E-Mail This Article to a Friend Apocalypse no Resident Evil misses the mark, and then some BY MITCH KRPATA
	Resident Evil: Apocalypse Directed by Alexander Witt. Written by Paul W.S. Anderson. With Milla Jovovich, Sienna Guillory, Oded Fehr, Mike Epps, and Jared Harris. 94 minutes. A Screen Gems release. At the Boston Common and the Fenway and in the suburbs.

The first Resident Evil was the best cinematic adaptation of a video game I've seen, if only because it was not totally charmless. Both the hot zombie action and Milla Jovovich's washcloth-sized miniskirt appealed to my inner adolescent. For the first time in my life, I was not angry to have dropped 10 bucks on a video-game movie. Leave it to the folks at the ironically-named Screen Gems to ruin a nearly good thing by releasing this abysmal sequel.

The action picks up exactly where it left off in the first film. Alice, portrayed once again by the fetching Jovovich, has escaped the Hive of the Umbrella Corporation only to find the dreaded T-virus has spread throughout surrounding Raccoon City. This leads to the eponymous zombie apocalypse, with hordes of undead stalking the city streets and feasting upon survivors – although to put it that way sounds like the movie handles the scenario competently. The same ground was already covered to much greater effect in this year's Dawn of the Dead remake, which throws into sharp relief how ham-handed Resident Evil: Apocalypse really is. Rather than provide a clear sense of the overwhelming zombie threat, director Alexander "Surprise! It's my first movie!" Witt instead opts for quick cuts of incomprehensible motion. As a result, the zombies never intimidate, and serve instead as nothing more than target practice.

The best zombie movies are really about something. George A. Romero has made a career of critiquing America's social inequalities vis à vis the walking dead; 28 Days Later was a powerful statement about human isolation and the need for connection; even Dan O'Bannon's classic horror-comedy The Return of the Living Dead was largely about deflating the genre's conventions. Resident Evil: Apocalypse, on the other hand, is about loud noises and things blowing up real good. It's like Witt didn't even consider suspense or dread as viable mood options, instead choosing histrionics at every turn.

Consider: the Umbrella Corporation is established as evil when it opens fire on a mob of desperate refugees. Tough-as-nails but good-hearted special forces agent Carlos Olivera (Oded Fehr) is established as heroic when, five minutes into the movie, he fast ropes out of a helicopter – against orders, mind you – while firing two pistols at a gang of zombies atop a roof. And Alice makes her grand entrance by crashing a motorcycle through a church window 30 feet above the ground. Harry Lime standing in the shadow of a doorway this ain't.

None of that is nearly as ridiculous as the film's central antagonist, dubbed the Nemesis. You may remember the Nemesis from the third installment of the game series (and if you don't, at least the character design is exactly the same). He's an eight-foot-tall, genetically-engineered superzombie, but this is the sort of movie where it's not merely enough to have such a monstrosity prowling the streets. No, in Resident Evil: Apocalypse, the Nemesis wields a rocket launcher and a mini-gun.

About the best you can say for this movie is that it features hot chicks with guns, but even that's a disappointment considering the director can't keep them onscreen for more than a second and a half without cutting away to something else. The dialogue is brusque and almost as staccato as the editing, as characters speak in two-word bursts: "Let's go!" "You okay?" "Bite this!" I'm not asking for Shakespeare here, but one line of genuine dialogue might have gone a long way. It says something that the most engaging character in the picture is the wacky black guy whose job is to look confused and say, "Daaamn!" a lot.

In the annals of films based on video games, this isn't the worst – that honor goes to House of the Dead – but I'd put it on par with Street Fighter (see sidebar). There's little here for fans of the game, especially because the storytelling in the games is at least competent. Since Resident Evil first appeared on the Playstation back in 1996, the series has been about establishing mood and suspense, threatening unspeakable horrors around every corner. The movie, by contrast, is all muzzle flashes and exploding helicopters. The filmmakers deserve a bonus point for some impressive FX work on the Nemesis, but that's hardly enough to make up for a screenplay more brain-dead than the ghouls lurching about Raccoon City.