Much worse than the first one

Rating: 2/10 (28 September 2004)

Where the first "Resident Evil" did quite well in capturing the look and feel of the video games while also managing to score as a surprisingly good horror film, this second one fails in all points. Nothing is left of those creepy tunnels of the hive or the scare of zombies in the dark. Instead all is replaced by a whole city. Wisely used, this setting would work as well as the first one. Instead, the director uses it as a huge playground for stunt and demolition displays of the most uninspired kind. He really likes to break glass and blow stuff up. And he likes the female characters doing stupid and pointless matrix-like martial arts. Another point for criticism is the way this movie ist cut. Very often, the cuts are lightning-fast, jump around locations and would suit a music video much more than a horror movie. The same applies to the frequently used way to show moving zombies. It is a strobe-like visual effect that results in staccato movement of the zombies. For many visual and action elements of the movie, the director doesn't use own ideas, but seems to have watched quite a lot of action movies with similar content an tries to copy as best he can. Not much success here. Reading this, you might ask yourself: O.k., there are flaws in craftsmanship, but is there at least an interesting or in any way innovative story to it? Well, no.
Enough bashing now. So what is the recipe of the whole thing? Take the Resident Evil concept, strip it down to only the action parts of it, make up a generic story, stuff in two scanty-dressed heroines and a rubber monster, stir well and blow everything up. Done. If this works for you, you will be entertained. For me it didn't.
Rating: 2/10