Resident Evil: Vendetta Review

Director:  Takanori Tsujimoto

Starring:  Kevin Dorman, Matthew Mercer, Erin Cahill and John DeMita

Released: June 19^th 2017 (limited engagement)

*Spoilers abound*

Well the time has finally come, a brand-new cg Resident Evil movie to help wash out the horrible aftertaste of the live action series.  The past two cg Resident Evil films were pretty decent, nothing to write home about but decent flicks all the same. Capcom has been running most of their successful franchise down the drain, but with this year’s Resident Evil VII: Biohazard things seemed to finally be on track.  I hoped that this new film would be a return to form just like the aforementioned game. The trailer that accompanied Alien Covenant was suspenseful and teased a psychological adversary that both Chris Redfield, and Leon S. Kennedy would have to face together.  Unfortunately Resident Evil: Vendetta is not only the worst cg RE film, but one of the worst movies I have seen all year. 

Taking place sometime after RE 6 but before VII, Resident Evil Vendetta is the first cg film to feature Chris Redfield as a main player. After tracking down a mysterious bio-weapon dealer in Mexico named Glenn Arias, Chris’s entire squad is wiped out leaving him the sole survivor.  On a quest for revenge Chris teams up with two survivors from the Raccoon City incident, Rebecca Chambers and Leon s. Kennedy.  Can the trio take down Arias before he unleashes a terrible virus across the country?

When this movie first started, I absolutely loved it. The first 12 minutes are actually an intense thrilling ride that harkens back to the original game.  Glenn Arias is given a fantastic introduction, after the death of Albert Wesker in the fifth game the RE series has lacked a proper intimidating villain. I thought this Glenn Arias character would break that mold, he had everything that you could want in a villain for the series. He was dressed well, smarter than our heroes, and was literally connected to every major organization in the series from Umbrella to Los Illuminatos.  Of course name dropping these things could get any Resident Evil fan excited, because for the most part the cg films haven’t really held an impact to the series. This film promised to be a game changer, a fantastic lore building film that would not only finally put Chris in a film (Leon has been the star the last two times) but force Leon and Chris to take down an enemy that would test them mentally and physically.

Then the opening credits finish and the movie commits its first sin, we are given Glenn Arias’s origin. For some unknown reason the film decides after the 10 minute mark to just show us Glenn’s story with at least 80 minutes left in the film, and after that happens you can just guess his endgame and basically how the rest of the film will play out. This character who had one of the best entrances to a villain I’ve seen all year is reduced to a pathetic mockery of a Bond villain, he even comes equipped with a scar on his eye so you know just how eeeevillll he is.  In fact the rest of the movie just becomes a paint by the number mess, you have got your Bane like henchman, damsel in distress who is poisoned but gets cured last minute, and magical chemtrail rain that cures the infection. 

The problems don’t stop there of course. Having our villain, who is actually supposed to be one of the driving points of his movie isn’t enough. No, we are introduced to one of the most annoying characters I’ve seen all year, Rebecca Chambers.  Now it kills me to say this, because I don’t want to hate on a female character, but Rebecca is god awful.  Sure, the intent and origin is all there but Rebecca’s main point in the movie is to serve as walking exposition.  Chris and Leon need her because she figures out a cure for the virus that Arias has developed, oh and of course she is the only person who has the cure (haven’t seen that one before) . She is eventually captured by Glenn Arias who notices she resembles his late wife, so he decides to keep her around not only because she figured out the cure but because he might be falling for her.  In fact for a majority of the movie Chris and Leon take the backseat of their own story and we are forced to focus on Rebecca, who as I said continues to spout exposition.

That is because Resident Evil: Vendetta thinks you are an idiot.  This movie doesn’t trust its own audience. It has so little faith in you that after the 30 minute mark we are given an entire scene, I repeat, an entire scene dedicated to recapping the first ten minutes of the movie. Then after that we are given another scene involving Glenn Arias recapping exactly what was shown in the flash back after the opening credits. Look I know you are a videogame/anime movie, and you did show but then you decided to tell us everything. We can assume Glen wants revenge because of what happened involving his wedding and the death of his wife. Why exactly this happens we aren’t sure, we get probably two lines of dialogue dedicated to this, but please continue on telling us why Chris is on this mission and why Glenn must be stopped.

Since this is an animated movie the animation is one of the most important things here. It’s essentially your first impression. Well this is subpar animation at best with every character walking like stiff mannequins. I might have given this a pass but with last year’s Kingsglaive giving us seriously the best cg animation ever, I think Capcom can fork up some of that RE VII money for better animation.  I am also a sucker for music, and when I see in the opening credits that you got Kenji Kawai (original Ghost in the Shell) scoring for you, I expect some good music. Of course with the rest of this uninspired crap Kenji Kawai gives us a lazy score that most of the time sounds like some of his work from Ghost in the Shell 2. Kawai I know this film isn’t that good, but even a good soundtrack can save a bad movie.

Now maybe I am insane, because apparently some fans love this movie. I’ll also admit I have not watched Resident Evil: The Final Chapter which I assume is worse than this, but Capcom Resident Evil as far as films go isn’t highly regarded.  They should pull out all the punches to show us that the company that makes the games can produce better films than Hollywood.  I also thought since VII wrote so many wrongs with the franchise that this would be a more grounded movie, alas I did not get that either.  There are two kinds of Resident Evil, the over your shoulder nail biting horror experience, or the comic book where everyone is a superhero and apparently have the durability of a fucking Terminator.  This falls under the ladder.

Okay, its anime I expect some over the top action to happen, sure. Most of the time that falls under the monsters our heroes face, and that makes sense. These are supernatural creatures that should be hard to kill. Our heroes should be afraid, even if they are seasoned veterans. The main goal of any movie is to create suspense for the audience but that isn’t here. When I have Leon moving with the speed of Neo and shooting zombies like John Wick the film immediately loses all tension.

I thought Glenn was infected when the movie started; his initial conflict with Chris was amazing. He had the upper hand, he was fast at an almost superhuman level ala Wesker. However by the end of the movie I guess he was just a normal guy who could fight extremely well. Then he just mutants into a roided up Freddy Kruger (no joke) and proceeds to throw our heroes around like rag dolls. It’s a good thing our heroes come out with scraped and boo boos on their arms, even though the damage dished out to them would say otherwise.  I always thought the main characters of Resident Evil were a little more grounded beside the insane things that continue to happen to them.

What happened to the first ten minutes where everyone was outmatched by just three zombies? By the end we have hundreds and Leon with his stupid one-liners starts shooting down road signs with a pistol. And I guess dogs can blow up cars when they run into it. At the end of the day Leon served no purpose for the movie and could have been cut completely. They mention they need him due to his past run in with Los Illuminatos and the Los Plagas virus, but that doesn’t go anywhere.  The movie starts namedropping events from Resident Evil 4, which hardly ever happens in the series let alone the movies. If you are going to attempt to make your film seem like it’s part of a grander picture……do it!

There is also some Man of Steel level of destruction in this thing as well which gave me a chuckle.  So what do you want to be? The tense thriller advertised, or a stereotypical anime film. I love anime, but is it so wrong to ask for a little more out of the movie?

In the end Resident Evil: Vendetta is a mess of a movie. With clunky horrible writing (look out for the Breaking Bad mention) some stiff animation and a plot that has been done countless times.  I don’t know what most people are seeing out of this. Even my friend, the biggest Resident Evil fan I know came to the screening and he was left disappointed.  Watch it if you’re into the heavy action, but this is a horrible movie that fell prey to a trailer that didn’t represent the final product.  I would have preferred if that amazing opening sequence was just a small short film which would have acted as a prequel for either the 8^th main title game, or some sort of spinoff title that took place during VII.  The movie even have the audacity of throwing in sequel bate right before the credits rolled. You know that they won’t fall through with that. It wouldn’t be the first loose end in this series.

I give Resident Evil: Vendetta a 3/10. 

It’s a good thing the first 9 minutes of the movie were recently posted on Youtube. If you have an inkling of interest the film just watch that instead. It works wonders as a standalone piece. 

Just for fun, here is the trailer that I originally saw, so maybe you can understand what I was expecting, and what we eventually got.