"It's easily as good as 'Land of the Dead'!" This is going to go well then...

Rating: 5/10 (15 October 2010)

If you're watching this film then you know the drill:
Act 1: There's no hope for humanity! Act 2: I've met some lovely people, perhaps there's hope after all! Act 3: Ah, no... no I was right, there's no hope left, just a terrible conspiracy from a greedy company
(repeat acts 2-3 as necessary).
It's a familiar recipe, and one that nobody here shies away from exploiting time and again. Still, 'Afterlife' is probably the best sequel to a film that was so poor it shouldn't have had one- let alone three. That being said, it only makes it as good as "Land of the Dead". How bad, I wonder, was Romero's screenplay for the original 'Resident Evil' that it was rejected in favour of this formulaic franchise?
Though, like some criminally insane lunatic with an obsessive compulsive disorder, I have inexplicably been drawn to watch all four of these films. Some say Resident Evil: Extinction was unwatchable; it- like the first- bared some resemblance to the first two games from which it is adapted, the events from said shoot 'em-ups happening as a backdrop. And why not? It is an adaptation after all, and it's nice to have surprises. Shame then that's the only one the series offers.
The action here is okay- but you could easily lose about 20 minutes of the running time by simply removing the slow motion bullets, kicks in the face and swinging/running away from things that are exploding. The director (Anderson, returning after a brief hiatus from the series to run 'Alien' and 'Predator' into the ground simultaneously and the shockingly watchable 'Death Race') loves looking at shiny guns, too- so we have to look a lot of shiny guns.
The 'infected' are a bit boring (compared to the pants-wettingly terrifying ones in '28 Days/Weeks Later') and they seem to have a great deal of difficulty eating anything because they have four very long tongues with teeth embedded in them (a bit like the dog out of John Carpenter's 'The Thing'- a bit too much like that, actually). Furthermore, they look completely unbelievable (as if these zombies are walking around with a bad special effect stuck to their faces) and it's a gimmick that gets exhausted pretty quickly (Del Toro did something similar in 'Blade 2' as well, except he's a genius and doesn't submit to overkill).
The villain wears sunglasses ALL THE TIME and has a big black trench coat. Frankly, that's so clichéd it's beyond funny now: it's actually a little bit embarrassing, like that guy at college who STILL dresses like Neo from the Matrix. Seriously, it's been eleven years. Can we stop ripping that film off please? If it's not fashion, then it's the slow mo and the half-baked bullet time effects. It wouldn't be so bad if they weren't so terribly executed.
The highlight of the film is the unexpected appearance of Neil from 'The Inbetweeners' sister. The plot's the same as always, there's nothing new on display here, there's not even any innovation in terms of death- everything gets bitten on the neck or gets shot several times- because guns ARE the solution.
It's the best of the four, but it's still a sub-standard action/horror flick which delivers on neither action or horror. It's been bested by other, smarter films. I wouldn't mind the film being so dumb, so mind numbingly stupid if only it wasn't asking the audience to take it so seriously and this misguided self-belief that it's the greatest action/horror franchise of all time. It's the best video game inspired franchise of all time, but then again I think it might be the only video-game inspired franchise that hasn't been helmed by Uwe Boll (most other adaptations don't get sequels for damn good reasons- I don't see how Resident Evil was any better than, say, 'Doom'- which will never get a follow up).
Also, the trailer gives away something that the film tries to keep as a surprise, given how the opening scene plays out... although it's pretty obvious to be fair.
I can't say I'm disappointed, I knew it was going to be poor. And I will probably watch the fifth one too. Like I said, it's an illness.