[REVIEW] Resident Evil Retribution (2012)

Malaria.  Ebola.  Gang rape.  These are the experiences I’d rather endure than be subjected to another bout of this slurry.  But you know, as a fan of the old games and, y’know, zombie movies in general, my ire is no longer directed at Paul W.S. Anderson.  Because to hate Paul Anderson would be like hating a 13 year old dog that can’t help pissing itself.  When AICN once called him out on his Resident Evil movies basically sucking as movies and being categorically worse as adaptations and being despised by fans of the games,  he made a point not to deny it and instead point to the numbers – that these movies have made hundreds of millions.  So the real problem is, as dumb as Anderson is, there is in fact a dumber specimen out there – his fans.  Or as I like to call them, his enablers.  Isn’t Anderson just a symptom?

At this point in a review, I usually talk about the plot and/or premise of the movie.  But to try and explain the plot of this fecal matter would be pointless because Anderson himself clearly hasn’t got a clue.  You can often berate a movie for having no plot, but rarely is it literally the case.  It’s surplus to requirements here.  Anderson has done here what he always does when contracted to write a screenplay:  Go home, watch some of his favourite movies, take notes and then stitch together a Frankenstein brew of bald-faced plagiarism.  Tell me, exactly when were the copyright lawsuits settled after this theft?  Did Snyder take an out of court settlement?  Here’s a bit of irony: Anderson steals from Snyder, who was copying Romero, who was fired from this series to be replaced by Anderson.  Another piece of irony is that the movie steals from Aliens, Dawn Of The Dead, Halloween, The Thing and others but the actual licensed property (Resident Evil) is completely ignored.

We should talk about the action now, after all this is just a popcorn blockbuster series.  Hey, man, maybe we should just sit back and enjoy the ride?!  That is one way of looking at it, if you enjoy unintentional point-and-roar hilarity.  One of the gems about this shit, apart from the interesting study of how it got greenlit (I’m favouring John Travolta’s thesis of homosexual favours), is Anderson’s pitch of having good guys use expertly honed military training to take on CGI beasts and enemies.  Kinda like cool dudebro special forces.  Odd then that they should frequently run directly into suppressive enemy fire, shoot from the hip and leave each other blatantly exposed. Who trained them anyway, the Angolan army?  The joke though, clearly being on the viewer, quickly wears off and the old problem of being downright insulting comes thick and fast.  It really, truly is diabolical cinema.  The fact that these movies get made – and eaten right up – is the real horror here.  What is the world coming to?

There is a type of two legged organism out there that converges annually at cinemas to pay to witness this garbage.  They’re the real Biohazard.  And from me to you, as a Shinji Mikami fan…

Fuck you.