Disappointingsuch potential to create an interesting story arc wasted

Rating: 4/10 (14 December 2010)

As a fan of the RE film franchise, I was hoping that after the way things were left with Extinction, we were in for an interesting movie with Afterlife. Alas, it was merely elaborate set pieces to show off the 3D special effects and everything else was merely filler in between fights with various foe in different states of mutation. And who exactly were the baddies? Nothing was explained so I'm assuming you had to have played the game to know who they were.
With no explanation, the new baddies look like rip offs from other horror franchises - The Executioner looks like Pyramid Head from Silent Hill and the zombies who's entire faces open up to reveal internal suckers look like the Reapers from Blade II. Are we to assume that these are all creations of the Umbrella corporation or subsequent mutations of the T-virus? Surely there could have been just a teeny bit of explanation as to where all these new villains actually materialised from?! All the new characters served no purpose apart from being appetisers for a zombie buffet and there is still no character development whatsoever. What is the purpose of Chris and Clare Redfield in the films? Why bother paying Spencer Locke and Sienna Guillory to reprise roles that lasted all of two minutes? Is something going to actually HAPPEN in RE5? Because nothing whatsoever happened in RE4. All of the best action and major plot points were in the trailer - nothing new was added during the film.
All the guff at the end of Extinction where the White Queen talked about 'Alice's blood being the key to curing the T-virus' and she was in possession of 'all the equipment she would need to synthesise the cure'. What happened to all of that? We see loads of Alice clones attacking the Umbrella facility in Japan - so was that Alice's only objective? To have revenge and kill Wesker? Again, nothing was explained. Did ALL the Alice clones die in the explosion in Japan? Who IS Wesker? What exactly is his function and what are Umbrella actually up to? Questions, questions and not one iota of information from RE4 explains any of that. I am scratching my head to understand what the point of it all was as all the major plot points could have been summed up in about 10 minutes.
Disappointingsuch potential to create an interesting story arc wasted on 97 minutes of incoherent drivel.