Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City is Good but Not Great

Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City rebooted the film series. This movie is trying to be a horror movie, which is a nice change of pace from the previous series. I watched this movie when it was released, and then forgot about it.

This movie tries to combine Resident Evil 1 and 2, as well as some of the lore from the prequels. It is one of the advantages of having so much Resident Evil lore available to the filmmakers. There were a number of changes made to the plot, and I’m not sure if it was due to the pandemic or not.

Plot Summary

We start our story with a flashback to an orphanage in Raccoon City. This is where we meet Claire, Chris, Lisa Trevor, and Dr. Birkin. Then we switch to Claire hitchhiking back to Raccoon City.

We learn that Umbrella is leaving the town. In this movie, Raccoon City is depicted as a company town. Think of a coal mining town. When the mine closes, the town slowly becomes abandoned as the jobs disappear.

Then we meet Leon, Wesker, and Jill. They’re meeting in a diner before going to the police station. This is also when we find out that the townspeople are sick and seem to be bleeding from the eyes. I’m guessing there is no hospital in Racoon City.

Claire meets Chris. We learn more about their relationship, and about Claire talking with some guy on the internet. The guy is a journalist/whistleblower who claims to know what Umbrella is up to. He doesn’t matter all that much.

Suddenly, an announcement tells people to remain in their homes. Umbrella apparently set up a bunch of loudspeakers in the town. It is like an early warning system.

Chris, Jill, Wesker, and another guy who doesn’t matter go to the mansion. Leon, Claire, and the Police Chief are quickly trapped in the police station. We also learn that Wesker is working for someone, but we never find out who.

Chris, Jill, and Wesker get separated. Wesker enters the underground lab while Chris and Jill deal with the zombies. Jill, Leon, and the Police Chief escape the police station and head to the orphanage.

Let me back up a bit. When we learn that Wesker is working for someone, we’re also told that Raccoon City will be destroyed at 6 am. So, we have a countdown to deal with, and the movie does a good job of reminding the audience of what time it is.

Dr. Brikin brings his family to the secret lab. Wesker ends up killing Dr. Brikin and his wife. Then Jill shoots him. Chris, Leon, Jill, and Claire meet up. They make it to an underground train and start to leave.

Dr. Brikin turns into a mutant. He attacks the train, and Leon kills him with a rocket launcher. It is the most video game scene in the movie.

A post-credit scene brings Ada Wong into the movie. The good guys make it out okay, the bad guys are dead, and the movie sets us up for a sequel that we’ll probably never get.   

Likes and Dislikes

This movie is trying so hard to be a good horror film. It is creepy, there are a lot of callbacks to the games, and I liked most of the characters. I’m not sure if I heard it right, but the neighboring town sounds like Gatlin, making me think of Children of the Corn.

I have no idea if that was intentional, but I immediately thought it was a reference to Children of the Corn. It is rather funny to think that Umbrella has an underground lab right next to Gatlin, even if it doesn’t make any sense from a geographic standpoint.

I also liked that Umbrella wasn’t secretly controlling the world. They have a much smaller footprint in this movie. The lab is small, the road block is more realistic, and the idea that Raccoon City was basically a company town is interesting.

I don’t like how small Raccoon City feels in this movie. It isn’t what most people would think of as a city. I know plenty of places have the name city in the town’s name, but I always imagined Raccoon City to be like Detroit, Michigan.

It feels rundown and has a dwindling population. People flee the town even before the outbreak, which this movie addresses quite well. It is nice that the filmmakers decided to explain how the town got infected.

It doesn’t make up for how small Raccoon City feels. For how few people we see in the film, there are a lot of zombies. Even in the mansion, they seem to come out of nowhere. This is a common trope for zombie movies, but it doesn’t seem to make much sense here. It feels like dozens of zombies show up in an abandoned mansion.

There is also this whistleblower/journalist in the movie who serves no purpose. The movie takes place in 1998, and he has been talking with Claire on the internet. Leon finds him locked in a cell at the police station. He gets Leon to open the cell, and promptly dies. He is never mentioned again.

The Licker looks pretty good. It is the one CGI monster that I liked. The others look odd at times. While the practical effects on the zombies look great, the CGI is hit and miss.

If there is one character who didn’t need to be in the movie, it was Lisa Trevor. She does a few things, but didn’t need to be in the film. You could’ve had Claire and Leon stumble across the keys and secret elevator some other way. You also don’t find out what happened to her.

Wrap Up

This isn’t a bad movie. You don’t need to know the Resident Evil lore to enjoy it. It is an improvement on the previous Resident Evil films, but it isn’t a memorable movie.

I do like the teaser at the end of the movie. It brings Ada Wong into the series and shows what happened to Wesker. Unfortunately, it appears that the next film will reboot the series again. Great.

I think this movie got a lot of things right and deserved to have a sequel. It looks like that won’t happen. Maybe the new series will get more funding and follow this film’s lead.

If you liked this post, please check out my other movie reviews like Resident Evil and Mortal Kombat.