Where Afterlife went wrong

4/5 stars
The Resident Evil films are a perfect blend of story and fight scenes, just enough of the first, heavy on the second. But that’s fine; if you’re watching them for the love story, you need to work on your choice of films.
Fourth in the series (of the live action films), Afterlife is not bringing out any new surprises on the basic format and I can see most of the plot coming from a mile away. It’s what we expect from Resident Evil films and Afterlife delivers.
Unfortunately, someone on the directing team has been watching too many Matrix films recently. Here’s a list:
Mr Smith has a new face! But it’s so similar, I actually had to look up the actor playing Albert Wesker (not the best evil guy name by some margin) to make sure it wasn’t the same guy who did Mr Smith. They share a love of wearing sunglasses indoors, moving faster than the camera can pick up and generally kicking ass. On the sunglasses note, Wesker throws his at two of the characters for no reason other than, I assume, to make use of 3D. It didn’t distract the characters in any way and he immediately puts them back on again afterwards. Resident Evil wins the Least Subtle Film Ever award.
Bullet time, now used in completely pointless places! I can get the use of bullet time when either one of two things happens: someone avoids a bullet but only just or someone gets shot, significantly. Like Trinity did. Resident Evil appears to feel the need to use bullet time just to show a zombie getting shot.
Falling out of a window while still shooting! That famous scene in The Matrix Reloaded, where Trinity goes backwards through a window and has a falling fight scene with an Agent. That one? Well, it’s copied, almost move for move. Why, Resident Evil? Can’t you come up with your own?
All this makes me want to kick Resident Evil in the shins and tell it to come up with some ideas of its own.
But I still enjoyed the film. Axeman is a severe cutie – I want to take him home – and the overall acting skill is sublime. The characters feel like real people, the kind of people you actually want to survive. At no point was there the Horror genre staple: a cheerleader-like character who I want to feed to the zombies. And, yes, predictably, most characters die. But I’d feel a bit cheated if they all survived.
Afterlife has been set up with no ending, not as such. There is a clear indication, along the lines of a big neon sign, that another film is in the making. And I really really want to see it. Right now.
I should quickly justify the four stars rating. If Afterlife had made itself out to be a serious drama that dug deep into what it is to be human, I would have asked Axeman to kill everyone ever involved in that decision. But it isn’t. You get what you pay for. Except for the expectation that Neo is going to walk across the screen, looking suitably dour.
If you like the Resident Evil films you will be neither surprised by nor disappointed in Afterlife (unless the Matrix parallels kill you inside). It’s a suitable sequel to the other three and has set up an interesting premise for the fifth.
Stupid, annoying, but loveable. Go watch it.