Resident Evil: Apocalypse - Well... I liked it!

I’ll start by saying that Resident Evil 2 (or ‘Apocalypse’ to give it its correct name) wasn’t that well received.  The first film was (loosely!) based on a computer game and kind of went some way to revitalise the ‘zombie’ genre (or at least bring the undead back into the mainstream again).  However, whereas the original was widely well received by people who like a good B-movie, its second outing was pretty much trashed.  And, yes, I can see why – but I still liked it!

It carries on nicely from the original after a zombie outbreak occurs in a secret lab complex under a major (fictional) city.  Now the virus has been released on the above ground population and the city is basically falling to the numerous walking corpses while the authorities struggle to maintain order.  Throw in the only survivor from the first movie (a semi-naked Milla Jovovich) and you have your film.

I’ll start by listing its – numerous – faults. The cast are wafer thin cardboard cut-outs and every piece of dialogue is by-the-numbers and feels like it’s been written by a first year film student.  There’s no such thing as ‘character development’ and you’ll see every plot point coming.  They even bring back the ‘zombie dogs’ from the first film and sort of rehash the scene again.  The villain (yes, there’s a human villain as well as the zombies) is – again – your typically badly-written Bond-villain rip-off.  Then you have the ‘Nemesis’ – which is basically a man in a rubber suit pretending to be a monster.  Everything here is ‘style over substance’ – the story (and maybe I should put ‘story’ in quote marks?) moves from one stylised fight-scene to another.  You really will have to leave your brain at the door to get over the gaping holes in the plot which lead up to all the major characters getting together.

Yet, despite all that – I confess to actually owning this film on DVD and watching it every few years.  I found it quite fresh at the time.  I’ve been a fan of the zombie genre since the seventies and missed them so much that I was quite glad to see a big budget film where you get to see a glimpse of society falling while the zombie outbreak is underway.  The trick to getting something out of RE2 is basically lowering your expectations suitably to ignore all its faults.  You’ll probably have to know what Milla Jovovich’s movies are generally like, i.e. superhuman female kicking the hell out of numerous faceless baddies (or zombies in this case).  Don’t expect too much.  It’s a complete B-movie where you can wander in and out of the room at will and still know exactly what’s going on.

I like it, but even if you do really hate it as much as the majority, it’s still head and shoulders over every last sequel which follows (and there are a lot of those!).

7/10 if I woke up on Groundhog Day and had to watch this again, I could live with that