An insult to its predecessor and the audience

Rating: 2/10 (26 October 2004)

I used to believe that Paul W.S. Anderson was not getting a fair break from the Hollywood studio system. It's an easy belief to support, given that every film he has made so far has been hacked apart by the MPAA or a film studio acting upon MPAA orders. This evening, however, I witnessed a film so indescribably awful that not only do I believe my mother's pet silky terrier can puke up a better script, it has erased any respect I might have one had for Paul Anderson.
The MPAA's R rating is quite meaningless, and that studios cut their film in order to get it is a telling sign of what is wrong with Hollywood today. In Australia, Resident Evil: Apocalypse was passed with the very softcore M rating, and this attempt at a film is a mild M at that. The atmosphere of the first film is absent, and the violence is so toned down that it resembles one of those Modified For Television cuts that were so reviled here in the 1980s.
I now know why they changed the name from Nemesis to Apocalypse. There was once a belief that the Nemesis name is cursed, given that the Star Trek film with the same secondary title tried to compete with a Lord Of The Rings film and failed miserably. I have a funny feeling that Capcom saw the script, imagined what it would look like on film, and quietly asked that it not be associated with their excellent video game. The Nemesis in this film isn't so much an unstoppable killing machine as he is a drooling idiot in need of a friend. The Hunters/Lickers also take a beating here, too, having been confused with Speedy Gonzales.
The cinematography and editing in this film are beyond a joke, too. Like all incompetent directors, Alexander Witt rarely keeps his camera still for more than a few seconds at a time. During the hand-to-hand fight scenes, the extraneous camera movement is enough to make me fight off the urge to vomit. I doubt I am the only one, and it certainly makes me glad that I don't have epilepsy. Contrast this with the stable, well-angled shots of the original. Better yet, watch the fight scene with the Nemesis, then contrast it with the shot of Alice putting her foot in the final zombie dog's head during the original. The camera-shaking fad has outlived its welcome by a major factor. Then there's the editing. In the original fast-paced action sequences were mixed in with slow, languid sequences that helped set up an atmosphere.
That's another thing basically lacking from this sequel. Atmosphere. As there is rarely a shot or sequence that lasts more than two minutes due to the incoherent editing, none of the characters are given enough background to seem even slightly human. Anderson spent some time explaining the skills that his characters were meant to have, so it seemed natural when they made use of them. In Witt's film, characters constantly display abilities or skills that the audience was never made privy to before. Constantly-repeated, blurred, obscure footage of doctors injecting a character with their virus do not count.
The worst part, after all these insults to the viewer, is the ending in which we're set up for another sequel. After the dog barf that was served up in the other 85 minutes of this film, to spend another five suggesting that there's going to be more is like a punch in the eye. They should have ditched their plans for a sequel and instead filmed another half-hour of footage for this one. An extra half-hour of exposition or setup would have saved this accident from being a total write-off.
I gave Resident Evil: Apocalypse a one out of ten. The MPAA is constantly moaning about how piracy is eating into their profits, and yet they continue to make garbage like this. Seeing an organisation that controls billions of dollars worth of assets in this kind of denial is really sad to observe.