Review: RESIDENT EVIL: WELCOME TO RACCOON CITY Was a Fun Film That Had Some Issues

I was really excited to watch the new Resident Evil: Welcome To Raccoon City and while it wasn’t the worst movie I have seen, an admittedly low bar, it is one of the better video games movies I’ve seen. Overall, I did actually enjoy the movie, it was a fun zombie shoot 'em up, but it had some big problems for me. Obviously spoilers ahead, you have been warned.

Let’s start with the bad, first up, some characters were not written in a way I personally agree with. Leon, for example, was extremely incompetent. Now granted, he is a rookie cop, but they made him laughably bad at his job with no explanation. He even puts forth the question, “I’ll bet you’re wondering what a guy like me is doing being a cop?” and then answers it with, “Me too.” And that’s it, we learn that he was a screw up in training and that his dad is the only reason he has a job, but no real character motivation is given. Leon, as we know from the games, despite being a rookie cop is still competent at his job, or at the very least seems like he wants to be a cop and help people. The actor himself did a good job with the direction he was given, I just don’t think it was a great direction. 

Wesker was also really strange, he was portrayed as just kind of a big dumb idiot. Like, literally his whole motivation given for stealing Umbrella intel is money, no mention of having worked with them and no previous experimentation on him. And I’ll admit, it’s kind of cool to imagine this as an origin story for him, but he seems so much more conniving than this movie portrayed. There is a mid credits scene where we see him get his iconic black sunglasses, but he is still so confused about what is happening to him. He just… he didn’t have the right personality at all.

Claire was just adjacent to being really spot on and I think the problem stems from changing her backstory. In order to consolidate things, they made her and Chris from Raccoon City and having been raised in the orphanage. She runs away when she realizes that Dr. Birkin has nefarious plans for her and Chris never hears from her again until the start of the movie. This has made her closed off and not very warm towards people with others seeing her as a conspiracy theorist. They made her as smart and clever as she is in the games, but in the games Claire is someone very approachable and warm, not cold and brooding. There’s a reason that Sherry and Leon immediately trust her in the games, I don’t think this iteration of her comes across that way. All that being said, she is definitely a badass with a shotgun, it’s just a shame we don’t get to see her wield her classic grenade launcher

Next up is Chief Irons. I love discovering in the games how he was in on the whole thing and essentially was instrumental in the outbreak that occurs in Raccoon City. In the movie though, he is left completely in the dark and while a jerk, is not a villain. I’ll give them that they were cramming a lot of story into this movie and so didn’t have time to devote to setting up his betrayal and comeuppance. But still, seeing him not play the role of an active villain was very strange.

The last offending character was Annette Birkin. In the game she is pretty amazing, a scientist just like her husband and eventually willing to do whatever it takes to save her daughter and put a stop to the G virus. In the movie, I don’t think she was even a scientist. She seemed surprised and horrified to see what kind of experiments William had been doing. Then she dies in the fight over the vials of G virus.

I would say they portrayed Ada Wong poorly, but she only appears in a mid credits scene. I really missed having her mysteriously saunter around like she was always in complete control of every situation. If they get to make another movie, I hope they decide to actually include her in it.

The rest of the characters were spot on I thought. Chris looked and acted the part as did Jill. William Birkin was just as creepy and sadistic as you might imagine someone who invented the G virus would have to be. Definitely the kind of guy that while fleeing for his life would bring his wife and daughter to his lab with a live and flayed open zombie strapped to a table, definitely not going to traumatize anyone doing that. I also thought Lisa Trevor was actually pretty well done and was definitely sufficiently creepy. 

My next issue was the set. I love that they made things look just like they do in the games. However, some scenes, like the entry hall of the mansion, were CGI to look like the location. It really bothers me that they didn’t build set pieces to replicate the game, but I guess the budget could only go so far.

Here’s my biggest problem with the movie, it didn’t have enough build up and pay off for the ending. Every time some tension would get going in a scene, it would just sort of fizzle out. For example, most scenes that start with zombies ends with all the zombies dead or neutralized. There’s just a lack of ongoing threat other than the count down to the destruction of the city we know is imminent. What the movie really needed was to start with the creation of G or to have a Mr. X stalking the characters, just something that presents a danger that follows the characters throughout the movie. Then, when the big bad is finally defeated, it feels like it means something. William doesn’t become the G monster until the final act of the film, there are a grand total of two confrontations with him and each are resolved within about 5 minutes. It doesn’t feel earned or satisfying when Chris and then Leon take him down. Given the fact that they turned William into a true villain in Claire’s life, having Chris stop Claire from killing him just to do it himself just felt cheap. While it turns out that William essentially betrayed Chris, without enough lead up and actual stakes for Chris, it just didn’t feel like an emotionally satisfying moment while it would have if it had been Claire that finished him off. 

Here’s how I would have done things. It’s fine to have Chris and Claire be from the orphanage, but the opening scene should have been William injecting himself with G with only mentions of Claire and Chris’ childhood. Then, we should cut to Claire on her motorcycle on her way to Chris’ house, only to find the zombie infested gas station and her fateful run in with Leon. We can cut back and forth between the mansion and the police station with each team of people discovering different clues. It would have worked better to have Chris find Birkin’s work and realize from that that Claire was meant to be a test subject, then the confrontation about that would have meant a lot more as Chris has come to realize that Birkin used him for his own twisted schemes. I also would have had Wesker leave his team in more dire circumstances to make that betrayal sting more. Sherry should have definitely been found by Claire and actually play some sort of role besides being horribly traumatized by seeing her parents murdered in front of her. I would then have one party being pursued by G while the other has Mr. X to contend with. That should culminate with G taking out Mr. X in the underground lab, then G having to be blasted with a rocket launcher to be defeated as our heroes ride the train to freedom. If I’m being honest though, there is enough story between these two games that each one could have been its own movie and that alone would have solved most narrative and pacing issues. But I get it, you never know if you’re going to get that sequel so sometimes it’s safer to try and cram as much into one movie as you can.

But this movie isn’t all bad, I know I’ve painted a pretty bleak picture, but like I said at the beginning, I did actually enjoy watching the movie overall. I thought the casting was well done, especially for Chris and Jill. The costuming was also perfect and the zombie makeup was pretty well done. There are some fun nods to Resident Evil lore like including Lisa Trevor and having a scene of the Ashford twins that we see in Code Veronica and having members of Umbrella blocking off the roads out of Raccoon City. It had plenty of jump scares throughout and a moment where Chris is fighting off a horde of zombies in pitch black that shows exactly how the games feel when you accidentally wander into an area you should not have. Just wild firing and attacking and praying you get out of your predicament. 

The last thing I really liked was showing how the zombies were made. It wasn’t just one got loose and started biting and then everyone else turned. You got to learn how the water supply was toxic and how this change people into zombies gradually. They made it so Umbrella had all but abandoned Raccoon City, so anyone left was either part of their skeleton crew or people too poor to leave. It’s a little heavy handed with that bit of commentary, but an interesting point to make regardless. We do learn that those Umbrella didn’t want to get infected, stayed healthy. Hence why the cops and the Birkins aren’t turning.

Like I said, I really did enjoy this movie, I don’t regret spending the money to go see it in theaters. I may even end up buying it when it comes out on blu ray. But if you are a stickler for keeping all details exactly the same, you will hate it, they changed enough to be very annoying for you. If you’re ok with them shaking things up in order for these two games to read as one narrative then give it a chance. I rank it at a solid 6/10.