V.G. Movies #34: Resident Evil: Degeneration.

[Welcome back to the Evolution of Video Game Movies series. Every week, I will be moving forward through time, starting with the earliest and ending with the most recent of video game movies. I will be detailing the histories of the games and how the films came about, and both my and fan reaction to the adaptations. Practically all of my background information is either common knowledge or from Wikipedia. So without further ado, let's move on to the next film on the list.]

THE HISTORY

Despite the existence of the live-action films, Capcom--the game company who makes the series--decided to make their own film version. But instead of tying it in to the live-action film series, they naturally put it within the continuity of the games. The film takes place between Resident Evil 4 and 5.

THE FILM

This is going to be short, mainly because I'm mostly recycling from a 3-year-old short review. I didn't want to watch this again. The basic plot of this is that Claire Redfield is at an airport to meet a family she was there to help when there's a zombie outbreak. They end up calling for help, and a special team comes to their aid, including member Leon S. Kennedy. And, of course, they discover a much bigger conspiracy while they're there.

The CGI animation was terrible and distracting (I’ve really seen better CGI in video games), especially Claire’s face. The voice acting was awful. The dubbing itself was way off the mark (again, distracting). The dialogue was overly melodramatic and cheesy. For being one of the fan-favorite characters, Leon has the personality of cardboard (or Hayden Christensen… not much of a difference). The Tyrant looked like bad Claymation. For a zombie/monster movie, there was very little blood. Hell, TV’s CSI has more blood. While it did share the atmosphere of the games, even the action was mostly boring (with a couple exceptions). The whole movie as a whole was rather boring. And if you’re not a hardcore fan of the games, you’d probably get completely lost by the story. Finally, where the hell did that woman’s boobs come from at the end? All of a sudden, she has a D-Cup. It was so random. Anyway, it was just awful/terrible/awfully terrible/terribly awful all around. There were only a couple scenes that made it remotely interesting or entertaining, and those didn’t last very long.


The Zed Word

(P.S. And I'm being generous with that (rather ironic) rating.)