When we left off last time, an army of Alice clones was being grown in a desert lab. No, I’m not making that up. It was an odd moment, but it was entertaining. Where does the fourth movie go with that strange idea?
Well, Resident Evil: Afterlife starts in Tokyo with a stupid girl who forgot her umbrella. This is all before the outbreak that destroyed the world and killed more of humanity. The dumb girl is a zombie and we see how the virus spread to Japan.
This movie was released in 2010. Alice explains some of the stupid things that led us to this point. I was grateful for that. I saw this movie in college, and had completely forgotten what happened in the previous film.
Alice’s Clone Commandos
Alice and her clones attack Umbrella’s HQ in Tokyo. She doesn’t have as many clones as she did at the end of the previous film. It isn’t that important because they all die, aside from the real Alice.
So, Alice and her clones all have superpowers. Wesker, who might be a different actor from the previous movie, escapes in a plane. One of the Alice clones goes with him. They fight and Alice loses her superpowers.
What happens with the Umbrella facility and the cloning vats? Doesn’t matter. We’re moving on to something else. I can only assume that facility is still out there doing whatever. By the way, Wesker has superpowers now.
The plane crashes, and Alice manages to survive, somehow. There are three more movies, so she can’t die, yet. Alice decides to head off to Arcadia. It turns out, this isn’t a good place. Seeing where this is also shows that everything we learned in the third film was bullshit.
The T-Virus didn’t kill all the plant life and dry up the water. Anyway, Alice heads out to Arcadia, learns that it is an Umbrella plot, and fights Claire who has a mind control spider attached to her chest. This is actually a thing from the games! This is something of a rarity at this point.
Alice takes the mind-control boob spider off of Claire. For some reason, Jill has become feral. How did this happen in a few months? Doesn’t matter.
Claire doesn’t remember anything, but eventually stops being a dick. The pair flies down to Los Angeles for some reason. They eventually find their way to a prison. They manage to land and team up with a group of survivors. Zombies surround the prison.
There is a boat in the harbor. The boat is called Arcadia. For some reason, none of them think it is a trap.
Claire starts remembering stuff. Eventually, she’s going to put it all together, but the mind-control boob spider is still messing with her. I know it has another name, but I like mind-control boob spider more. There is also a super zombie out there. What is it and how did it get here? Doesn’t matter. Oh! The zombies are tunneling into the prison.
We meet Chris Redfield. Not sure why he’s still locked up in a strange box. I’m guessing the thing with the axe/hammer is a tyrant. Alice fights some zombies in the shower. The zombies can run now, by the way. Well, I guess they can run when it is convenient for the plot.
Slowly, we start meeting the people from the video games. Like many zombie movies, there are a few characters, the escape plan doesn’t work, and everything goes sideways. There is a pattern to these films that I find very enjoyable.
There is another fight in the shower. This time it is with the Tyrant, or whatever it is supposed to be. The Wikipedia synopsis calls it “Axeman” which makes sense since it carries a big axe. I have no idea what it is.
Alice, Chris, and Claire find a boat and sail to the Arcadia. This is when we find out that this is an experiment. Umbrella has been capturing survivors and holding them on the Arcadia. Wesker is on the ship. He is eating the survivors because he has become unstable. They fight and our heroes win. Wesker manages to escape, because of course he does.
There is an after credit scene where Jill Valentine leads Umbrella soldiers to retake the Arcadia. She also has a mind-control boob spider on her chest. I also have to point out that Umbrella sent way too many helicopters to retake the ship.
When I saw this movie, I had no idea who this was. It is the same actress, but Jill from the second movie had black or brown hair. In this movie she has long blond hair. It is the smile at the end that gives her away.
The Special Effects Got Worse
I liked the effects in the first three movies. They weren’t great, but the makeup and monster suits looked very good. When the CGI showed up, things went sideways.
The movie has these moments where they slow things down. I found this to be more annoying than anything else. Some of this might have been due to the film being shot in 3D.
The film industry goes through these phases when they want to make something popular. The 2010s was one of the times when they tried to make people care about 3D. This happens every 25-30 years.
Eventually, people got tired of the gimmick and things moved on. I never saw this movie in 3D. Maybe it would be better if I did, but I doubt it.
This movie doesn’t look as good as the previous three. I guess the series reached the point of diminishing returns as far as having a budget. The film made 300 million dollars, so I guess it was a success.
Wrap up
This felt like a collection of action scenes that were patched together with a very thin plot. Stuff just happens in this movie, and there is little payoff to what is going on. It was nice to see some of the characters from the previous films, but that was it.
It was like watching people as they tried to escape from the franchise. Like they didn’t want to be in the movies anymore, but were contractually obligated to be in them. Let’s see what happens in the next one.
What bothers me about this series is how they drop everything that makes zombie movies good. The Resident Evil films turned into generic action films, losing everything that the games or the horror genre could say. There could’ve been a message in these films, but that was discarded for something that looks cool.
If you liked this post, check out my posts about the other three films: Resident Evil, Apocalypse, and Extinction.