Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010)

I am an unashamed fan of the first two resident evil movies.  Even the third one was pretty cool.  They all deliver on zombies and crazy mutations.  They are a lot of fun.  So, of course, I was going to check out Afterlife.  I was a bit disappointed right from the start.  The actor that played Wesker was wooden and had some horrible lines.  Also this movie had zombies in it, but they were not really the focus.  The humans were mostly isolated from them and really only had to fight of the mutations. 

Plot-  The movie picks up right where it left off.  Alice is out for revenge against Umbrella.  This really wouldn't work as a stand alone movie as you need to have watched most of the previous movies to understand what was going on.  I think you can get by with just the recaps in the other movies.  So, Alice defeats Umbrella and now fears that she is the last living person.  She finds some people holed up in a prison and can't help but stop to help them.  Of course, her timing is impecable as all hell is about to break loose. 

Characters-  Paul Anderson wasn't really on his A-game here.  He wasn't getting the best performances from his actors.  Milla is Alice, you can't go wrong there, but the other actors just weren't cutting it, especially but not limited to the guy that played Weskers.  It was probably a bad script and bad lines, but I really didn't care about anyone in the movie.  Of course all the characters went completely undeveloped, so why should I care about them. 

Prettyness-  The movie is shot almost too polished.  Resident Evil is about monsters and zombies at its core.  This movie is just too bright and too pretty looking for most of the film.  It fails to set a mood and creep you out.  This was also a problem with the third movie. 

Time-  97 minutes.  Really. . .Really. . . Really. . .  The movie was practically over once it got started.  Hey Paul W. S. Anderson.  How about 15 minutes of character development or maybe 10 minutes of fighting zombies.

Overall-It was just okay.  It wasn't a zombie movie or a horror movie, it was an action movie.  I don't agree with that direction for this franchise.  They even forgot that you can't kill zombies by shooting them in the body.  Yes, many zombies were taken down with body shots.  What are people learning from watching this sloppiness.  Anderson could be costing folks their lives with his laziness.  I am not going to tell you to not watch the lovely Milla, but I can't really recommend the movie either.  Just know that it is an action movie you are watching.