Resident Evil: Death Island (2023)
Last Watch Date - October 18, 2023
Total Times Watched - Once
Comments
While Resident Evil may have started out as pure horror, it has shifted to an action-centric series with a bunch of horror elements. This movie is far more action than horror, but given the series' history, I'm going to leave it tagged horror too. Deal with it.
As far as continuity, it's been a while since I watched any of these RE movies. I've seen the four prior animated movies, but it's been years. The story doesn't really seem to matter all that much anyway, so whatever. This movie does have regulars Chris and Claire Redfield, Leon Kennedy, and Jill Valentine. If you know who they are, that's probably sufficient.
The animation is quite good. There's nice texturing and the environments feel pretty real. The water scenes in particular feel almost real. It's crazy to see this stuff when you consider how clunky the original RE looked. Some of the action animations were jerky and clearly skipping frames, but it was fine. The voice acting was generally pretty good, although Claire was the weak point. Script-wise, it's a Resident Evil movie, so ... Also the one dude looks JUST like Tom Brady. It's very weird.
My problem with RE as a franchise is that it's always trying to one-up itself. I don't want to spoil anything here, but it's "bigger" and "badder" enemies all the time and at some point you take away all of the creepiness of the series. I still remember being creeped out in RE 1 and 2, seeing weird monsters and strangely vacant people. That's still kinda-sorta here but it's mostly gone to the giant monsters. It takes away a lot of the tension and turns it into more of an 80s action movie. You know they're going to be fine, but you also get to see them blow through a bunch of chumps. Maybe that's your thing, maybe it's not.
Recommended?
I don't think I'd recommend it alone, but if you're watching the animated movies, it's a good addition.
