City of the Living Dead Fans of the post-apocalypse, slow-mo, 3D format and zombie films are waiting for the fourth part of “Resident Evil”, which continues the story about the struggle of the invincible Alice performed by the chic Milla Jovovich against hordes of zombies, various monsters and people behind it all. But the thing is, under the guise of a zombie movie, we're being offered a set of excerpts of what Paul Anderson was watching, coming up with a script, stealing pieces from everywhere. Jovovich in the prologue of the film is sure that he starred in Ultraviolet, as if showing Reynolds how Deadpool should have cut everyone in Wolverine, and nevertheless the spectacular action of the Japanese prologue turns out to be the best and most valuable in the whole, so to speak, film.
Stepping from the banal to the primitive, the lack of a plot tries to link the ridiculous mosaic of the part of the cinema universe with the game, and somehow weave the maps on their hands together. And weave only pieces of other people's films, but break the most valuable moments. Let’s start with the fact that the movie about the zombie quadriquel in fact is not. The confrontation goes mainly to the soldiers of the corporation, intertwined with the search and ways of survival in an empty world. Yes, this time the world is absolutely empty, but it is not a desert, as it was in the third part. There will be greenery, sea coasts and finally a city of the living dead with a prison siege. The absurdity of situations makes you laugh, and everything else is sacrificed to the visual part. About the acting game of cannon fodder here is not even worth mentioning, since barely acquainting with the characters they get rid of them, as from excess cargo, and the main character devoid of emotions is no better than the equally icy and devoid of charisma of the main villain. The latter somehow resembles another failed role of Val Kilmer, although it is played on the screen by a completely different actor. Well, Jovovich, unlike the previous parts, has become much less expressive and spectacular, although he tries to pull the strap of a ruthless killer machine.
As for disappointments, they do not fall from the fact that on the screen there are dogs of the third “Blade”, the butcher from “Sylent Hill”, whose appearance refers more to Gogolovsky “bring Vii!”, when a powerful axe suddenly needed a horde of dead to break the fence and get to a bunch of extremely nasty personalities, which they still would not hesitate to eat. No, the frustrations come from mocking the best and most valuable franchise. I have already mentioned about the completely petrified Jovovich, but the worst thing is that her character is instantly deprived of all superpowers, which was most intriguing at least in a wonderful triquel, where an impeccable script saved even an extremely weak visual production. Having lost the main plus, Anderson also manages to spoil the final part, when the long-awaited mutation of Wesker is first interrupted by fake shots of a related couple, and then completely remains somewhere behind the scenes, apparently due to lack of budget. The only thing that could have saved this film was some spectacular finale fight with a posh monster, in the spirit of an alternate ending to the first Blade but brought to mind by the staging of the fight and the quality of CGI. Unfortunately, we are offered just one more look at the ending of “Island” by Michael Bay, and then it is broken off by a bunch of flying helicopters, as if the ending was already not meaningful and intriguing to the sequel. And also a strong disappointment was the lack of the title musical theme of the franchise and the next change of composer. Even though the music in the film is quite good, the film, devoid of the main musical theme, is even less like a part of the Resident Evil franchise.
Each attempt to take a high note is a failure from the subsequent efforts of both the director and the screenwriter – and here they are presented in one person. All Paul does here is re-shoot the Matrix to his own zombie movie. If sliding slow-motion bullets affectionately bypassed Neo, then here each will enter the head of another dead man and tear it apart, splashing the viewer’s three-dimensional glasses with red blood. High-quality 3D and excellent shootouts, despite their effectiveness, make us forget that we have a movie in general related to the Resident Evil franchise, and occasionally appearing monsters barely brighten up boredom, returning a kind of good atmosphere. The film even has a couple of rather scary moments, so that from the genre of action horror to remain not only meaningless action, but still a film related to the horror section. But nevertheless, the fourth “Abode”, unlike the beautiful first, is not the movie you have to go to to be scared and tickle your nerves.
When the scenes-repeats in the head of the viewer will pass for more than 20 films, it is already difficult to take the utter nonsense happening on the screen at least somehow seriously, and laughing at the wretched seems like a sin, although some scenes in the spirit of the episode “this is a trap!” cause only seduction for a few minutes. And Paul Anderson, without even trying to somehow originalize, gives out wretched and primitive cliches, putting a cliche on a cliche, so that the viewer finally loses all interest in the film.
On the other hand, without movie quotes now in the mainstream can do only lazy, and not always some similarities and purely licked scenes should cause negativity and indignation. Another thing is that apart from someone else, there is nothing of its own. The film looks not like a sequel, but a stupid fan art on the topic when it is not possible to think of something, and you just start to collect cool moments in pieces: but here we have a dog’s jaw will open, and here we have a ship on which everything is also bad as always, and here a huge boogay will thresh with all the dope, and here are the jumps of slow-mo da rapids from the “Matrix” and the bullet “Especially dangerous”.
Quadriquel is more tiresome and annoying than able to entertain, and what happens on the screen causes complete bewilderment. But the visual part, as I said, was successful – shootouts, graphics, variety of 3D and numerous slowdowns, the absence of which would reduce the time of the film by half. For the sake of all this, you need to go to the movies, because when watching at home, all this can already dramatically lose its value. Over beautiful shootings, impressive tricks and presentation of material here worked hard, and all sorts of monsters look really impressive, although not so often loom. The three-dimensional effects are striking, forcing you to rather nod with thoughts “that’s three des!”, as well as dodge flying sharp objects, and wipe the glass from whipping blood. And what, and the technical part here is simply meaningless. It’s a shame that it’s as meaningless as anything else in the movie.
5 IZ 10
Original