Main cast: Kaya Scodelario (Claire Redfield), Hannah John-Kamen (Jill Valentine), Robbie Amell (Chris Redfield), Tom Hopper (Albert Wesker), Avan Jogia (Leon S Kennedy), Holly De Barros (Sherry Birkin), Donal Logue (Brian Irons), and Neal McDonough (Dr William Birkin)
Director: Johannes Roberts
Resident Evil: Welcome to Reboot Raccoon City is a reboot of the entire franchise. This is not the start of a new saga of the Alice show, for one, and it’s also more faithful to the video games despite some creative liberties taken here and there.
However, this movie tanked pretty badly in terms of box office, which should make the people that wanted a movie closer to the video games super salty. After all, it means that the world likes the Alice show far better than, well, a Resident Evil zombie movie.
Then again, the reason this movie tanks could be something far less complicated: it’s not an interesting or fun movie. It’s actually pretty boring, so I can’t imagine there is strong word of mouth out there to encourage people to go watch this thing.
This one starts out with almost 10 minutes of unnecessary flashback to Claire and Chris Redfield being orphans that grow up in the Raccoon City Orphanage, where the kids were made into test subjects of the sinister Dr William Birkin. Claire was picked to be the next guinea pig, but she escaped.
We then cut to the present day. Now an adult, Claire is back in town to investigate further into Dr Birkin’s experiments, while Chris is an agent of the Special Tactics and Rescue Service (STARS) Alpha team—an elite special forces division funded by Raccoon City—led by Albert Wesker. Jill Valentine is his team buddy. Just when I am thinking that this is really going to be like the video game origins, then comes Leon S Kennedy as a rookie cop mocked and underestimated by everyone around him, heh.
Then the zombie outbreak happens, and it’s the good guys versus Dr Birkin while trying to stay alive. Folks that are aware of the video game lore will, of course, see the twist with regards to Albert Wesker coming from the moment the character shows up.
Okay, so most of the cast looks nothing like the video game characters, but come on, it’s ridiculous to expect human beings to look exactly like computer-generated pixels. However, I can object to how the characters here have personalities that are nothing like those of their video counter counterparts.
This Wesker is way too chummy and open with his team members, and worst of all, he gets his sunglasses only after the credit rolls.
I have no issues with Hannah John-Kamen playing the traditionally white Jill Valentine, but her Jill is the sassy strong woman that does everything perfectly archetype that is becoming a dime a dozen these days in films, and a far cry from the idealistic and somewhat naïve Jill in the early Resident Evil games.
On the other hand, people that ship Jill with Chris may cheer at how, in this movie, Chris having a crush on Jill is canon. Robbie Amell almost looks like Chris in many ways, but his character unfortunately is saddled with the boring “my father figure turns out to be a megalomaniac mad scientist, oh no” arc.
As for Claire, she’s the standard “I’m a strong acerbic woman with a vulnerable interior and I have plot armor so thick that I can get into and out of improbable situations considering my supposed prowess and abilities” archetype, and it doesn’t help that a boring character is played by a discount Kristen Stewart that has a single “I look and sound more dead inside than the actual zombies in this movie” facial expression and tone throughout the whole film.
Still, I’m okay with these changes if they added something to the movie, but alas, these changes don’t elevate these characters or the movie. They only serve to turn these characters into derivative archetypes that I have come across so many times already.
Unfortunately, this movie is for the most part made up of tired clichés, so it’s a predictable drag for me as I am aware of the tropes and hence find the whole thing akin to eating the same meal yet again that I just want different flavors for a change. When things finally get going, I find myself watching a live action version of the first Resident Evil game, complete with scenes that will be familiar to folks that have played that game.
It also doesn’t help that the people that will survive are pretty obvious: Chris, Jill, Leon, Wesker, and Sherry will certainly stick around, like they did in the video games. Hence, the movie doesn’t even hide these characters’ plot armors. Everyone else is disposable, so what a surprise, they all die.
Perhaps the movie can be salvaged by letting these characters die in memorable ways, but no, I can’t even get that here. The death scenes are standard “zombies come, zombies munch, victim becomes a zombie” stuff done many times already.
Hence, Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City is a good example of a film that depends way too much on the video game as well as overused tropes and character archetypes. It feels like a generic, formulaic made-by-committee film, probably puked out to allow the studio to retain the rights to the film franchise or something for all I know. It’s dreadfully unoriginal in the blandest and forgettable ways possible. I hate to say this, but I think I’ve had more fun with the Alice show.
