This fourth Resident Evil instalment was only ever going to be worth seeing if it featured lots of amusing gore and entertaining action scenes that utilised the third dimension successfully. Evidently, director Anderson must've known this too, because nary a second is wasted on anything else. From the get go we're embroiled in a mass raid on Umbrella's high-tech underground headquarters by dozens of Alice replicates. It's Matrix-y slick, features a massive body count and is a great way to kick off proceedings, even if the CGI is occasionally substandard.
The remainder of the film becomes grubbier once it relocates to an abandoned maximum security prison surrounded by thousands of the "infected". Alice, and the ragtag bunch of Los Angeleno's she meets in the jail, encounter blood-thirsty zombies left, right and centre with murderous glee. The finest sequence on offer comes thanks to the inexplicably nonsensical inclusion of an unnamed 10ft creature with a mammoth axe-like weapon, who was apparently only introduced so we could witness its gruesome demise. With rain-drenched slow motion and heart pounding music, watching Alice and Claire despatch of this demented beast is a thrill.
To mention other dispensable elements of this movie – you know, acting, character development, dialogue, plot plausibility, etc – would be redundant for two reasons, (a) because your enjoyment of Afterlife can be measured wholly on your reaction to the above couple of paragraphs and (b) we all know that the aforementioned filmic elements will be close to non-existent anyhow.
Mindless fun.
3 out of 5 (1 - Rubbish, 2 - Ordinary, 3 - Good, 4 - Excellent, 5 - Classic)
