Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004)

Boring

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

The quest for mediocrity continues with this direct sequel. Despite the change of director and a full on charge to the action genre, it still falls short of being a good film. Alice wakes up, Raccoon City is ravaged by abandonment, she walks around until she stumbles across Jill Valentine. They are tasked with extracting a young girl out of the quarantined city before it becomes decimated in order to fight back against the T-Virus. Would I class this as an improvement over its predecessor? Tough to say. Most fans of the series will say this is the best instalment, and I can see why. Jill Valentine, despite Sienna Guillory looking like she is cosplaying, does kick ass and gives Alice a run for her money. Two strong female protagonists is refreshing to see. The stunts were well executed, including Alice running down a building whilst being attached to a cable. Nemesis looked great, although unfortunately incredibly underused and not nearly as threatening as he should be. If you played the game, you would know he is relentless. In this, not so much. The horror aspect obviously did not work in the first instalment, so completely shifting this into action gear was more suited. Milla Jovovich gives an enjoyably daring performance as we watch her grow into an action star. It is unfortunate that the story is somewhat underwhelming...again. Point A to point B to point C. Roll credits. The way the seperate parties unite feels far too coincidental. Although really do we care? They are so one dimensional that if any meet their demise, I feel nothing. The fight choreography has this generic annoying sound effect for every punch and kick. The over reliance of tilted camera angles makes Alexander Witt's directing style feel amateurish. Also, the full five minute expositional introduction was a waste of time that could've been spent developing the characters. Again, the series remains mediocre but somewhat watchable.

Previous readers may be aware that the original RESIDENT EVIL wasn't one of my favourite genre flicks, despite the presence of flesh-eating zombies, and the sequel follows in much the same vein as the first. There is one major difference, however; this film dispenses with the story altogether, and the result is a typically mindless action fest with absolutely loads of shooting and martial arts high-kicking action. Normally I'm all for that, but sadly APOCALYPSE succumbs to the same clichéd formula as the original, in its story of a bunch of people running around in a sealed-off location and trying to avoid getting bitten by zombies.Director Alexander Witt (Paul W. S. Anderson isn't missed) has some annoying techniques of shooting his zombies in slow motion like in a Michael Jackson video, the result being pretty funny and not at all scary. Hardcore gore lovers will enjoy the flesh-biting fun but the camera always shies away from anything stronger than a little nibble on an arm or neck. The action tends to be repetitive, but kids will love the noisy theatricals with the incessant bam-bam of the guns and the outrageous stunts on hand. In this film, Jovovich is a kind of super woman who runs down the side of buildings and can jump over parked cars. The background to the plot is pretty murky and left unexplained. Jovovich is a strange lead in that I find her half sexy, half unappealing; she's back in her skimpy attire but still looks like an undernourished supermodel and I'm sure she has a cold sore on her lip at one point – not the most attractive of heroines, it has to be said. Much better is Sienna Guillory, who resembles and acts like Lara Croft far more than Angelina Jolie.Special effects are the main draw of the film, with the zombies looking fine and those skinless dogs back and just as good as in the original. Sadly, the pink mutant from the original's climax is back and seems to have multiplied in a church, still as unconvincing as ever. The film does score points by having a massive monster running around, a really ugly guy with a minigun who stomps and shoots in equal measure. I love men in monster suits and this inclusion – his name is Nemesis and he was once human apparently – is no exception; any scene with him in is so OTT as to be a whole lotta fun. Sadly, the bits involving the zombies are clichéd beyond belief – at one point they burst out of a graveyard, yawn – and the weird ending, which starts a whole new story, will leave viewers thinking "what the heck?". Pretty much the same experience as the first film offered then.

As a huge fan of RE -- after watching the first movie -- though not perfect , it is a great movie , i was looking forward to RE2 , in the hopes of seeing all the unique , original ideas , characters and creepy spooky horror elements that made the game scary ( Nemesis in particular ) hoping they would do the game justice , how wrong i was . RE Apocalypse is in my top 10 of worst movies ever made. First; Paul Anderson's screenplay is ridiculous , it is full of stupid , laughable ,embarassing , ilogical and poorly thought out ideas ever conceived to film , with some of the worst continuity errors i have seen in a movie , in both storytelling and logic , that is totally unforgivable , especially a RE fan. This movie is nothing like RE , i don't care that they tuck it in another direction , but you have to stay within the world of the games or the movie will fail as this one did. Another reason it failed was due to Alexander Witt-less' direction. This is the worst directed movie i have ever seen , due to all elements of directing. Alex should stay in second-unit because he doesn't have the skill , talent and vision to helm and sustain an entire movie to him self. Errors in this movie include; Jill Valentine walks into the police station with only one gun and in the next shot another gun pops out of nowhere. Kain is standing next to a man with a bald head and next shot a man with dark hair.( same man ) sniper shoots undead in their heads but when Nemesis shows the sniper doesn't , when in reality there would be no more nemesis. It takes Umbrella 13 hours to build an entire wall around Raccoon city , when in reality it would take months to build and we're supposed to believe it tuck a few hours. How do you write and direct a movie without noticing these things just gos to show why this movie failed. Alex directs this movie with fast cutting and a 100 shots of one punch thrown an inch forward then another 100 of another inch , and when your about to see the impact he cuts out the shot and 2 minutes of the fight is missing , and also he has the camera rammed right infront of what he is shooting and thats the way the movie is from start to finish , and when the movie is over the viewer is left thinking to them selves 'Did i just not see that?' and that is not how to direct a movie because people go to movies to experience them. But the thing that was most damaging to the movie was the constant ripping off ideas of other superior movie ;Escape from new york , Aliens , John Carpenter movies,The Terminator , so blaintly ,that the essence of RE is totally destroyed.The Nemesis in the game is a terrifying fracked-up Jason Vorheeves type character ,in the movie he was the Terminator , and any true fan of RE would never disrespect the franchise in anyway , so i can understand why people think Paul WS is not a true fan of RE but for me its a case of showing how bad a writer Paul is.This movie is not RE , it doesn't deserve its title.Arter so much thought and effort was put into this movie just for it to bomb , critically ,popularity , financially and for the fans make RE2 an embarrassment in the history of film. I give it 3/10 , 1 star for the audio commentary of Mila vovovich(forgive my spelling) and oded Fehr , 2'nd for the actress of Jill Valentine.

After surviving the horrors of The Hive and managing to escape, Alice (Mila Jovovich) discovers that the T-Virus has found it's way into Raccoon City resurrecting the dead. On her route to try and get out the city, she comes across other bands of survivors and they join forces to try and escape before the Umbrella Corporation resorts to extreme measures in "cleansing" the city. To do this, though, they first need to rescue the daughter of Dr. Ashford (the creator of the T-Virus) who is still within in the city limits. This will be made all the more harder, however, as the Umbrella Corporation have sent in a formidable opponent to stop them...Nemesis.Resident Evil: Apocalypse is a pretty decent sequel to the enjoyable Resident Evil movie, and is made much more enjoyable with the introduction of Nemesis. Thankfully, Nemesis makes more than just one solitary appearance as he is such a formidable character & presence (just like Pyramid Head in Silent Hill), and I'd maybe go as far as to say that if it wasn't for that character then the movie may have lacked a wee bit even with all the other action.The action in the movie is pretty relentless from start to finish with a good few impressive action scenes, two of which being the church scene involving Alice and three Lickers, and the action following the scene where Alice runs face first down a 200 foot building.The story line continues on from the 1st movie, but never really develops much until the final few scenes which lead onto the 3rd film, so don't expect much from this sequel story-wise.The acting is a wee bit dire in some places, mainly from Sienna Guillory who plays Jill Valentine, but thankfully it's not bad enough to actually throw you off from watching the film.All in all, like I say, this is a decent sequel and even if you're not familiar with the game series, it's still an enjoyable action flick.