Resident Evil: Vendetta review

RESIDENT EVIL: VENDETTA:

BRINGS THE HORROR ASPECT ON TOP OF INSANE ACTION SEQUENCES AND STAYS FAITHFUL TO ITS BELOVED SOURCE MATERIAL!

By Nico Beland

Movie Review: *** out of 4

STAGE 6 FILMS AND CAPCOM
Chris Redfield is locked and loaded in Resident Evil: Vendetta

            You wanted a faithful Resident Evil movie? You got it with Resident Evil: Vendetta, the third CG animated film based on Capcom’s popular Resident Evil video games, the first two being 2008’s Resident Evil: Degeneration and 2012’s Resident Evil: Damnation. The movie completely scraps anything Milla Jovovich or Paul W.S. Anderson related and delivers a thrilling and dazzling film that is sure to put a smile on any fan’s face.

            Set in between the events of Resident Evil 6 and Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, the film follows BSAA, Chris Redfield (voiced by Kevin Dorman) as he enlists the help of American government agent, Leon S. Kennedy (voiced by Matthew Mercer-Fullmetal Alchemist: The Sacred Star of Milos, Kill la Kill, Sailor Moon) and Professor Rebecca Chambers (voiced by Erin Cahill) to stop a death merchant named Glenn Arias (voiced by John DeMita) with a taste for vengeance and plots to spread a new deadly virus on New York City. After a tragic incident on his wedding day Arias seeks revenge by transforming everyone in New York into flesh-eating zombies and undead mutant experiments.

            Chris, Leon, and Rebecca lock and load and blast their way through the zombies and other threats to stop Arias and find a cure for the virus. What follows is action overload with gunplay, gore, motorcycle stunts, and some encounters with horrific zombie experiments.

            Overall, Resident Evil: Vendetta delivers everything fans want, over-the-top action sequences, familiar characters, terror, winks and references to the games, and some imaginative zombie designs as well as dazzling computer animation. The film’s animation was created by Sega’s Marza Animation Planet who will also be providing the animation for the upcoming Sonic the Hedgehog movie, and it’s absolutely stunning and energetic especially during action scenes, had my eyes glued to the screen and couldn’t look away haven’t felt like this since Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children.

            I really applauded this movie for not making up their own protagonist like what the live-action films did. They stuck with characters from the games and nothing more…Well, okay there are some characters made just for the movie but no Alice.

            It pisses me off that this film only has a one-night theatrical run while the live-action movies were given wide releases. The original Resident Evil movies aren’t the worst adaptations of a video game but they’re action/sci-fi-driven movies by name only with characters from the game as side characters…Weak.

            This on the other hand is a thrilling action extravaganza with some zombie scares thrown in that understands its source material and delivers what most video game movies don’t. It probably won’t sit well with mainstream movie-goers, if you have no idea what Resident Evil is like I wouldn’t recommend watching it on its own.

            Resident Evil: Vendetta is the best Resident Evil movie I’ve ever seen, one of the best video game movies I’ve seen, and a film I’d buy on Blu-Ray when it comes out. It’s no masterpiece but a movie based on a video game turning out to be good is so rare today and I’d rather be watching this several more times than any of Milla Jovovich’s movies.

            Hopefully this will lead to more CG films based on video games in the future and it shows that adapting a video game into film is possible with the right amount of thought, effort, and understanding of the material it’s based on. If you don’t understand it then you’re no less evil than the Umbrella Corporation.