Just shoot them in the head!

★ 1/2 out of ★★★★

Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (2021)

Runtime: 107 minutes

MPAA: Rated R for strong violence and gore, and language throughout.

The title of the movie I'm reviewing suggests why I've taken so long to watch this. If you can recall, in an earlier review I wrote about "Resident Evil: The Final Chapter", I wrote these following things:

"This movie is an utterly meaningless waste of time, and the only way for the director, Paul W.S. Anderson, to tell us that he and his wife are cool and no one else."

"I haven't seen the remake yet, but let's hope this is the last time we'll ever see something this lazily contrived."

After finally getting myself to watch the reboot from writer/director Johannes Roberts, I can say that thankfully the editing and camerawork are not as abhorrent as the previous installment, and much more steady. While I can say that Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City has an adequate blend of story to action, the story itself isn't that interesting.

I'll keep the spoilers light. The year is 1998. Claire Redfield (Kaya Scodelario) wakes up from a dream, in which she experiences her childhood trauma in the Raccoon City Orphanage. She's here to re-visit Raccoon City, which is pretty much desolate and undeveloped, ever since the Umbrella Corporation left the town after a mishap. Her truck driver hits a lady, who mysteriously rises as the undead, infecting the dog and later, the driver.

Meanwhile, in Raccoon City, we are introduced to some police officers, Chris Redfield (Robbie Amell), Jill Valentine (Hannah John-Kamen), Albert Wesker (Tom Hooper), Leon Kennedy (Avan Jogia), and Chief Irons (Donal Logue). Throw in Claire's friend from the orphanage Lisa Trevor (Marina Mazepa) and William Birkin (Neal McDonough), who appears in increasingly confusing flashbacks later in this movie. The four officers I mentioned at the top of this paragraph are sent to find their missing colleagues, and arrive at the Spencer Mansion.

Claire is convinced that some people in this city are ill because of the poisoned water from the Umbrella Corporation. She's indeed right, as zombie-like creatures emerge as the undead, with one shouting, "Itchy, tasty, ITCHY, TASTY". As more of the city is infected, the groups discover that Raccoon City would be blown up by 6:00 a.m. later in the morning, leaving them with less than 6 hours to discover what the fuss is all about and to escape the place as soon as possible.

One could only imagine the dread that this reboot could possibly bring, but luckily and sadly at the same time, a general feeling of mediocrity surrounds the entire movie. Sure, it is faithful to the well-received video games, and features character names that would please most of its indebted fans, but at the same time, the story itself achieves a remarkable feat of being boring to being very illogical and confusing.

Similar to Bullet Train, the sufficiently entertaining summer movie, Welcome to Raccoon City features a few subplots, before interconnecting all of them together. One praise I can give is that it is chronologically told with cinematography that makes it mostly clear about who's doing what, along with slightly better editing than Bullet Train, in the sense that the subplot goes on for a little longer and doesn't jarringly cut as often.

However, the story itself isn't really interesting to begin with when the pace initially is too relaxed with characters wasting most of the plot time walking around hallways and stairs. The jump-scares, which are abundantly scattered through the movie, are very easy to predict, reducing the tension every silent moment is building up to. They're also hardly impactful, thanks to poor character building.

All conversations here are as if the movie assumes you already know the characters all too well and mostly refuses to build them in an interesting or compelling way. Even when the script tries to do so, scenes involving dream-like sequences blurring reality and humans all the more confuses the viewer, instead of establishing the character. As a result, all the actors don't get utilised properly in a way that makes us care.

With this failed attempt, Welcome to Raccoon City then jumps to the action and starts gaining some momentum towards the final act. While it showcases us the impressive visual effects on the zombies and genetically modified monsters, and while the action gets more intense and thrilling, a weird climax once again disappoints, with William Birkin appearing again for some reason, a scene in which I thought was once again another manipulation of two different time events. Unfortunately, an unexplained showcase of characters from different time eras just merge together in a way that's frustratingly incomprehensible.

Welcome to Raccoon City also features a final showcase of the gigantic monster interrupting the train, one similar to the original movie "Resident Evil". It ends on a rather anti-climatic note, though, and the movie ends too abruptly that you'll walk out bewildered, wondering what to understand and why to even bother watching it.

A sort-of mid-credits scene involves Wesker, who is brought back from the dead, along with another character introduction. I smell a franchise coming soon, but I do not wish for another sequel anytime from now.