Movie Review: Resident Evil: Degeneration

Thanks, but I much rather play the games

The new remake for Resident Evil 3 has come out. I myself am a big fan of the series, and so decided that this week I will be looking at one of the Resident Evil movies. Not the live action ones however, I have too much of a dislike for those films. Instead we will be looking at the first of the animated movie trilogy. Released in 2008 Resident Evil: Degeneration takes place seven years after the events of the first, second, and third game, this is because the first 3 games take place in the same time. The main characters from the second game, Leon, and Claire are forced into a new nightmare after barely escaping Raccoon City seven years ago. 

Our movie begins with news clips because news clips at the beginning of a zombie movie are so very spooky. It also provides context to the movie's plot as well as recaps the final moments of the original trilogy, which is just Raccoon City being exploded by a small nuke. We learn that the company behind the zombie virus, Umbrella Corporation goes bankrupt, and is bought by WilPharma. Despite everyone's protests to close down the company to prevent another outbreak, they don't listen of course. We skip to the present (2005), and we are introduced to Claire Redfield, the second main character from Resident Evil 2. I really don't know what she's doing, but she's at the airport to meet up with this kid who is related to someone who works at the same anti-bio-terror organization as Claire. There really isn't any explanation to this, except they needed to come up with some bullshit excuse to have her at this airport. Like after the first 20 minutes we don't see this kid ever again except at the end of the movie. Anyway, the two spot the politician guy, and watch as a news reporter, and a protester dressed up like a zombie harass him. Claire steps in, and stops the protester. Moments later though, a real zombie shows up, and kills the police officer there. A whole panic then erupts in the airport as suddenly there are tons of zombies everywhere. As messed up as it may sound, I love scenes like this, I like to refer to these scenes as "Day 1 Panic" when people left, and right are just being chomped on by zombies, and it's just absolute chaos. Outside the airport, a couple of military people are being sent to go save the politician guy, along with the help of Leon S. Kennedy, main character of RE 2, 4, and a smaller role in 6. By the way, chronologically this takes place after Resident Evil 4, which means that at this point in time Leon had not only survived the Raccoon City outbreak, but he has also rescued the President's Daughter from a creepy cult located in rural Spain; this guy has one hell of a resume. The trio go into the airport, and meet up with Claire's group which consists of a couple of useless side characters, the useless kid, and politician guy. Surprisingly they all make it out okay, except for the military guy named Greg, he died, but I don't care because he was a asshole. Sacrificing yourself doesn't automatically make you not a asshole. 

To be honest the movie really comes to a stop after the group leaves the airport, and doesn't pick up again until towards the end. Just like Doom Annihilation, how the fuck, do you make a Resident Evil movie boring? To be completely honest, I really don't remember what happened in this movie, there were zombies, then a bunch of talking, then a big monster showed up. They didn't even blow it up in true Resident Evil fashion, instead it fell to it's death, BOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRING! Unlike the newer Doom movie though, this movie got 2 sequels. I almost forgot to mention, the cg really hasn't aged well. I've seen video game cut scenes from the PlayStation 2 era that look nicer. Really I only recommend that you watch this if you're a die-hard Resident Evil fan, otherwise just avoid it like the zombie plague. This glorified video game cut scene gets a 1 out of 5 Paws up.