Nicholas Thurkettle

Originally published 9/13/04

Resident Evil: Apocalypse
Director: Alexander Witt
Writer: Paul W.S. Anderson, based upon the videogame by Capcom
Producers: Jeremy Bolt, Paul W.S. Anderson, Don Carmody
Stars: Milla Jovovich, Sienna Guillory, Oded Fehr, Thomas Kretschmann, Jared Harris, Sandrine Holt, Mike Epps, Sophie Vavasseur, Raz Adoti

I am asked to accept one of two remarkable possibilities. One: that the evil global conglomerate Umbrella Corporation managed, in a feat of hustle engineering that would have impressed the folks behind the Berlin Wall, to erect, in a matter of hours, massive high-tech barricades blocking every escape point from Raccoon City, which is a spitting image in both size and shape to Toronto.

The other possibility is that they had these barricades up already, and it must have been some story they spun for why they might someday be necessary. And I’m starting to wonder in what country this is all taking place. We worry in America about corporations being too powerful, too friendly with the government, more in control than we know. But I have my doubts that we’ve reached the point where a corporation could wall in an entire populace and start slaughtering them without hearing even a peep from the authorities.

Either way, Resident Evil: Apocalypse is a by-God disaster in the storytelling arena, and for perhaps the first time in movie history, a movie based on a video game proves clumsier and dumber in both pacing and plot detail than the actual video game.
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