The first installment in the Resident Evil film series reboot may induce nostalgia in fans, but it failed to generate a cinematic flair.
SONY PICTURES
Actors: Kaya Scodelario, Hannah John-Kamen, Robbie Amell, Tom Hopper, Avan Jogia, Donal Logue, Neal McDonough, Nathan Dales
Genre: Action, Horror, Sci-fi
Premise: Once the booming home of pharmaceutical giant Umbrella Corporation, Raccoon City is now a dying Midwestern town. The company’s exodus left the city a wasteland…with great evil brewing below the surface. When that evil is unleashed, a group of survivors must work together to uncover the truth behind Umbrella and make it through the night. (Sony Pictures)
Running Time: 107 minutes
Director: Johannes Roberts
Why You Should See It:
A reboot of the original film series, Welcome to Raccoon City walks on the footprints of its predecessors. Devoted fans won’t have a hard time spotting the screaming references to the game and the Milla Jovovich-starred films. That said and despite the nostalgia, relating with the film may likely come as a difficult task to do for fans and non-fans alike, who may find the characters too thin to strike a chord. But then again, that’s a familiar feeling as much of the original film series was met with negative assessment by critics
The reboot follows an orphan, Clare Redfield (Scodelario), who comes home to Raccoon City. She found out about the experiment to be performed on her by the same bad guys, who were responsible for the disfigured, newfound friend of hers–Lisa Trevor, who played this time by a contortionist, Marina Mazepa.
Redfield comes home to warn his older brother Chris (Amell) on the experiments to be performed by the nefarious Umbrella Corporation. Yet, her timing of coming home could not be more misplanned. It’s clear even before she sets foot on Raccoon City that something is [terribly] wrong; a truck-hit girl immediately gets up and disappears as if nothing happened, for starters.
The audience got teased relentlessly with familiar images throughout the film.
The Raccoon City Police Department building and the Spencer Mansion, for example, are near-perfect live-action equivalents of those in the games. Such choice is [seemingly] pulled off to communicate with the fans, but something lacked–it kept that from getting realized.
There is a void, an incurable disease, and it only gets worse in the film’s final moments.
As a remake, this film needs to be a bit more imaginative if it aspires to create hooks that catch the moviegoers’ attention. After all, these events and characters are the same ones pulled by just another set of actors. Unfortunately, this assignment got largely misunderstood by Roberts, who both wrote and directed this feature.
Roberts’s efforts to pay tribute to the original material certainly isn’t a sore choice, but his problems mainly come from the choices, he employed to make this reboot work.
Roberts’s film also bears the burden of having boring players, especially Scodelario, who looks [completely] unlike Jovovich. Of course, there is still something to say if she decided to copy her predecessor, but judging how this turns out, it feels as if her Clare Redfield could have gotten more love if she did copy Jovovich.
Nevertheless, Welcome to the Raccoon City has the strengths to generate some interest. Maxime Alexandre, who is at the helm of the film’s cinematography, definitely came up with a ravishingly-looking feature. He has riveting shots to make it a clear standout among the entries to the franchise. And he perfectly shot most of the film’s beautiful action sequences.
5 – Excellent
4 – Very Good
3 – Good
2 – Tolerable
1 – Terrible
Resident Evil: Welcome to the Raccoon City is now showing in cinemas nationwide. Watch the official trailer, below:
