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A Review of “Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (2021)”

 

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I sort of enjoyed the Resident Evil live-action movies from Paul W.S. Anderson but admit that it went off the rails completely. It was an insanely stupid movie franchise and did not understand its source material at all. Deep down, I have been wanting a Resident Evil movie that was more faithful to the video games. Now it has finally happened with Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City. So does this movie do justice to the games or is it another one to add to the garbage?

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The most obvious praise I can give after watching this is the set design. Clearly whoever designed the sets for this film had played the games. The Spencer Mansion, the R.P.D station and Raccoon City look exactly like they were pulled from the game. Additionally, there is a great scene in the mansion where Chris is getting attacked by a horde of zombies. It was the tensest moment in the film as Chris was struggling to survive. It was also quite stylistic as Chris, and the audience, the only light source was the gun muzzle and it looked cool.

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Unfortunately, this is where the praise ends. For some stupid reason, the director decided to mash together both the stories of Resident Evil 1 and 2 together. The movie has a short runtime yet the director somehow thought it would be great to do 2 full-length games stories in one. This is very noticeable in the second half where the pacing is atrociously fast in wrapping up everything. Character development is rushed, the story is rushed and even the action felt rushed. The final fight, aka the boss battle, ends in like 2 minutes with little fanfare. It was so anti-climatic that I thought the boss would be revealed to not be dead but it actually was.

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What annoys me the most is how this film still managed to be unfaithful to the source material. Claire and Chris have a damaged relationship, Jill is very trigger-happy, Wesker is a whiny loser and Leon is an absolute moron. None of the characters in the film even act like their game counterparts which are just insulting. They also remove Barry, Rebecca and Ada involvement in the plot which sucks. Barry’s blackmail plot was an interesting element in RE1 and Ada’s relationship with Leon was a highlight of the franchise. Some iconic enemies are not even in the film such as the Tyrant or Mr X which is just another gut punch. They also completely removed the Claire and Sherry relationship which is lame considering that Sherry is still in the film. They do bring Lisa Trevor but they change her completely from the games just to be a plot convenience.

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The actors’ performance also feels incredibly phoned in and lacking in any depth. Wesker and Leon are also completely miscast as they do not even remotely look or feel like the characters from the game. It baffles me that the director went with Tom Hopper as Wesker and Avan Jogia as Leon. It clearly shows a lack of understanding of the games from the director. The writing is also atrociously bad. None of the characters ever speak like normal human beings and none of the dialogue makes them likeable either.

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Overall, what a complete let-down and an insult to Resident Evil fans. The writer had no understanding of the games and the director is an idiot for allowing this monstrosity. This movie actually ended up making me appreciate the Paul W.S. Anderson movies more. It is such a shame as Resident Evil 1 would have worked on its own as a movie. There was no need to shove 2 games into 1 movie. I don’t understand any of the choices made by the director but I hope he never touches another franchise again. It seems we have another live-action Resident Evil movie to add to the garbage. I don’t know if we will get another live-action Resident Evil movie because of how bad this one is. However, if we do get one, hopefully, the writer and director are actually going to be faithful instead of this liar, Johannes Roberts…


 

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