Resident Evil: Welcome to Racoon City, hit cinemas in late November
and finally made its way to the UK on the 3rd of December. There wasn’t much hype behind the movie,
the first trailer they released was met with a lot of unflattering feedback, from
the trailer it looked like a fan film, looking somewhat cheap and the CGI looked very dated.
They quickly rushed out a revised trailer which seemed to reduce the negativity surrounding it
but most fans of the game were expecting another failed attempt at video game to movie adaptation.
The early reviews published were as expected, with most leaning on the negative side,
they all seemed to complain of the poor casting and their characterisations.
Combining Resident Evil 1 and 2 into one movie didn’t go down well with the fanbase,
as the script had left things unexplained and relied heavily on the viewer knowing the backstory
to many of the characters and for those unfamiliar with left a bit lost. It was not all bad,
some had pointed that out that it was more faithful to Capcom’s popular video games
than the long running series by director Paul W.S Anderson and it provided enough
action and horror to keep you entertained. So far it’s not performing well at the box office,
but with it being made on a low budget, it will easily break even. In the UK not many of the
cinema chains are showing it, and if they are its getting only a couple of screenings a day.
Wheels were in motion to reboot the series when the last of the current series was coming to an
end back in 2017. In December 2018, it was announced that Johannes Roberts was attached
to write and direct the film. Roberts had a number of successful films at the box office,
with 47 meters down, its sequel and The Strangers prey at night.
Roberts was interviewed early this year and said “What he loved about the games was that
they were just scary, and that's a lot of what he wanted, that atmosphere. It's raining constantly,
it's dark, it's scary, Raccoon City is a rotten character. Inspired by John Carpenter's films
such as Halloween, Assault on Precinct 13, and The Fog, the director explained that the
origin story is a piece divided between two main locations: Spencer Mansion (the setting for the
first game) and the Raccoon Police Department, which first appeared in Resident Evil 2.
"Roberts loved the remake of the second game and wanted to carry over the look
and tone of that game into the movie. Roberts emphasized that his version has
nothing to do with the series that preceded it starring Mila Jovawick.
He said he had never seen the horror and atmosphere of the games [in those movies],
what he felt when playing those games or watching from behind the shoulders of people playing them
he never felt it on the screen, and this is something he get across with this reboot.
Set in 1998, Claire Redfield returns to Raccoon City and catches a ride from a truck driver. On
their journey he gets distracted and hits a woman who is walking in the road. When Claire and the
driver go to investigate, the woman disappears when their back is turned, leaving only a pool
of blood behind. The truck driver's dog licks the blood, and begins to foam at the mouth.
Claire heads to Chris's home to warn him about Umbrella's experiments that
has leaked in the towns water supply. Chris is not interested in her conspiracy theories
and leaves for the police station, Claire gets attacked by Chris’ neighbours who are
bleeding and have severe hair loss. Claire escapes, stealing her brothers motorbike.
Meanwhile across town, Leon S. Kennedy, has been transferred to the Racoon Police
department and is struggling to fit in, there has been reports of bizarre
events around the city and an incident at the Spencer Mansion which the Stars Team are told
to investigate as the Bravo team have not reported back after being sent out earlier.
A truck driver has turned into a zombie and crashes his vehicle outside the police station,
starring the crap out of Leon, the town falls into lockdown and the
chief of the police is already trying to escape leaving Leon by himself.
Alpha team, composed of Chris, Jill Valentine, Richard Aiken, Brad Vickers, and Albert Wesker
head to the mansion by helicopter, Alpha team find Bravo team's police vehicle and follow the
tracks and enter the dark mansion, they can hear the sound of people moaning in the distance and
they decide to split up to investigate and uncover the hidden secrets of the mansion.
Now going into the see this movie my expectations were set really low,
what I wanted was just schlocky entertainment, so basically, its going to be bad but good and
to be honest that’s kind of what I got. I didn’t walk out of this movie really annoyed or upset,
I was somewhat pleasantly surprised by it but also had many questions about its direction
and the wasted opportunities to really expand on the narrative
to take the fantastic storytelling of the first game in particular and put it on the big screen.
I don’t understand the producers wanting to combine two games into one film,
there is plenty of plot available to take advantage of to focus on for one movie? They want
to make sequels right, so why cut themselves short by rushing through two video game storylines?
Which results in annoying the fans, because so much is left out. I had hoped it would focus on
the first game but upon seeing the trailer, I was left disappointed with its direction to shift its
focus onto part 2 with elements from part 1. I had thought the focus on the mansion could be
flashbacks but that wasn’t the case. Resident Evil 2 is the most popular out of the series
and the recent remake has further enforced its popularity, so I can understand their attempts
to really grab onto that game but the end result is cutting both games storylines short.
The biggest red flag I had with it was the casting, Leon and Jill are the worst offenders,
first of all they don’t look their video game counterparts but the biggest problem is that
they don’t act like them, Leon is a bumbling fool, who is crap at his job and lacks confidence. What
the hell were they thinking? Jill just a generic character, who shares no traits to her video game
counterpart. Its just baffling why those chose to do this? I can totally understand casting someone
of a different ethnicity but to totally ignore who those characters are, is a wasted opportunity.
Wesker is kind of half way there to being like the video game character, but his whole persona
is a bit of a meat head and has this dude like bro attituded. I did laugh when I saw
Neil McDonough turn up as William Birkin, totally hamming it up by the end. Neil seems to be the go
to guy for video game movies now, having appeared in The legend of Chun Li and Sonic The Hedgehog.
The dialogue in the film does make use of heavy exposition dumps to let the
audience know who aren’t familiar with the games to be informed of what’s going on,
some of is it a bit forced and clunky, what left me laughing throughout is that the film
is aiming for a world recording of using the F-word pretty every other word that comes out
of the these characters mouths. F- this, F-that, who the F-he is, where the F- are you going etc.
Now the film isn’t a total disaster, it has good photography, it has a number of the crew from the
Shazam movie, the production design is pretty solid, its nice seeing the mansions entrance
and the police station, they look very faithful to the game but they’re very small in scale and once
you go into different rooms, it no longer seems familiar to the game especially with the mansion.
The zombie make up effects are done well, seeing their eyes bleed and the undead pulling
their hair out as they begin to turn into a zombie was a nice effect as they transition.
The licker effect wasn’t as bad I was expecting, it has a great introduction as you can’t see it
at first but the Florence lights are moving as it crawls towards Claire and Leon, a tense moment.
The final confrontation with Birkin as he takes the virus and morphs into this beast
with loads of eyes, yeah it didn’t look great but his early transformation was
produced to a good standard of digital effects, its just his final form is a bit hit and miss.
It was nice to see them make use of Lisa Trevor who was the daughter of the architect
who built the mansion but this subplot it doesn’t really go anywhere and is not well explained.
Claire’s finds some old records of the children at the orphanage that Birkin had managed,
and I thought they would show more of the experiments ie like the hunters or the Tyrant
but in fact they do a shot for shot remake of a sequence form the 4th video game, Code Veronica
featuring the Ashford twins, as she plays this old projector which seems to hint that
any intended sequel will follow that storyline, which is interesting because that game did have a
great story but it does seem the story is kind of rushing through these events too quickly.
The score by Mark Korven does a great job of setting the mood making use of synthesizers
even throwing sound effects into the soundtrack to puncture the music to kickstart a sequence
I don’t recall any themes from the game making their way into the film
which is a shame because those themes are instantly recognisable if you’ve played the game,
as the director wanted to capture the style of John Carpenter and his direction
the music follows suit in many areas. There are couple of decent tracks on the
album release but I don’t think the score really lends itself to easy listening.
I think the film is worth a watch, there is definitely parts of it that will annoy you
or leave you dumbfounded on why they made some creative choices if you’re very familiar with
the games and their storylines, but it was far more entertaining then the other movies,
which were just so over the top and had little story, major continuity issues,
they threw characters in from the games but they were there by name only,
the action was farcical Mila as Alice becoming this super hero who was indestructible and is
probably the most 2 dimensional action hero of cinema. Those films were just utter nonsense
and bore little resemblance to the games but can be enjoyed with friends to just laugh at.
Welcome to Racoon City makes a strong attempt to take the source material more seriously,
it has the action played out in a more realistic manner, no chopping editing, you can see what’s
happening, you’re not seeing Chris and Claire doing backflips or anything unrealistic this was
directed and edited with some care and attention, there was some effective jumps scares, some bait
and switch moments to avoid it being predictable, the scene with Chris and his lighter that keeps
cutting out was a great sequence. I’m not a fan of strobe effects in movies but they pulled off
a goods action scene with the lights out and Chris shooting his way through the zombies.
The director has said to be a big fan of the games
and its clear he has made an effort to focus on story points from the remake of RE1 and 2
but perhaps his script was changed during the shooting process or sequences dropped
during the edit that resulted in the script not being totally clear or the producers handed him
notes to change things that resulted in his movie that so wants to appeal to the fans being changed
thus it resulted in these silly errors that has turned off a lot of fans and annoy them.
Overall a so so effort, that is enjoyable but clearly far from perfect I just wished they had
taken the time to really focus the script on Resident Evil 1, and not combine it with the
sequel, so they could play things out in a slower fashion to let the story breathe and
help build up the suspense to reveal the hidden secrets of Umbrella then I think it would’ve
worked really well to prove that video games could be turned successfully in a movie that would
please the fans and a gained new ones with the general public who were unfamiliar with the videos
games but again it’s another misfire. Perhaps with the sequel they will learn from their mistakes.