Fistfight, you mutated fool

Rating: 5/10 (11 April 2020)

"Resident Evil: Apocalypse" is a 2004 horror film and video game adaptation directed by Alexander Witt starring Milla Jovovich and Sienna Guillory. After the catastrophe the original film has been, my expectations towards the following films sank even lower. I wasn't hoping for anything anymore, to be honest. So I was mildly surprised that the first sequel was a minimal improvement to the first movie. Still not a groundbreaking achievement, but better. First of all, it was appeasing to see that the film finally has drawn on its source material in any way and created the apocalyptic scenario that followed after the outbreak in Raccoon City. It's obvious that the film was conceived on the basis of "Resident Evil: Nemesis", focused more on the action than on any type of horror and that's probably the best thing that could have happened to it. Former director Anderson now functions as the writer and leads the audience through a story that least feels more like an actual RE adaptation, even if it is far away from being as packing as the original game. Honestly, it even started out decently. For example, I literally screamed when I saw that it finally included one of the game's actual protagonists, Jill Valentine and that they even made a great casting choice in her case. On top of that, she's furthermore wearing her iconic "Last Escape" outfit and also nails her movements and other character traits. What's wrong then? The thing is that they degraded her to nothing but a meaningless side character who doesn't really get the chance to shine. The same applies to the mercenary trio centered around Carlos Olivera: great to see them featured in a similar scenario, but underused nevertheless. They might have copied whole sequences from the game shot by shot, but to me it feels like they were only written into the movie in the fear of fan's repeated negative reactions. Oh, and how they misused the Ashfords was dumb as well. The biggest disappointment of the whole film is how they depicted Nemesis. At first, I thought it could be actually great, but in the end they characterized him absolutely wrong. How could you even fail this simple task? In the game he's this giant, inevitable threat and haunting demon that terrorises you restlessly, makes your heart race and gives you severe nightmares you will never really recover from. What the hell is he here? A regular sized, way too lame and absolutely harmlessly looking abomination that's neither a danger or somewhat scary. He does nothing but walking slowly, shooting with the same two weapons over and over again. Not running mercilessly once. Not killing someone brutally once. Not becoming his totally gross final form once. It's not underwhelming. It's a shame and it almost made me cry that they wasted such a great opportunity and made him so absolutely meaningless. At least it hasn't kept me from finding some sort of guilty pleasure in this film, though. Milla Jovovich is more badass than ever and she goes along with the side characters pretty well, even if I wished they had more screentime. What surprised me the most though is how it was finally able to develop a nearly decent atmosphere the first outing dismally lacked. Not only had it obviously better visual effects and some actually enjoyable scenes, the way it started out and how the story developed even gave me the feeling that I might be watching a film that's gonna be more than mediocrity. I was dumb to think that. Probably forgot that one of the most incompetent director's was still in charge of writing the story. While the premise was acceptable the film became more stupid from scene to scene. Until the final act. It gave me the rest. Not only has it some laughably obvious plot holes ("How did she get up the skyscraper so quickly?", I uttered) it's total garbage as both a final conclusion and as a decision in general as well. I lost my mind when Alice was forced to have a fistfight with Nemesis and even more when he developed some kind of emotional world and saved her while sacrificing himself. Absolutely ridiculous and brain melting all the same. What happend from there on is beyond my understanding. Setting up the next sequel, obviously, but it's so unnecessarily dumb. All in all, it's definitely better than the first entry of the franchise, but still a terrible film nevertheless. While it shows more understanding of its source material, it still wasn't able to comprehend its full potential. In the beginning it wasn't even that awful, but the unrealistic and just laughable ending make it what it is: Another failed attempt to bring a classic video game to the big screen. When it's not possible to adapt it perfectly due to missing technology there's one advice: Just don't try it. Another proof for me that Anderson shouldn't have done this. It's even more ironic after I have read that he heavily criticised director Witt for his work on this film. He's definitely not the most competent director, but as if Anderson made the perfect adaptation, you know? So ironic. This series can't get any better than this, I know that, but it's without a doubt cheesy fun to watch. Onto the next one.