By Sequel Standards, This One Is Pretty Impressive

Rating: 7/10 (11 December 2006)

After Alice escapes from Umbrella Corporation's secret underground laboratory (The Hive) as seen in the first film, she stumbles into Raccoon City, which has already become overrun with people infected by the T-Virus. Umbrella Corp closes the city to leave everyone to die.
First, I must confess the first film took two viewings for me to appreciate it. I watched it once and was not moved, but was very impressed the second time. This sequel caught my attention the first time. Now, sure, very little happens in it and it has some flaws, but as I say, by sequel standards it is quite good. A film series never really manages to make a great sophomore effort (with the exception of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II"), so take each one with a grain of salt.
I could debate the merits of director Alexander Witt versus Paul Anderson. Anderson still wrote this film but declined to direct, and Witt is admittedly a very inexperienced director. But he did fine... and kept the similar style that Anderson had, leaving the two movies very seamless (which is important when they run one to the other without pause).
I enjoyed the subtle references to other films, like the line "10 points" that I assume to reference "Deathrace 2000" and the line "Finish him!" that clearly is from Anderson's previous effort, "Mortal Kombat". Very nice work.
The Nemesis was a great creature. Not exactly like the game, but a formidable foe. The move to make him the counterpart to Alice was a good plot device and plays out well. I also liked the dogs, which are more true to the video game version. Those dogs in the game can be quite the pain in the butt. I think the way the zombies walked was perfect, exactly how zombies should. Many films get this wrong these days, not making the corpses Romeroesque enough. This movie gets it, keeping the tradition alive.
It's a long tradition, too: this is a sequel to another movie ("Resident Evil") based on a video game ("Biohazard"), which was based on an older video game ("Alone in the Dark"), inspired by Romero's "Night of the Living Dead" series, which was inspired by Roger Corman's "Last Man on Earth", which was based off of Richard Matheson's "I Am Legend".
I disliked the fast movements by the people and the fast camera work that went with it. Many times things happened too fast to really see what was going on, and I found this to be a real setback. I don't recall the first film doing this (another Witt/Anderson difference?) and it seemed very strangely paced for a horror film (though maybe properly paced for an action film).
The geeky guys get the ladies: Milla Jovovich returns as Alice, which is crucial since geeky guys are obsessed with Milla and have been ever since "The 5th Element". They also now have their Jill Valentine, the darling of the "Resident Evil" games. The film creators did a great job keeping the costume for Jill very close to the game, though I think the actress could have looked more similar. (And in the third film we have Ali Larter as Claire Redfield, which is an even bigger stretch.) As you can probably tell, I endorse this film. While I think Paul Anderson would have made a better sequel than Witt did, that's just being nitpicky. For what we were given, we have a great package and a respectable bridge between the first and third films.