An actually Zombie movie, instead of a movie about Zombies

Rating: 1/10 (28 February 2007)

Zombie movies have always been a guilty pleasure of mine. For sheer cheesy pleasure nothing beats watching a gathering of mind-numbing dumb individuals being torn limb from limb by the ambulatory deceased. I want to make this point clear before I start this review as Resident Evil: Apocalypse is amongst the most painful mindless films I have ever endured.
Paul W.S Anderson (director of such masterpieces as Mortal Combat, Soldier, Event Horizon and Alien VS predator) has achieved something truly monumental with this film. He has managed to make a film with a more childish and illogical plot than the game it was based on.
Resident Evil 2 upon which the film was based follows a Police officer and a college student as they attempt to escape a city which has been overrun by the undead. Paul Anderson felt this story to be far to boring and mundane to turn into a film so instead we are given Milla Jovovich as Alice a woman with superhuman strength and agility leading a motley band of irritating cliché's (featuring such family favorites as slightly racist comedy relief black guy and nosy reporter woman) across a city filled with zombies and bad CG effects in order to rescue the daughter of a mysterious scientist and escape the city before an inexplicable evil European man detonates a nuclear bomb and wipes Raccoon City from the face of the earth.
If that didn't make to much sense don't worry you won't be alone. The film seems to actively avoid developing the character or plot; it seems to feel that being coherent was something shameful that must be avoided at all possible costs. To this end the film bounces from one action scene to the next. These range in quality from the silly; riding a motor bike through a stained class window, jumping off and then shooting the fuel tank. To the downright pointless; running down the side of a glass skyscraper in order to ambush five men standing around looking disinterested at the bottom.
Considering the tripe they had to work with it's not really fair to criticise the acting in this movie. You can't build a mansion out of cardboard and by the same token it's difficult to give a convincing performance when you're given lines like "You motherf@@kers is crazy! Look. That big motherf@@ker got a rocket launcher!" That said credit must be given to Mike Epps (LJ the mildly offensive stereotypical black guy) he knows he's in a truly absurd movie and seem to be having a really really good time. He seems to find the next plateau beyond over-acting, uber-acting perhaps. Everybody else just seems to be waiting for their pay cheques to be clear and they can get back to making worthwhile films.
In summation it's a mindless zombie movie that shuffles around the plot, the dialog is mindless groaning, it looks bad and it'll probably eat your brains. The consummate zombie movie really.
By Nicholas Hamonet