Main cast: Matthew Mercer (Leon Scott Kennedy), Nicole Tompkins (Jill Valentine), Kevin Dorman (Chris Redfield), Stephanie Panisello (Claire Redfield), Erin Cahill (Rebecca Chambers), Salli Saffioti (Ingrid Hunnigan), Daman Mills (Dylan Blake), Lucien Dodge (JJ), Cristina Valenzuela (Maria Gomez), and Frank Todaro (Antonio Taylor)
Director: Eiichirô Hasumi

One of life’s great mysteries isn’t whether we’re alone in the universe or if there’s life after death — it’s how the hell anyone is expected to keep track of the Resident Evil timeline without a CIA-grade corkboard covered in red string.

Mercifully, the animated movies, much like the games that spawned them, operate on the same simple gospel: see zombies, shoot zombies. Plot? Character development? Emotional resonance? No, no — bullets, monsters, occasional cleavage.

Resident Evil: Death Island sticks to the formula like it was written by an AI trained exclusively on 2000s action-horror clichés. We kick things off with an evacuation mission that predictably goes belly up. A platoon of nobodies is sent in to deal with a zombie outbreak, and surprise! All but one get eaten.

That one is Dylan Blake — the kind of man who insists, “Wait, those flesh-hungry creatures used to be my buddies!” right before watching those same buddies rip apart his actual friend who had the sense to start blasting. Dylan survives and grows up to become this film’s big bad, because apparently watching his bestie die due to his own terminal stupidity turned him into an anti-corporate terrorist. Classic Resident Evil logic: blame Umbrella, even when it’s your fault.

Fast forward to the present day, where Capcom abruptly remembers that Jill Valentine exists. Not only do they dust her off, they toss her back in that iconic blue tank top, because nothing says “prepared for battle against bio-organic weapons” like leaving your upper body as exposed as your dialogue. She teams up with the usual suspects: Chris “Meathead” Redfield, Leon “Quip Machine” Kennedy, Claire “Still No Personality” Redfield, and Rebecca “Should’ve Cured the World by Now” Chambers. Together, they track a rogue scientist peddling classified information and investigating — what else? — a new virus strain. Because if it ain’t broke, mutate it until it is.

In case you missed Resident Evil: Vendetta (lucky you), Maria Gomez is back too, still nursing a grudge like a high school mean girl with access to biological warfare. But ultimately, it’s just the same song and dance: our heroes running around empty labs and abandoned facilities, shooting at progressively goopier monsters. Rebecca brews up another miracle cure in what looks like a NutriBullet blender, Jill flips through her greatest hits, and the guys blow stuff up while pretending this is all new ground.

The real horror here, though, is the voice acting. Everyone sounds like they were dragged into the studio at 3AM, handed a script still warm from the printer, and told to read it as quickly and disinterestedly as possible. Even Matthew Mercer sounds like he’d rather be anywhere else — possibly back at Critical Role, where at least the zombies are imaginary and the scripts are better.

To its mild credit, Resident Evil: Death Island dials down the deranged, over-the-top carnage that made Resident Evil: Vendetta such a glorious, stupid mess. Unfortunately, that just means it’s also less fun. No motorcycle-fu, no suplexing mutants through church pews, just a bland string of predictable action beats leading to the inevitable boss fight.

Unless you’ve been trained to applaud like a caffeinated seal every time Jill Valentine shows up in that damn tank top, there’s precious little reason to subject yourself to this. But don’t worry — as sure as the sun rises, another identical Resident Evil animated movie will shamble out in a year or two, guns blazing, dialogue dead on arrival.

Same old, same old — but with slightly less blood splatter this time. What a time to be alive.