The sequel to Resident Evil starts out precisely where the first left off. Alice has made it out of the facility and finds that the zombie virus has already destroyed the city. In this episode, she joins some people who are trying to keep alive, and helps them beat the crap out of all the zombie monster’s they encounter.

Even more so than the first movie, Alice’s power enhancing abilities come out and provide us with Matrix-esqu fight scenes against the zombies. In addition to the traditional zombies, we also meet a number of virus-enhanced creatures that have resulted from the company’s experiments. The most notable includes a mega monster that destroys everything in its path until it meets Alice.

A few major plot holes, just for fun. First, the mega monster is most valuable for its ability at precision aiming with a gun, but in the battle with Alice, which is set up by the company to see which is stronger, it is allowed no firearm, and its mobile skills are limited. There really is no point to it all beyond allowing for a fight scene between the two in which it’s possible that Alice could win.

One other: it’s a major issue throughout the film that a reporter is filming all of the events on a camcorder and it becomes very important that the group – and footage – survive, because, if not, the company that caused this problem is going to drop a nuke on the city to cover up the event and call it a malfunction with nearby nuclear reactor. Doesn’t make sense. There are thousands of survivors who had first hand experience with the zombies and will be able to testify as to what happened, not to mention all the other ways to go about verifying what actually happened via satellite, etc. It’s not a big deal that an action sci-fi movie has this kind of plot hole, most such movies do. But in this case, this idea is provides the underlying rational for everything that happens in the last half hour of the movie. Not necessary.

All in all, Apocalypse is indeed more than its predecessor. More elaborate fights, more elaborate sets, and more elaborate plot points but never a significantly more interesting final product.

 
 
 

Year:

MPAA Rating: Running Time: Date Written:  
2004 R 1:34 12/04  
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