Major Disappointment

Rating: 3/10 (5 March 2005)

RESIDENT EVIL was an engrossing, intelligent thriller with a solid story and likable characters. Lots of twists and turns, with the story constantly taking you to unexpected places and some really dynamic and original special efx. Much more than I ever expected from a movie based on a video game.
R.E. APOCALYPSE is an exercise in style over substance. More proof that digital editing plus digital efx equal digitized boredom. I watched this with two friends, and twenty minutes into it we all concluded that it was a huge pointless waste of time.
Horror films are not expected to be Shakespearean drama at its best, but you should care about the characters enough to get sucked into their journey and enjoy a vicarious, and hopefully cathartic, experience for your money.
This movie was EMPTY. Soulless. The action scenes were a mess of crappy swoosh pans. There was not one drop of genuine suspense or danger. Zero character development, except for the embarrassingly racist "Uncle Buckwheat" character who proclaims (with anachronistic glee) at one point, "I usually drive a Cadillac."
Rarely have I been so fully and painfully aware of wasting precious minutes of my life as when sitting through this snoozefest, hopefully waiting for it to show some semblance of intelligent story development. Instead I got lame snatches of "Dawn of the Dead", "Mortal Kombat" (right down to Lara Croft's costume, weaponry and personal style), "Robocop", and other movies and comic book imagery.
The visual efx were flashy and impressive. Sadly, the only thing they conveyed was how much money must have been wasted on this garbage. I can only hope that the lovely and talented Ms. Jovovich banked some serious scratch for whoring herself in this turkey.
The only positive which came from watching this movie is that we all agreed to take note of who wrote and directed it, to studiously avoid their efforts in the future.