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Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004)

DVD Cover (Sony Home Entertainment)
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Overall Rating 59%
Overall Rating
Ranked #954
...out of 20,319 movies
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Connections: Resident Evil

As the city is locked down under quarantine, Alice joins a small band of elite soldiers, enlisted to rescue the missing daughter of the creator of the mutating T-virus. It's a heart-pounding race against time as the group faces off against hordes of blood- thirsty zombies, stealthy Lickers, mutant canines and the most sinister foe yet. --TMDb
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Review by Chad
Added: September 21, 2004
The movie starts up a short while before the ending of the first one, starting with the T-Virus outbreak that started to occur throughout Raccoon City while Alice (Milla Jovovich) was doing her thing down in The Hive. After the infection starts to spread, members of the Umbrella Corporation go through the town and pick out some of the important people of the city in order to take them to safety. One of the people they attempt to take is Dr. Charles Ashford (Jared Harris), one of the main scientists involved with the T-Virus. He refuses to go, however, because his daughter Angie (Sophie Vavasseur) is still in the town and he refuses to leave without her. After the important people have been extracted from the town, Umbrella sets up a barricade around the entire city limits, effectively locking everybody in so that the infection can't spread outside of the town. As they're letting a few uncontaminated people out through the only available exit, some of the infected people near the opening start attacking people, leading the Umbrella fellows to open fire on the entire crowd, including one of our sets of heroes who were also attempting to get out. Our heroes here include Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory), a cop who realized early on that those infected must die, Sgt. Peyton Wells (Razaaq Adoti), your stereotypical big-black-man who was coming along with Jill for the trip to the city, and Terri Morales (Sandrine Holt), a news-reporter who was (and continues to) filming the events inside the city. After Umbrella opens fire on the crowd, things get quite hectic throughout the town, with the number of zombies growing larger, and the mayhem rapidly escalating. We then cut over to Alice leaving the Umbrella lab and walking out onto the deserted streets (remember the ending of part one?), and she eventually meets up with the other group up above, as well as L.J. (Mike Epps), a guy who was just trying to survive throughout this mess. Meanwhile, Dr. Ashford has been watching the events through cameras positioned throughout the city through a computer system he rigged up, and makes contact with our band of merry travelers in order to make them a deal; if they can find and rescue his daughter, then he'll help them get out of the city. Not much of a choice, so off they go looking for Angie. Their attempts will be slowed down, however, when they find out that not only are they dealing with zombies and lickers, but also the final result of the Nemesis Project: a rocket-launcher-wielding super-monster (played by Matthew Taylor).

Well, after seeing how great the first part was, realizing that Paul W.S. Anderson wrote the script for this one, and then finding out that first-time director Alexander Witt was in charge here, I really wasn't expecting a whole lot of quality to emerge from this. Boy, did I ever call that one ahead of time, but watch it I did. The main problem here isn't the storyline, though that could have done with some improving; that part of the film was decent enough. It's the execution of things that kills any sort of entertainment one could get from ninety minutes of movie. The worst part of this, by far, is the "creativity" used in the zombie and action sequences; instead of showing the audience what that multi-million-dollar budget was used for, we see things either in a blurry, stop-motion view, or from a different angle every second (literally), leaving the audience confused as to just what the hell is actually going on. Neither of those edit techniques would have been too bad once or twice, but every sort of action scene here used one or the other. The second problem, not too far behind my hatred of the way of filming, was the way the zombies once again got pushed down to a low-priority here. We start things off with a few nice (but blurry) scenes of huge mobs of zombies, some nice action sequences, and then they all sort of disappear for the vast majority of the rest of the film, only making a small cameo in the final scenes. This wouldn't have been so bad, had the lickers had a bit more on-screen time; but sadly, we see a couple of them in one scene, and then they're shelved for the rest of the running-time. But at least we had Nemesis to carry things in their absence, right? Strike three, as he seems to just disappear after his introduction, only to reappear in the ending. The point here is that it's quite a shame to slap the Resident Evil title on this, when all of the various sorts of monsters seemed to be thrown in just long enough to make some nice scenes for the trailers.

I'm not going to critique the entire cast here, as there was far too many people involved for me to bother with. As expected, nobody pulls out anything worthy of mention, but I'll hit the main ones here. Milla Jovovich (Alice) pulls out the same performance that she did in the original movie, with more action sequences thrown in here due to her super-human agility and strength. Yes, she can now run down the side of a skyscraper with the greatest of ease, which was beyond hilarious. Besides the added physical stunts, she's a carbon-copy of her character from the original, so if you enjoyed her there, you'll like her here. Average, in my book. Sienna Guillory (Jill) takes the place of Michelle Rodriguez (Rain from the first movie) as the typical lesbian'ish ass-kicking female lead, though she doesn't do anywhere near as good a job as Michelle did in the role before her. A bland and highly unbelievable performance from Sienna here. In my opinion, the best performance here was by Mike Epps (L.J.), the token comedic-relief black guy. He had a fair number of great lines ("GTA motherfuckers" whilst mowing down a zombie in a car), but that's all he was used for. He seems to be exactly like the token black-guy from Not Another Teen Movie, in the sense that he only shows up on-screen when a comedic line needs to be dropped. When the best character in your movie is a comedic-relief bit-part player, you know things aren't too going too nicely.

Once again, Hollywood asks you to please check your brain in at the door and put up with some more "mindless entertainment". While those types of films have their place and can be entertaining at times, this one doesn't even do well for that sort of label, which is a pretty hard feat to accomplish. When I watched the first entry in this soon-to-be trilogy, I was appalled at the horrid storyline adaptation and the way the monsters were grossly absent, so I gave it a final rating of a 4/10. In comparison, that movie was deserving of a much higher rating, which is yet another method of making your horror-loving reviewer quite sad. Overall, worth a 2/10, if even that.
Bluesummers #1: Bluesummers - added March 7, 2005 at 3:36am
This is the problem with movies. Something so terribly stupid you just have to take it or leave it. We're asked to believe so many script contrivances and sheer dumbness all for the sake of entertainment and...

...I'm sorry, I fell for it. Don't get me wrong, I can dig a lot of "deep" movies (just look at some other stuff I've reviewed!), but this flick helps me get away from everything. That and come on. Milla. Jovovich. Is. The. Sexiest. Woman. Ever. The acting here isn't great, but it does. And one more thing. My main problem with the original movie was the one CG zombie (and the fact the best scene in a ZOMBIE MOVIE had no zombies in it) and general lack of undead carnage. Now we get the Nemesis in full practical effect glory...if only he was in it more.

All in all...this movie reminds me of Battlefield Earth. Just not as stupid. If you want to let your hair down, take a couple shots or a hit or two of the bong, and chill with some friends, enjoy!
bluemeanie #2: bluemeanie - added January 17, 2006 at 5:10pm
Milla Jovovich has to be one of my least favorite actresses working today. She has very limited range and she always plays the same damned role -- "The Fifth Element", "The Messenger", "Resident Evil", this sequel, and the forthcoming "Ultraviolet". She is awful, but not nearly as awful as this piece of shit sequel that takes all of the fun and excitement of the first film and pisses all over it. I enjoyed the first film. I piss on this one. 0/10.
Rik #3: Rik - added September 22, 2007 at 2:17am
Surprisingly, I preferred this instead of the first. I find that it had alot of similarities to the Resident Evil: Nemesis game installment. The fact that you couldn't kill Nemesis until near the end of the game (you could only run away from him, which was what Alice did). I have already embraced the fact that Resident Evil is more sci-fi/action than zombie movie, so I'm willing to let that go. The action sequences were really nice. 6/10
Crispy #4: Crispy - added September 24, 2007 at 9:15pm
I like this one was well. Sure it gets a bit hoaky in places and requires quite a bit of suspension of disbelief in a few spots, but for an action movie it's not bad. And that's what these are. Even the first one. They're not horror movies, they're action movies that use horror elements.
Tristan #5: Tristan - added September 24, 2007 at 9:20pm
I dunno, I was pretty disappointed in this one. I still bought that double feature released a few weeks ago, but I think after a few viewings, and watching the third one, I'm done with the series. 5/10
Lucid Dreams #6: Lucid Dreams - added May 17, 2010 at 1:55am
This was the only one I liked and number four is on it's way here. 5/10
George Snow #7: George Snow - added January 13, 2013 at 7:51pm
Again, just mindless fun. Plus the cop and reporter were pretty hot also. I'm looking forward to seeing the 3D movies when I get the damn glasses.
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