At Umbrella Corp. no changes – review of the movie “Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City”

“Last Minute” offer

So accept the invitation to Raccoon City – a medium-sized city in an undefined part of the United States. However, the city’s heyday – the former seat of the pharmaceutical giant Umbrella Corporation – is behind it. The corporation that kept the town alive closed its branch and relocated almost all employees to other centers. Currently, Raccoon City appears to be extinct; there were a few Umbrellas left in place, what was left of the local law enforcement staff and a multitude of people too poor to move out of here. The crisis is in the air – to make matters worse, something disturbing is starting to happen with poor locals …

Under these circumstances, Claire Redfield (Kaya Scodelario) decides to return to the city after many years. The young woman claims she has found a chilling plot against which she wants to warn her brother Chris (Robbie Amell) – now a dedicated police officer and member of the elite STARS cell In another part of Raccoon City, another man in uniform – Leon S. Kennedy ( Avan Jogia) – to experience the absolutely worst first day in a new job …

From a fan (?) For fans

The plot of RE: Welcome to Raccoon Cityit runs in two ways. On the one hand, we will follow the suicide mission of the STARS team, which will go to the abandoned villa of the founder of the Umbrella corporation, Oswell E. Spencer, in search of two recognized missing colleagues. On the other hand, we will see the intersecting fortunes of Claire, Leon and the commander of the local police headquarters, who will closely observe the progressing plague and try to survive in the city center plunged in chaos, besieged by mutating desperates. One of the main accusations against the adaptations of the title so far was a very liberal approach to the source material – the heroin of the series, portrayed by Milla Jovovich Alice, does not appear in any of the games, after all, while key characters and plots played out insignificant episodes or were presented in complete isolation from their original context. In this respect, Johannes Roberts – the director and screenwriter of the latest film adaptation – gives the impression of a top student who has done his homework carefully. The creator of the series evidently knows the series, and maybe even likes it, but overall it seems … it doesn’t matter much.

Roberts goes back to the source, taking on wallpaper not one, but the first two parts of the series, quite faithfully sticking to the plot of Resident Evil (the plot of Spencer’s villa) and Resident Evil 2(including the plot of Leon and Claire). Fans of the series may be pleased with the mass of quotes, flavors and references, longing for idyllic “najntisami” – this treasury opens with the setting of the action in 1998, which is associated with cramming a whole range of today obsolete equipment: Walkmans, VHS players, palmtops, pagers *… This is not the end of the film franchise reset; the director goes back to the basics, recalling the survival roots of the series. Even if the story itself is woven from clichés, and the solutions used are clichéd, it is happy that Roberts is not limited to cheap scarecrows, but tries to build suspense with longer shots, appropriate framing, camera work and limited lighting. Sequences inside a luxurious villa seem particularly successful, using a large potential of claustrophobically tight and dark corridors. Thanks to the presence of the G virus, there are also elements of body horror, which is in all its hideousness – which is, after all, the hallmark of the series, and so far treated neglectfully by film adaptations. The latter also has the germ of psychological terror – when we are able to observe victims at various stages of mutation, still aware of the progressive changes and gradual but inevitable dehumanization. This is in the perspective of all the trifles, but after the chaff the viewers were given to the saga of the Indestructible Alice (and which the writer of these words followed with masochistic pleasure), they simply enjoy. Thanks to the presence of the G virus, there are also elements of body horror, which is in all its hideousness – which is, after all, the hallmark of the series, and so far treated neglectfully by film adaptations. The latter also has the germ of psychological terror – when we are able to observe victims at various stages of mutation, still aware of the progressive changes and gradual but inevitable dehumanization. This is in the perspective of all the trifles, but after the chaff the viewers were given to the saga of the Indestructible Alice (and which the writer of these words followed with masochistic pleasure), they simply enjoy. Thanks to the presence of the G virus, there are also elements of body horror, which is in all its hideousness – which is, after all, the hallmark of the series, and so far treated neglectfully by film adaptations. The latter also has the germ of psychological terror – when we are able to observe victims at various stages of mutation, still aware of the progressive changes and gradual but inevitable dehumanization. This is in the perspective of all the trifles, but after the chaff the viewers were given to the saga of the Indestructible Alice (and which the writer of these words followed with masochistic pleasure), they simply enjoy. when we are able to observe victims at different stages of mutation, still aware of the progressive changes and gradual but inevitable dehumanization. This is in the perspective of all the trifles, but after the chaff the viewers were given to the saga of the Indestructible Alice (and which the writer of these words followed with masochistic pleasure), they simply enjoy. when we are able to observe victims at different stages of mutation, still aware of the progressive changes and gradual but inevitable dehumanization. This is in the perspective of all the trifles, but after the chaff the viewers were given to the saga of the Indestructible Alice (and which the writer of these words followed with masochistic pleasure), they simply enjoy.

The tyrant is naked

These moments, however, remain a drop in the ocean of rushing narration, rigid, expositional dialogues and sequential dramaturgy. Cutting down not one, but two games for the needs of a reasonable size (less than two hours) would always be a breakneck task and forcing a certain shortcut, but it is impossible to resist the impression that omitting a few not very important elements (especially at the slightly sleepy beginning) could only work to the advantage whole. It is difficult to feel the stakes and the real danger when all problems are solved by the proverbial manna from heaven and happy coincidences, and clashes with allegedly inhuman and dangerous adversaries, no matter how grotesquely deformed, end without much effort. The whole thing seems to be made of two projects – claustrophobic horror and its amateur parody, with a group of home-grown cosplayers pasted onto computer-generated backgrounds. Forced play and humorous interjections appearing here and there simply clash with quite competently created terror. Mr. Roberts, you don’t bite over your main course with dessert.

If we strip the fanservice the mantle of everything, we’ll quickly find out that the king is not only naked but also greedy. The biggest problem of the series still seems to be the fact that the creators see in the players – and therefore, as logic suggests, potential recipients – useful idiots who will pay for the ticket anyway, driven by loyalty to a well-known brand. They forget along the way that for a movie based on an existing franchise to be considered good, you just need to deliver… a good movie. RE: Welcome to Raccoon CityIt is by no means a good film, but the complete lack of pretensions and a substitute for a non-obvious anti-indulgent and entertaining value protects it from the status of a completely indigestible monster, instead placing the title under an umbrella labeled “crap-occupying”. And if you are still asking yourself why this carcass is not in a hurry six feet underground, it remains for me to send you back to the box office results ** …

* By the way, from today’s perspective, it is funny to observe all the “insurmountable” problems that having a mobile phone would solve today … which, moreover, appears in one of the scenes.

** All six Resident Evil films , despite – to put it mildly – low-enthusiastic reviews and complaining from gamers, grossed over $ 1.2 billion in total.

We invite you to the movie Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City to the Cinema City network!