Time for another zombie apocalypse as highly profitable Capcom computer game gets a reboot.
Johannes Roberts (The Strangers: Prey at Night) works an amusing, if gory early internet feel to Resident Evil: Welcome To Raccoon City. The early series of films fed off the antecedent which starred the lissome Milla Jovavich as the commando Alice. Remember the Umbrella Corporation with its deadly supercomputer.
The pharmaceutical titan wields its clandestine research causing havoc in a sleepy midwestern hamlet as an exodus in desolation occurs. A more watchable, less smug and annoying tale of infection isn’t as combative-minded as the days when Alice did much with her torso. Especially when teamed up with the likes of Michelle Rodriguez as Rain in the first, arguably best outing.
Roberts adjusts wisely to more horror finding solace in popular features and exercises clone over the past two decades with characters given a little more breath than under the guise Paul W. S. Anderson.
Not that there’s really anything remotely cutting-edge in fashion as a family reunion of sorts is in order when a distraught, orphaned Claire Redfield appears in the town of her childhood.
Claire, filled with noticeable renegade zeal by Kaya Scodelario of The Maze Runner, has to get her brother Chris (Robbie Amell) up to speed on the omnipotent, dastardly conglomerate inRaccoon City. You get the picture that mayhem in terms of carnivorous undead is ripe for the taking again.
Recurring characters like Chris and Jill Valentine, played by Hannah John-Kamen are part of a glowering grand design that sets up the possibility of further Evil. If an unctuous, later gnarly Dr. Birkin, filled with smirking glee by Neal McDonough can help keep it from a harried harangue while prowling with a little more on its brain.