Resident Evil-Apocalypse (Blu-ray) (2004)

"...fast, funny, smart and highly satisfying in terms of visceral impact.  Dave Kehr, The New York Times
"...stylized, blood-spattered fight scenes that come at a breakneck pace and should please the target audience...  Robert Dominguez, New York Daily News

Editor's Note The lovely Milla Jovovitch is back with a vengeance as amnesiac, genetically-altered zombie ass-kicker, Alice, in this sequel to the 2002 hit film, which is based on the video game. This time around the sinister Umbrella Corporation sends a team of investigators into their destroyed underground lab (the ground-zero of carnage in the previous film) and unwittingly unleash the still-staggering zombies and monsters out into the population of Raccoon City. Soon Umbrella has evacuated all of their own key employees and has shut everyone else inside to be devoured. A mastermind chemist's daughter gets left behind in the confusion, and she is the one ticket out for Alice and a handful of dwindling survivors, including the equally hot, skimpily dressed, and almost-as-tough lady cop, Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory). There's some nifty motorcycle riding, plenty of bullets and splattering blood, and even a new monster--the hulking, heavily-armored, seriously ugly Nemesis. Comic actor Mike Epps is great as a pimped-out hustler who handles the whole dead-coming-back-to-life thing with cool nonchalance. In some ways, this nonstop creep show is even an improvement over the original, with a pervasive mood of nihilistic corporate dehumanization adding extra concern about the future of civilization to the mix of shooting, dying, punching, and munching.

	Milla Jovovich
	Oded Fehr
	Sienna Guillory
	Thomas Kretschmann
	Alexander Witt - Director
	Christian Sebaldt - Cinematographer
	Derek Rogers - Cinematographer
	Eddie Hamilton - Editor
	Jeff Danna - Original Music By
	Jeremy Bolt - Producer
	Nigel Churcher - Art Director
	Paul D. Austerberry - Production Designer
	Paul W.S. Anderson - Writer
	Robert Kulzer - Executive Producer

New York Times
"Mr. Anderson's screenplay provides a steady series of inventive action situations....It is, of course, all in the timing, and Mr. Witt's is extremely good. He knows just when to lay in a lull and just when to puncture it with a shock effect..." 09/10/2004 p.E16

Los Angeles Times
"Witt injects the film with plenty of razzle-dazzle on the visual side..." 09/10/2004 p.E4

Sight and Sound
"[The film] does deliver solid action/horror/superheroic scenes: the Hitchcock-on-steroids mutant crow attack is outstanding..." 11/01/2007 p.71

Film Threat 7 of 10
Critically speaking, movies based on video games always start on a disadvantageous position. Let's face it: when your best films for comparison are "Super Mario Bros.," "Street Fighter," and "Wing Commander," expectations are understandably lowered. Hell, even the first "Resident Evil" was a mixed bag. It had its moments, but most of them came after a solid 45 minutes of snooze, and what interesting scenes there were seemed inserted simply for the purpose of looking cool (the decapitating laser grid), rather than making any kind of narrative sense. In spite (or perhaps because) of this, the original enjoyed moderate box office success, but nobody figured "Resident Evil: Apocalypse" - second in what appears to be an ongoing series based on Capcom's popular zombie horror games - would break new cinematic ground. And it doesn't. "Apocalypse" is dumb, loud, and ludicrous in the extreme, and I actually enjoyed it. - Pete Vonder Haar