One Of The Weaker Installments Of The Series

Rating: 5/10 (15 January 2015)

In this 4th installment, Alice continues her fight against the Umbrella Corporation. She now finds herself in Alaska in hope of finding some kind of humanity left from the disaster of the T-Virus. After finding Claire Redfield (a survivor she was with in Nevada), they make their way to L.A. where they find another small band of survivors who've taken refuge in a maximum security prison. Working together, they try to find refuge in Arcadia. However, all is not as it seems regarding Arcadia, and with the zombies continuing to surround the prison, it soon becomes a race against time to get to safety.
OK, the first three movies were decent....thin on story, granted (apart from really the 1st one), but they had good action & suspense. Unfortunately Resident Evil: Afterlife is messy. It starts out in Japan, where we see the start of the zombie attacks, then 4 years later where Alice and her "friends" try to break into the Umbrella Corporation there, then 6 months later she's hundreds of miles away in Alaska, so it's pretty confusing to follow to start with.
The story is, well, to say it's thin would be an understatement. Action is the main reliant, which isn't too bad, however this is basically a Matrix movie with a Resident Evil title. The slow motion action (which were obviously done for the 3D) is pretty cool in a good few scenes, but there's just a bit too many. It's a bit like a John Woo film on crack.
Also, this film copies so many other movies as well....Wesker dodging bullets (Neo from The Matrix); bullet time (Max Payne); Axeman character (Pyramid Head from Silent Hill); zombies mouths stretching open (vampires in Blade 2). So really nothing is that original.
The acting by Wentworth Miller (who played Chris Redfield) and Shawn Roberts (who played Albert Wesker) was just awful as well, so add that to other mediocre scenes and you have a very lackluster installment to the series. Some very cool action scenes but that's about it for this one really.