roberts as Albert Wesker
Director: Paul W.S. Anderson

The Umbrella Corporation’s deadly T-virus continues to ravage the Earth, transforming the global population into legions of the flesh eating Undead. The human race’s last and only hope, Alice (Milla Jovovich) awakens in the heart of Umbrella’s most clandestine operations facility and unveils more of her mysterious past as she delves further into the complex.

The Resident Evil movies aren’t particularly good, but I can’t deny that I find them quite entertaining. With the exception of Apocalypse which I found straight up bad, the other movies in the series are silly, very much not representative of the games they are based on, but yet work as some mindless fun. With original Resident Evil director Paul W.S. Anderson’s returning to direct Afterlife, I found it that movie to be fun, but also felt a little underwhelmed at the same time. However, his work on Resident Evil: Retribution was much more of what I was looking for, and was probably the peak of the movie series.

The opening was admittedly a bit awkward. The credits sequence was a great start with a tracking shot reversed of an attack taking place after the end of Afterlife. Immediately after that however, it just cuts to Alice (Milla Jovovich) giving a recap of the previous movies, and it was just done kind of poorly done. Now Alice narrating what happened in the previous movies at the beginning of the next one isn’t uncommon, but the way they presented it here just looks really silly and out of place for the movie, as if it’s some teaser clip intended to be released online rather than put in the actual film. Without getting too into it, up to a certain point, much of the opening is a little jarring and you don’t really know what’s happening. After that point however, it started to really work for me. I actually didn’t know what to expect from Retribution really. While all the movies are very similar, I wasn’t sure about the plot or the setting, and so it was quite the surprise when I did watch it. I think the reason why this movie works so well compared to much of the other movies in the series is that it’s so silly that it actually seems self aware. So whenever an incredibly silly or goofy moment happens, it doesn’t come across as bad, as it actually enhances the experience and just makes the experience more fun in a B movie way. This is probably the first movie in the series that understands what kind of a series they are, and completely embraces it. If you’re a die hard Resident Evil game fan who doesn’t like what the movies have done, this won’t win you over. I’m not even sure that I can say that zombies take up more than half of the antagonists that the main characters are fighting against in this movie. As someone who only played one of the games, like with the other movies, there are some characters and references to the game series that you might enjoy seeing.

The acting is pretty much at the level of the other Resident Evil movies, that is to say generally fine and occasionally bad. Milla Jovovich is once again reliable as lead character Alice, there’s not a whole lot of progression with her character in the series, and Retribution doesn’t change anything either, but Jovovich is effective enough and makes the character work well enough. You also get returns of characters from previous movies played by Sienna Guillory and Michelle Rodriguez, and they are decent in their roles. The rest of the acting is just fine but nothing that good either. Even the appearances of known Resident Evil characters weren’t that impressive, with Leon Kennedy, Barry Burton and Ada Wong being included. Li Bingbing was relatively decent as Wong, but the other two characters really could’ve been swapped out for anyone.

Paul W.S. Anderson directs his third Resident Evil movie here, and it works a lot better than what he was trying to do with Afterlife. Like with Afterlife, he decided to film the movie in 3D and if you are nowadays going to watch this movie not in 3D, a lot of the moments have objects flying at the camera and look really goofy and forced. However visually the movie actually looks pretty good, and makes it an enjoyable action flick to watch. By now you must know that this is an action series at this point, and thankfully it absolutely delivers on that aspect here. Whether it be with zombies or other humans, the fight choreography and stunts are quite good, and what’s even better is that the movie actually allows you to see what’s going on and not burying it in obnoxious cuts to hide poor stunts. It also doesn’t fall into the problem that Afterlife had, where it brought out the big guns for the opening scene and the rest of the action scenes not really living up to that moment. Retribution however is consistently entertaining from beginning to end. Like in Afterlife, there is quite a lot of slow motion used, but thankfully Anderson pulled back on a lot of it so it’s not nearly as goofy. A lot of the CGI in the previous movies haven’t aged particularly well, however I think Retribution has good enough effects. Tomandandy once again returns to provide the score after Afterlife, and it is quite effective, mainly in the action scenes.

Resident Evil: Retribution edges Extinction out for best movie of the live action movie series. It strikes the right balance of being entertaining and silly, yet is well made as a B level action movie that makes it genuinely entertaining and not just something to laugh at. If you enjoyed any of the previous Resident Evil movies then I recommend trying this one too, I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would.

 

Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010) Review

Time: 97 Minutes
Age Rating: Contains violence, offensive language and horror
Cast:
Milla Jovovich as Alice
Ali Larter as Claire Redfield
Wentworth Miller as Chris Redfield
Shawn Roberts as Albert Wesker
Boris Kodjoe as Luther West
Kim Coates as Bennett Sinclair
Sergio Peris-Mencheta as Angel Ortiz
Kacey Clarke as Crystal Waters
Spencer Locke as K-Mart
Director: Paul W.S. Anderson

In a world overrun with the walking dead, Alice (Milla Jovovich) continues her battle against Umbrella Corp., rounding up survivors along the way. Joined by an old friend, Alice and her group set out for a rumored safe haven in Los Angeles. Instead of sanctuary, they find the city overrun with zombies, and a trap about to spring.

After three Resident Evil movies, the director of the first movie Paul W.S. Anderson returns to the series to deliver on the fourth entry. While Afterlife is enjoyable, with some generally good action, it’s certainly the least interesting of the series. It comes with the expected flaws, and there’s not really much of a plot. With that said, I still enjoyed Afterlife quite a bit for what it is.

There’s really nothing to say about the plot, even less so than the previous movies. It’s actually a pretty straightforward movie, and it really just feels like a bunch of action scenes connected by a thinly drawn plot. While I get that many of the other movies are like that too, they did a much better job at hiding it than here. The horror aspect was most present in the first Resident Evil movie, the other movies following that had less horror, but it was still a noticeable part of the movies. With Afterlife however, the horror aspect was sort of in the background, it is first and foremost an action movie, that happens to have some horror in it.

Milla Jovovich returns in her role of Alice, and once again does pretty well, especially in the action. Ali Larter also returns as Claire Redfield and is also pretty good. Those two are the highlights of the cast, the rest range from bad to being fine. Wentworth Miller is also included in this movie as Chris Redfield, and he was alright. Albert Wesker has been recast from Extinction (the previous Resient Evil movie), this time being played by Shawn Roberts, and he gets more presence and screentime in the movie as the main antagonist this time round. Now again I hadn’t played the Resident Evil games that have him in them, but from the vague knowledge I have of him, he’s blonde guy with sunglasses who has superpowers, is like super enhanced and can fight very well. That’s pretty much how he is in this movie, and nothing more, a pretty generic, if passable villain.

This is Paul W.S. Anderson’s return to the Resident Evil movie series since the first movie, and while I wouldn’t quite say it’s a triumphant return, he still does some good things with his direction. Visually, this movie actually looks really good. The opening credits scene starts off the movie on a very high note, and even the first action sequence is pretty enjoyable to watch. The Resident Evil movies ever since Apocalypse have been action based, but they really made a big lean on the action in this movie. The first action scene starts off with a bunch of Milla Jovovich clones, as I said, it is very entertaining, but I think that’s where the movie might’ve peaked. There are also a lot of slow motion in the action, and while that could be fun to watch at points, it could get a little cartoonish and silly. There’s particularly a scene involving a big undead person with a giant axe, which while it was stunning to look at, bordered on parody with the amount of slow motion used, as without it the scene would’ve been only like a minute long. This movie was definitely filmed in 3D, with all the things flying at the camera, but it’s not the worst case of that type of movie I’ve seen. The CGI is pretty average, hasn’t aged well from 2010. Tomandandy provides the score, and it certainly made the movie much better, especially when it came to the action scenes.

Resident Evil Afterlife isn’t one of the better movies in the series but isn’t the worst either. It’s essentially a bunch of action scenes strung together by a vague plot. It has some enjoyable aspects to it for sure, a couple of the actors are good, and many of the action scenes are entertaining and stunning to watch, even if they’re a little too over the top for their own good. If you don’t like the other Resident Evil movies, you definitely won’t like this one. But if you made it this far in the series, you might as well check out Afterlife too.

Resident Evil: Extinction (2007) Review

Time: 94 Minutes
Age Rating: Horror Scenes & Violence
Cast:
Milla Jovovich as Alice
Ali Larter as Claire Redfield
Oded Fehr as Carlos Oliveira
Iain Glen as Dr. Alexander Isaacs
Ashanti as Nurse Betty
Mike Epps as Lloyd Jefferson “L.J.” Wade
Spencer Locke as K-Mart
Christopher Egan as Mikey
Jason O’Mara as Albert Wesker
Director: Russell Mulcahy

Captured by the Umbrella Corp., Alice (Milla Jovovich) receives genetic alterations that leave her with superhuman abilities. Hiding out in the Nevada desert, she joins forces with former cohorts Carlos (Oded Fehr) and L.J. (Mike Epps) as well as new survivors Claire (Ali Larter), K-Mart (Spencer Locke) and Nurse Betty (Ashanti) to eradicate the virus that threatens to turn every human on Earth into a zombie.

Despite mixed to negative reactions to the previous two movies, the Resident Evil movie series continued with its third movie, Extinction. Extinction is quite the considerable improvement over its previous movie Apocalypse. It is one of the better Resident Evil movies, it has some good ideas and setups, and is quite enjoyable, albeit being yet another over the top and silly zombie action flick.

Resident Evil Extinction takes the setting from the city in Apocalypse to a desert environment, and that was rather refreshing and a lot more fun. Compared to the previous movies, it really does feel more like the end of the world. I haven’t seen many zombie movies set in a desert environment, and so while plotwise it’s very familiar, it nonetheless feels fresh. At this point in the series you should completely separate the movies from the games. In my review for Resident Evil Apocalypse, I mentioned how there was a part in the third act that I didn’t really like particularly. That aspect was the revelation that lead character Alice now has somehow supernatural powers, including telekinesis. Unfortunately, they didn’t retcon that in Extinction, her powers stay here too. There is really no explanation for them, nor are there any rules set in place as to what she can or can’t do, they are very vague on that aspect. It’s a part you just have to go with, but I really wish that this wasn’t in the movie and series in the first place. Otherwise it’s a dumb and silly zombie action movie that’s quite fun. It’s reasonably paced across its hour and a half runtime and from what I could recall it didn’t drag too often. It does end with one of those sequel bait endings, but I guess all of the Resident Evil movies do that.

Milla Jovovich has quite a handle on the role of Alice by this point. I think the character really needed a lot more characterisation and better writing than what has been provided to her, but Jovovich did well. Ali Larter is introduced as Claire Redfield, another character from the games, and she was pretty good here. The characters in general aren’t particularly deep and you don’t really care for them, but I guess they’re handled a little better than the previous movies. Iain Glen is one of the main antagonists of the movie, the character is rather generic, and he thankfully hams up the role. One character that I recognise from the games that made an appearance here was Albert Wesker, I haven’t played a game with him in it, but Wesker is the main human antagonist of the series from what I can tell. The problem with him here isn’t that he’s only in a couple scenes, no doubt they were just setting him up for the next movie. The problem was that Jason O’Mara is just so miscast in the role, coming across as a really boring businessman, who I guess is Albert Wesker because that’s what people call him and he’s blonde and always wears sunglasses. It hardly drags the movie down at all but it takes you out of it a bit. Thankfully he was recast in the next movie, and was… slightly better.

Russell Mulcahy is the director, and is considerably better than the last movie. Instead of the dark blue colour of the dark cities in Apocalypse, Extinction takes place in the deserts of Las Vegas, giving off a vibe of Mad Max but with zombies. Everything feels abandoned and wrecked, and it’s quite effective. Action scenes are considerably better too, they are at least more creative with the setups and you can see a lot more of what’s going on (especially compared to Apocalypse), however does have a little too many cuts at points. Some of the CGI is kind of messy, but it’s at least improved on from the previous two movies. I also quite liked Charlie Clouser’s score.

Resident Evil Extinction isn’t great by any means, nor would I call it good, but I enjoyed it for what it is. Along with the underdevelopment of characters, some leaps in logic and dumb moments, I think one of the biggest problems in both the movie and really the series was having Alice be a superpowered character. Even as a dumb action series, the omission of that aspect would’ve made these movies considerably better. Nonetheless, at this point I’d say that it’s my favourite in the series thus far, though it’s not saying a lot. If you were entertained by any of the previous two Resident Evil movies, I definitely think you’ll have some fun with this.

Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004) Review

Time: 94 Minutes
Age Rating: Violence, horror scenes, and offensive language
Cast:
Milla Jovovich as Alice
Sienna Guillory as Jill Valentine
Oded Fehr as Carlos Oliveira
Thomas Kretschmann as Major Timothy Cain
Sophie Vavasseur as Angela “Angie” Ashford
Jared Harris as Dr. Charles Ashford
Mike Epps as Lloyd Jefferson “L.J.” Wade
Director: Alexander Witt

A deadly virus from a secret Umbrella Corporation laboratory underneath Raccoon City is exposed to the world. Umbrella seals off the city to contain the virus, creating a ghost town where everyone trapped inside turns into a mutant zombie. Alice (Milla Jovovich), a survivor from Umbrella’s secret lab, meets former Umbrella security officer Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory) and mercenary Carlos Oliviera (Oded Fehr). Together, they search for a scientist (Jared Harris) who might be able to help.

The first Resident Evil movie didn’t receive the greatest critical response but it was a success upon its release, especially with it being loosely based on the video games of the same name. The Resident Evil movie started out smaller, but by the time the movie series ended in the 2010s it was a full on action series. The second movie Apocalypse was the escalation from horror action to full on action with some horror elements, to such a ridiculous level. If the first movie wasn’t already a major departure from the games, Apocalypse certainly was that. It’s really not good at all but if you know what you’re going in for, you can have some fun at certain parts.

I will be commenting on how they adapted the Resident Evil games to the big screen, but keep in mind that I’ve only played the remake of Resident Evil 2, so I don’t know a ton about the series and lore. Apocalypse actually starts off pretty well, right after the events of the first movie. The movie on the whole is a pretty simple action movie with a straightforward plot. Even though it wasn’t attempting to have scenes like those The Matrix just yet, despite the scale being seemingly small they still manage to make it feel overblown, especially with the action scenes. While it is definitely horror based with the movie involving zombies, any sort of true horror that the first movie had is missing here. There’s very little that’s surprising, I guess there is a twist in the third act but on the whole the movie is mildly predictable. Again, I’ve only played the remake of Resident Evil 2, but it seemed like they took aspects from the game but did them in a more action sense. They do throw in a bunch of characters and aspects from the games, but not all of it is handled the best. One character that is brought from the video games is, Nemesis from Resident Evil 3 who is an unstoppable force. He’s like a tyrant (a giant bioweapon super soldier created by the Umbrella Corporation), only he has weapons and he is very dangerous. They did a good job at making him powerful in this movie. However without giving anything away, they do make him very weak towards the third act, and around this time they do something with main character Alice which completely breaks away from the Resident Evil lore, which just does not work at all. While the first movie didn’t to have exactly what the video games had, it did try to replicate the structure and it kept within its own lore. With Apocalypse, it tries to have it both ways, and by the end it doesn’t really work.

Milla Jovovich is really the only returning member of the first movie as Alice. The character doesn’t have a lot to her, but Jovovich comes across probably the best in this movie (as she generally does for all the movies in the series it seems). The rest of the cast weren’t anything special and weren’t given nearly the amount of attention that Alice got. The one character name I recognised was that of Jill Valentine played by Sienna Guillory, as I heard that the character is in the games. She was pretty good and I heard she’s like a perfect representation of the character in live action, however like all the other characters suffer from being overshadowed by Alice. Thomas Kretschmann is a pretty generic villain, nothing really special about him at all. Mike Epps also is in this movie, and while I get that he was going to provide the comedic relief over everyone else, he just didn’t fit in at all. I guess in a way this actually made him unintentionally funny at points, especially one of his early scenes when he hits a zombie with a car with a good ol’ “GTA motherfucker! 10 points!”. It really was at that point where I stopped taking the movie seriously at all. There’s nothing to say about the rest of the cast.

The first movie had Paul W.S. Anderson directing, but he wouldn’t return for the series until Afterlife. This time it’s Alexander Witt directing, and while the movie certainly is bigger than the first, it’s not necessarily better. Parts of the action are entertaining, but the colours and lighting aren’t that great and the editing isn’t the best, leaving some of the scenes a bit of a mess. It can be pretty hard at times to see what’s going on. If you have a look at the colour pallet on the posters, that dark blue colour is pretty much what you’ll be seeing for most of the movie. The visual effects also haven’t aged very well, although they are definitely better than the previous movie. Some of the more practical effects are good though, like the aforementioned Nemesis or the zombies. At points, Apocalypse does well to create good atmosphere, however there isn’t nearly enough of it and they don’t last very long.

I don’t hate the movie like some do, but Resident Evil: Apocalypse is so far the weakest in the Resident Evil movie series, though that’s not really saying a lot. If you’re looking for an accurate depiction of the games in live action films, outside of some characters and aspects that you might recognise, it’s not this. If you don’t mind a dumb action movie and you liked the first movie, then you might enjoy this one. However if you weren’t a fan of the first Resident Evil movie, you probably won’t like this movie either.

 

Hellboy (2019) Review

Time: 120 Minutes
Age Rating: Graphic violence and offensive language
Cast:
David Harbour as Hellboy/Anung Un Rama
Milla Jovovich as Vivienne Nimue/Blood Queen
Ian McShane as Trevor “Broom” Bruttenholm
Sasha Lane as Alice Monaghan
Daniel Dae Kim as Ben Daimio
Thomas Haden Church as Lobster Johnson
Director: Neil Marshall

Based on the graphic novels by Mike Mignola, Hellboy (David Harbour), caught between the worlds of the supernatural and human, battles an ancient sorceress (Milla Jovovich) bent on revenge.

Hellboy 2019 was a movie I wasn’t certain about going into it. Everyone wanted a Hellboy 3 with Guillermo del Toro and Ron Perlman, and I was one of these people. A Hellboy reboot wasn’t exactly what I was wanting. With that said, they cast David Harbour as Hellboy, had Ian McShane as part of the cast, and had Neil Marshall directing, so I was cautiously optimistic. Despite the trailers looking a little rough, I was hoping it was good. Even after the overwhelming negative response to the movie, I was hoping to at least be entertained by it. While I didn’t necessarily hate it like so many people did, it really was worse than I thought it would actually be.

I should mention that my knowledge of the Hellboy characters and world only comes from the Del Toro movies. So I’m treating this movie as its own movie (it already has enough problems as it is). 2 hours feels like a standard length for a comic book movie, yet it somehow manages to draw the plot out really long, the pacing is really slow. It takes about 30 minutes for the movie to really start with the actual main plot of the movie, and really it takes another 30 minutes after that for Hellboy to really get involved with it. Even after that point it feels unnecessarily long and drawn out, not to mention it fails to be engaging on any level. There are so many random and lazy expositions dumps given by characters it’s actually astounding, I’m pretty sure I checked out after the 5th one. The opening scene is an example, where it just has Ian McShane just talking about something that happened in the past with the main villain, Arthur and Merlin, and he just explains everything that happened in the past. Not that I don’t like a McShane narration, but from that point I really knew that something was off. This movie is yet another movie that has been hit by a bad case of studio interference, and you can feel it throughout, however it’s really hard to tell at times which was what parts were originally filmed and which were changed. The tone is all over the place, at some points it’s trying to be serious (it doesn’t work), at other points it’s trying to be witty and quippy like it’s trying to be a Marvel movie or something (that also doesn’t work). At points it’s also trying to be edgy, however it’s not quite like the 2019 Shaft type of edgy where the movie thinks it’s so incredible and hilarious when it does it. When Hellboy 2019 does it, it almost feels like thrown in and obligatory.

Despite the long runtime there are at least a number of scenes that were cut out and altered, especially from the trailers. If you watched the later trailers you probably saw a moment with Hellboy on a dragon with a flaming sword, don’t expect much from that scene, because it only lasts like 30 seconds. The trailer really does showcase the best moments, and unfortunately they mostly look worse in the actual movie. I checked out a few of the deleted scenes online just out of curiosity. One of the most notable scenes was an alternative version of that aforementioned opening flashback scene, where instead of having McShane just narrating everything that’s happening in an overly explaining way, you have characters like Milla Jovovich’s character and Arthur and Merlin actually speaking their lines, and it was considerably better. Now I’m not sure if including all those (and no doubt more) deleted/original scenes would’ve fixed most of the problems, but the movie would’ve been at least a little better. Throughout most of the movie I just felt nothing, and I didn’t particularly care about the plot or the characters. I wasn’t even fussed about potential parts of the plot that didn’t make sense, at this point I would’ve accepted a dumb movie and didn’t even get that. It’s really just a couple of action scenes that were the highlights. The first involved giants but had its own set of problems (more on that later). The other was towards the end (partially shown in the trailer as well), it’s a tracking shot action scene and it had more energy than the entire rest of the movie beforehand. Also if you really care enough, this movie has a couple credits scenes, as it seems they are very much keen on setting up for sequels. However it seems very unlikely that they’ll produce any form of media following up on this movie as a sequel.

Casting anyone for Hellboy that’s not Ron Perlman seemed an impossible task, he played the role perfectly in the Guillermo del Toro movies. David Harbour was however a great alternative and pretty good casting. He definitely does the best that he can with what he has, unfortunately he’s not exactly given the best material to work with. His character wasn’t exactly defined well and his arc just had him jumping around with him making sudden random character choices for some reasons, with some pretty lacking development. Ian McShane is always good to see in movies and Hellboy 2019 is no exception, however I didn’t really buy the connection between the two characters despite this movie’s efforts. Sasha Lane and Daniel Dae Kim are decent enough in their roles, but again aren’t given that much to work with. Milla Jovovich plays the villain and she’s one of those over the top taking over the world sort of villains where you can’t really do much with them. In her situation, you could either look like you don’t want to be there or ham up the role, and Jovovich does the latter. She’s really not good but again there’s really not much that she could really do with the little she’s given.

Neil Marshall directed this movie, and I’ve liked the movies I’ve seen from him However there are multiple parts with his direction which didn’t work, but I’m not entirely sure I can put it fully on him. Apparently there were disagreements. You can definitely tell that the budget is lower than the Del Toro movies from even just looking at this movie. Despite it being R rated, it’s kind of generic and dull somehow. As for the actual blood, there are some violent moments every so often in the first two acts but aside from some exceptions, some of it looks like it could be edited down to a ‘hard’ PG-13. It’s very much the CGI and fake looking kind of blood, and yes, when it’s on screen they are excessive with it and it honestly kind of feels lazy and over reliant. At the same time, they’re oddly enough not in the movie as much as I thought it would be. The third act is where the blood suddenly is ramped up, even though there are some other bloody moments in this section of the movie, it cuts to the city and has a full minute of people getting brutally murdered by giant monsters for whatever reason (maybe they thought that there wasn’t enough blood so just added it in at the last moment?). The second trailer at least seemed to indicate a really over the top and goofy hard R rated flick. Unfortunately, it seems that trailer had over 10 times more energy compared to that in the actual movie.

The CGI really is a mixed bag, at some points it looks pretty good, at others it looks really bad. For example in one of the highlights of the movie where Hellboy fights some giants, the environments and the giants themselves just look really off and it’s very distracting. The cinematography is so bland, and there are points where the movie looks flat out ugly, and no not in a good way. With the exception of a few moments, generally the look of the movie is pretty bland and colourless. More often than not, the only red thing on screen is Hellboy himself. On the other hand, the creature designs for the most part are creative and good. I know that a lot of people don’t like the design of Hellboy and think it makes him look ugly and all that, but honestly I liked the whole idea of trying to make him more monstrous. A more R rated horror take on Hellboy would’ve been interesting to see, but if they ever planned or even filmed some of that, it’s not in the final product at all. The score by Benjamin Wallfisch was pretty good, but the other song choices for certain sections were a little weird. It’s not even the few certain song choices, it’s just that there are so many cases where they put known songs in some of the scenes and it was kind of distracting.

Hellboy 2019 was quite a disappointment, and I wasn’t necessarily expecting much from it. By the time I got around to watching it, I was expecting at worst to be Venom levels of absurd silliness, but it couldn’t even reach that level. I’m not even sure what they were really trying to do with this movie, it doesn’t even seem to know what it’s trying to be. It really did seem like one of those 2000s comic book movies that were a misfire, and didn’t really work on any level. The cast were mostly fine with David Harbour and Ian McShane being pretty good, and I liked some of the action, but nothing else in the movie really works unfortunately. Maybe watch the aforementioned action scene with the giants and the ending when these clips come out online, but it’s really not worth watching the full 2 hour long movie. Instead if you haven’t seen them already, I’d recommend watching the two Hellboy movies from Guillermo del Toro, they are considerably better.

Resident Evil (2002) Review

Time: 100 Minutes
Age Rating: Contains horror and violence
Cast:
Milla Jovovich as Alice
Michelle Rodriguez as Rain Ocampo
Eric Mabius as Matthew “Matt” Addison
James Purefoy as Spence Parks
Martin Crewes as Chad Kaplan
Colin Salmon as James “One” Shade
Director: Paul W.S. Anderson

Based on the popular video game, Milla Jovovich and Michelle Rodriguez star as the leaders of a commando team who must break into “the hive,” a vast underground genetics laboratory operated by the powerful Umbrella Corporation. There, a deadly virus has been unleashed, killing the lab’s personnel and resurrecting them as the evil Un-dead. The team has just three hours to shut down the lab’s supercomputer and close the facility before the virus threatens to overrun the Earth

I heard for a while that the original Resident Evil was one of the better video game movies. I also heard that the original was the best in this video game movie series and gotten worse as the sequels progressed. If that’s the case, I’m a little worried about what the rest of the series will be like because I don’t even think I can call this first movie enjoyable as a guilty pleasure movie. Even if it might be one of the better video game movies, Resident Evil isn’t very good on its own. There’s no doubt some enjoyment to be had with it with some of the action scenes but unfortunately it wasn’t entertaining enough.

I will just first of all state that I’ve never played a Resident Evil game, so I’m not the best person to talk about accuracy to the games. There is so much exposition dumps by the characters that you just lose track of what’s going on. At a point you just stop caring about what’s going on. Honestly there’s not much to say about the plot of Resident Evil, people go inside a building with zombies in it, and the killing ensues. If you turn your brain off you might find it a lot more enjoyable, I certainly enjoyed it more. There’s nothing really intriguing, entertaining or interesting about the plot at all. Maybe the sequels have better plots but I’m not really counting on it.

The acting isn’t good at all, no one in the cast whether it’s Milla Jovovich, Michelle Rodriguez, Eric Mabius, James Purefoy, Martin Crewes or anyone else give good performances. The best thing I can say about the acting is that it certainly sounds like a Resident Evil game with how emotionless and flat the line deliveries were. Looking at the material they were given, I can’t really blame the cast for their at best mediocre performances.

Paul WS Anderson’s direction of Resident Evil feels very much like its from the early 2000s. It’s definitely more action than survival horror but the action is not so overblown to the level of the later films either. None of the scares work, there’s a bunch of fake jump scares and a bunch of real jump scares that all fail to leave any form of impact. There is also a complete lack of effective tension. The action sequences are fine and entertaining enough, probably the best part of the whole movie. When there are digital effects used, they look very fake, embarrassingly so and really stick out in a bad way.

While it’s no Bloodrayne, Resident Evil is not a good video game movie and not a good movie in itself. It just feels really mediocre and dated, the acting wasn’t good, the effects were bad, you just don’t care about what’s going on, the best part was the action, and even then the action wasn’t all that great. I suppose if you are the least bit curious, give Resident Evil a watch, but don’t expect anything more than a potentially ‘okay’ video game movie. I might check out the sequels but I’m not expecting much from them, if this is the best in the series, I can only imagine what the future movies are like.