We return to....the same old story

Rating: 3/10 (14 October 2015)

We all think enough is enough at some point, and now that is the general feeling around Resident Evil. I know I know, why it couldn't have ended after one movie but to be fair it stuck to itself and did what it wanted to do, sure the movies are terribly written and directed but, well OK that isn't acceptable at all. This was a series that had room to improve, all it had to do was make it less bat-s*** crazy and try to make it feel more personal and less obsessed with stupid things when all it had to do was make it alright. The man, who produces, writes and directs this is Paul W.S Anderson who is now for me nearly at a point of no return, where even if he makes something good, this will be on his back forever.
Now maybe my introduction seems a little harsh I mean after all this is what it says on the tin, big action, more zombies than seen before and an actual kind of interesting plot(emphasising kind of). We see Alice searching and looking for the place where survivors may be, she flies around everywhere in this plane and even lands it in impossible places. The plot is hard not to ruin because straight away it jumps right into it and that I can respect, but my main problem is not with the plot, it's with the technical decisions. Anderson manages to blast out this movie that's scenes are chosen horribly, it feels Anderson somehow destroys his own script and after it is all over you just feel some opportunities were missed.
A problem I have always felt with this franchise is that it goes too big scale, it can't settle for street to street zombie fighting with normal guns and never feels like the characters do what actual people would do in that crazy situation. It builds Umbrella as this corporation that just has too much money, I mean it builds huge underground complexes which seem to figure in every movie and make it even more insane. The villain of this movie is just so badly created that it just seems stupid to have made that character, the person just seems to be straight from the video game which this uses too much from, and then the movie feels OTT.
Can Resident Evil ever get any better is the question on my lips, on this it cannot and this is the first one so far I have actually found bad and not just another poor movie. It doesn't try and that is what I can't respect, it's not like this movie isn't worth a watch but it certainly isn't one I would recommend to many, fans of the series maybe and I know people who love action movies will also enjoy it, but even some will find this an overuse of special effects and one movie that ruins this series even more so.
So Resident Evil marches on earning money from a very disappointing attempt and I feel there is a lot of this kind of thing left to come in the future. Whether Anderson feels this is going somewhere is really a hard thing to work out, it rakes in money but critically they are smashed, it's like a moral film question, do you keep on making bad movies if a lot of people don't like them?, my answer is actually to keep on going, but improve your craft and don't keep going at the same old stuff that you've been doing for years.