uh...

Rating: 2/10 (10 September 2004)

Really what the hell did I just watch? Admittedly the first film was mediocre at best for all but the last five minutes, and it was only that final scene in it of Alice standing with the shotgun in a decimated Raccoon City that sucked me back in. +SPOILERS+
This movie didn't deliver on that ending on any level. Milla Jovovich, is far from one of the better actors out there. But she could act circles around the assembled cast here. Particularly the wooden actress who played Jill Valentine. Mike Epps is a pretty good comedic actor and everyone else in the audience cheered and clapped anytime so much as his elbow appeared on screen (but then again I did see it with the most rowdy ghetto audience ever, at a midnight show in Universal City). I guess going by other people in the crowd he must have been Oscar-caliber given that they would stand up and cheer/clap anytime he uttered one of his token one liners. Horror movies still seem to do pretty much the same thing with African-American actors and it's getting really old.
The camera style was bordered on irritating throughout. The fight scenes looked cheap and poorly choreographed because of the druggy, jerky camera effects used during the majority of them. The FX that were obviously the most expensive often came out looking the cheapest and most out of place. There was no sense of claustrophobia of fear at what might lie around the next corner like there was in the first. Honestly, scares were really hard to come by at all in this movie. The movie is rated R, but somehow felt like it had been toned down a lot.
I realize that most horror movies don't have to make a lot of sense, but this took the gold on that. The story is primarily about escaping a city full of zombies but it seemed like the director only remembered this periodically. These characters were supposed to be in a metropolis full of the walking dead, where the hell were the damn zombies? The scene where the cops were fighting back the oncoming horde, the whole movie should have been a lot more like that. The whole last thirty minutes forego the notion of zombies in favor of dumb looking military guys in motorcycle helmets and ridiculous stunts. This movie really could have taken a page from this years remake of Dawn of the Dead. The dogs in the school. If dogs and other animals can get infected then don't you think they might have run into some more animals and city that size running amock? Don't put something in a movie just to fill space and say it looks freakin cool. And the Nemesis with a heart of gold thing? Please.
Again the end was relatively cool in comparison with the rest of the movie. Alice with the telekinetic powers turning all the TVs to her and making the guy bleed from his eyes was the best scene in the whole movie. But if and when the third film comes out, I'm not feting sucked back into this trap.