Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (2021)

 

In the 1980s, Claire Redfield and her older brother Chris are children living at the Raccoon City Orphanage. Claire befriends Lisa Trevor, a disfigured girl who has been experimented on by Dr. William Birkin, an employee for the Umbrella Corporation.  Birkin oversees the orphanage and takes children for his own experimental research. Claire escapes from Birkin when she is selected to participate in one such experiment. 

In 1998, Claire returns to Raccoon City in search of Chris, whom she wants to warn about Umbrella's experiments.  But Chris, now a member of the Raccoon City Police's "STARS" team (basically, think SWAT) isn't home.  He's at a diner with his colleagues; one of whom, rookie Leon S Kennedy, notices that the diner's owner has blood coming out of her eyes.

Yep, Claire's made her return to Raccoon City at exactly the wrong time, with her warnings about Umbrella Corporation experiments coming too late to prevent the apocalyptic mayhem of zombies, monsters and evil conspiracies that is about to lay ruin to the whole place.  Claire and Chris and Chris's STARS team buddies all soon find themselves in a desperate battle for survival.

Welcome to Raccoon City represents a reboot of the Resident Evil franchise at the cinema, jettisoning the increasingly muddled chronology of the six Milla Jovovich films in favour of ... well, an entirely new muddle, to be honest.

I've never played a Resident Evil game but a little reading online informs me that this movie essentially structures a composite plot from the first two games. This was a mistake that leads directly to the film's core problem: there is too much going on and not enough happening, both at the same. 

A significant contributor to this issue is that the cast is too big.  The script tries to wedge in too many "iconic characters" from the game series, resulting in none of them getting to actually do anything very interesting because the movie simply doesn't have time for that.  It's too busy introducing them all, and giving them each their own plot-lines (and their own "big action scenes") to give them time to just be people we get to know and want to see succeed.  Which is a shame because there are several actors here whose other work I have enjoyed in other projects.  With more focused material, they could have made this a far more engaging watch.

The film makes other odd scripting choices, as well.  For instance, Leon S Kennedy, a recurring protagonist of the video game franchise, is presented here as an incompetent putz.  He's frequently incapable of performing even simple tasks, and on several occasions acts in the kind of ways that would normally mark a character as "destined to die".

I'm also not a fan of the score.  It is rather over the top at times.  There's also a recurring effort to "ironically" juxtapose popular songs with scenes that feel thematically opposite.  This can work really well when done sparingly, but the frequency of going to that well here came across to me as a case of "trying too hard".

Welcome to Raccoon City falls short of the first Milla Jovovich Resident Evil film in pretty much every regard. Technically I guess some of the CGI is better, but it's been 20 years, so it should be! Even then, the basic designs are not especially interesting. The final monster in particular is completely generic.

Ultimately, very forgettable stuff.