In The Lost Lands

Go Ask Alys

In The Lost Lands
Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson
Germany/Canada/USA 2025
Constantin Film
UK Cinema release print

Warning: Some spoilers.

This film is better than I thought it would be. I quite like director Paul W. S. Anderson’s movies but I find him a bit hit and miss. He seems to produce, write and direct a lot of films starring his wife Milla Jovovich and here she stars as the main character, Gray Alys, in his adaptation of George R. R. Martin’s short story In The Lost Lands. I’m used to some of the invention found in Martin’s Wild Cards mosaic novels and you can find my reviews of some of the more recent tomes in that series in my book section of the index page of this blog. I haven’t read this one though so, I can’t tell how good of an adaptation it is. I would assume though, since it’s a short story, that it is at the very least an expansion of the original material.

Gray Alys is a witch (a real one with real magical powers) who has lived for hundreds of years after the world as we know it has been wiped out. Yeah, that’s right, it’s a post apocalyptic spin on the heroic fantasy genre. In this future, everyone on the planet lives in one city, ruled jointly by a vindictive and evil religion (presumably Christian or Catholic or, probably a blend of both) plus the true Overlord and his Queen (played by Amara Okereke). And of course, the church wants all the power and are trying to seem subservient to the ‘royalty’ while looking for opportunities to seize the throne.

But the queen wants something, so she goes to Alys (who has already escaped being hung by the lead enforcer of the church, played by Arly Jover, at the start of the movie) to hire her to bring her the power to become a shape shifting werewolf. So Alys hires a hunter and guide, played by one of this generation’s undersung actors, David Bautista... and they go into the lost lands (where the ruined tower blocks and power plants of the former civilisation still stand) to kill a fierce werewolf who lives in the wilderness, so Alys can steal his power with her supernatural ways, to bestow upon the queen. And, of course, the church enforcer is hot on their heels, adding to their opponents along with a bunch of demons and so on.

But nothing is quite as it seems and, as Gray Alys warns every customer who she agrees to help, there are always consequences to the desires of those who seek her out. Which leads to a very nice narrative twist near the end of the film that I actually didn’t see coming.

And it’s a pretty well crafted movie. Lovers of both Italian post-apocalyptic movies of the 1980s and various heroic fantasy movies will more than likely find this one to be quite a nice entry into those sub-genres. Jovovich, Bautista and their supporting cast are all absolutely brilliant in this, with the enforcer being a character you will quickly learn to hate. So you’ll be rooting for them through the whole movie but, yeah, it has many twists and turns and all of Alys’ customers are somewhat surprised as to where their requests lead them. 

And, typically for a film from this husband and wife directing/acting team, it’s filled full of action and with the odd nice idea thrown in to keep the ‘road movie’ quest narrative lively and never dull. There are a few silly bits thrown in for good measure too. For instance, when the two leads are fighting for their lives in and on the top of an old, moving cable car, a few religious villains have jumped onto the car before it makes its trip... this doesn’t stop them somehow having to fight around twenty of said villains who seem to keep springing from the roof or sides of the car. I guess this is the modern equivalent of... ‘don’t count the shots in those old Westerns where they’re using six shooters’... just go with the vast numbers and have some fun.

My one big problem with it, which is completely conjecture but I suspect I’m right... is that you can tell the film has had its conclusion altered to fit ‘happy ending’ Hollywood expectations. The ending is grim and ugly... and then suddenly freezes frame and cuts away to a more agreeable resolution for the two main characters. Using, if I’m not mistaken, footage of them culled from material shot for earlier scenes in the film. Which is a shame because, it’s a rubbish ending which allows for a sequel but feels like it betrays the story somewhat.

Other than this slight crimp, though, I thought In The Lost Lands was a fine film in its genre with stand out performances, surprisingly competent and understandable editing (albeit the constant adding of villains where they couldn’t be in that cable car scene), a nice gimmick of visually counting down the number of days to the full moon (Alys’ self imposed deadline to coincide with the shape shifter’s rota) and a nice score by ex-Tangerine Dream member Paul Haslinger which, surprise surprise, hasn’t been given a proper CD release at time of writing. But the film is nicely done so maybe add this one to your list.

Monster Hunter

 

Gates Of Meow

Monster Hunter
2020 Directed by Paul W. S. Anderson
Germany/China/Canada/Japan/South Africa/USA
UK cinema release print.

Warning: Some spoilerage but, it’s not really that kind of movie.

So, once again, director Paul W. S. Anderson teams up with his wife, Milla Jovovich to make another movie adapted from a video game series. Now, I have slight issues with their Resident Evil series of films because... well, they were nearly all absolutely brilliant with the exception of two of them. The second one was kinda let down by some of the prosthetic ‘man in suit’ effects but the real disappointment was the sixth film in the series, Resident Evil - The Final Chapter... which totally failed to make any kind of sense and contradicted the running story of the films up until that point with absolutely no attempt to explain the complete lack of continuity, effectively negating everything we’d learned in the second movie.

So, yeah, I was always going to go see Monster Hunter, although, I hereby make the usual caveat that I haven’t played the game so really don’t know if it’s any good as an adaptation or not. Although the film has been freely available for a while in HD from ‘the usual web sites’ (and I believe that’s where at least one of my friends saw it), I decided to wait for half a year and see if it got any kind of cinema release in the UK. Since I’d seen the Resident Evil films at the cinema, I wanted to do it right with this one because, whether you like them or not, Anderson always tends to make huge spectacles of his movies and so I booked a local screening, even paying a little extra on top of my Cineworld card to see the film on a big IMAX screen.

The film itself... well, I firmly believe that with a few tweaks this could have been a really great movie but, I did have an issue with it and I think, all in all, it’s an okay and relatively entertaining movie and, at the very least, has the potential to be a long running franchise, if it gets the box office take to make that happen.

Okay, so the film is almost but not quite plotless. There are two worlds, one of fantasy style sand ships and big monsters and... also our world. After a brief prologue on the other world where the leader of a band of ‘yo hos’, played by Ron Perlman, gets in a skuffle with a big monster on his sand galleon and has to leave behind one of the monster hunters of the title to fend for himself, played by the ‘legend in his own lifetime’ Tony Jaa (who I though t had retired to become a buddhist monk or some such but, apparently not)... we join the main US protagonist of the movie, a ranger played by Milla Jovovich. She and her band of hard core military types are taking their heavily armoured transport to look for a scout team that have gone missing (in our world). Then, some archaic markers in the sand they pass by suddenly go all pyrotechnic and they are transported into the world of the prologue... and come face to face with various giant beasties.

It would be true to say there’s not much plot development after that. The film becomes one big action set piece after another and, within half an hour, Jovovich is the only one of both her team and the original team she was looking for, left alive... and only because Tony Jaa has tried to help out on occasion. When the two leads finally meet, after she manages to escape from a load of quite vicious giant spiders, everything gets a bit Hell In The Pacific meets Shelob for a while as the two, who don’t speak each other’s language, work through their issues with the tried and true movie clichés of violence and mistrust followed by, eventual, mutual respect.

And there’s also a double climax to the movie... one set in the other world and then one set in ours... both of which involve some large, ‘almost but not quite unkillable’ giant dragons and Ron Perlman, whose character can speak English due to a twist in what little of the plot there is, as he brings his team in to help out in our world after another dragon crosses over.

Okay...so the film is nice to look at, has some great actors, some not bad special effects and is quite pacey but, alas, that last thing is also the big problem with the film, for me at least. There’s no let up. The first half an hour is quite relentless, driven and harrowing, as Jovovich’s team all die big, monstery deaths but, it just carries on and on. There’s no real calm before the next storm... even the scenes where Jaa and Jovovich meet up for the first time are full of sequences where they are continuously brawling for way too long. This film, in my opinion, makes the one big mistake that a lot of modern action picture directors tend to make and that is... falling into the trap of giving the characters no real downtime before they face the next peril... thus giving no contrast within the tone of the scenes and, by the end of the film, it all seems just a little bit dull. Indeed, even the double climax seems like something of a let down because there’s no real build up to it... just conflict after conflict with the only really nice moments involving a cat... which I won’t spoil for you here but, make sure you stick around for an extra scene mid way through the end credits. I actually think that, in the case of this movie, it might have been more effective if the director had made it a little longer and put more pauses in the film to help liven up the action scenes. As it is... yeah, it feels like a ‘pretty good’ kind of movie rather than a truly great one, to be honest.

Even so, I think people who are into big monster movies will still find a lot to like in Monster Hunter and, like I said... the cat, man. We need to see more of the cat! I’d be quite happy if some more of these were made because, like I said, the director is a bit hit and miss and I’m sure he could make some decent follow ups which surpassed the original, if given half the chance. I might grab this one on blu ray once it goes into the sales and, I guess I’m still relatively happy that I waited to see it on the big screen. Hopefully there will be more to follow.

Hellboy (2019)

The Man Who Hell To Earth

Hellboy (2019)
2018 UK/USA
Directed by Neil Marshall
UK cinema release print.

You know, I thought a lot of the last two Hellboy movies, especially the second one so, frankly, the idea of doing a new, rebooted version of the character which didn’t involve the original dream team pairing of director Guillermo del Toro and actor Ron Perlman was pretty much anathema to me. I really wasn’t looking forward to this movie and even more so when I heard pretty much every critic weighing in with headlines saying it was one of the worst messes of a film out there. However, I thought I should witness the train wreck for myself and I had one slightly bright spark of a fact at my disposal which should have tipped me off that, maybe, this was worth a watch after all. That bright spark being director Neil Marshall, who made two of the best modern horror movies going... Dog Soldiers and The Descent.

I got lucky when I went and saw this because, honestly, this is an awesome film and I thoroughly enjoyed it... way more than I thought was possible. So I guess the bottom line from that is... don’t trust the professional critics, even if they all agree on something. This film is a great slice of exploitational horror which is not afraid to blend elements of epic, grandiose plotting with a true pulp/exploitation sensibility. In a way it felt a little like it had a kind of stylistic kinship with movies like Hansel And Gretel - Witch Hunters (reviewed by me here) and The Last Witch Hunter (reviewed here). Two movies which I think were less than enthusiastically received by audiences and which deserved more love.

As does this latest incarnation of Hellboy. I don’t think there were even ten people in the screening I went to and that’s a shame because it’s a solid and fun movie with some outstanding visual flourishes. There was even a jump scare moment which I didn’t see coming at one point.

Now, nobody can really fill the shoes of the mighty acting legend that is Ron Perlman in the role of Hellboy but David Harbour, who plays him here, actually does a really good job with the character and he manages to assuredly bypass the legacy of the role, giving us a nice interpretation of creator Mike Mignola’s comic book character. Both him and his ‘dad’, played by Ian McShane here (it was John Hurt in the last two movies), are totally brilliant and they are, pretty much, the only two regular characters carried over from the last two movies (which suits me fine as I never really got on with the Abe Sapien creature, although he is teased near the end). Instead with have a totally new support team who are working together for the first time here, played by Daniel Dae Kim and the truly beautiful Sasha Lane. They are also pretty awesome and, to round it off as the icing on the cake, we have Milla Jovovich playing the lead villain of the movie. And she does some pretty good work here too.

Now this movie is a complete reboot and is not associated with the del Toro movies. Which is a shame in a way because there was a definite direction for a third part which the director of that last one was clearly heading for. The question posed in Hellboy - The Golden Army was... just how was the title character going to bring about the apocalypse and, well, its a shame that never got resolved by del Toro. Except, it kinda does get resolved, somewhat, because I suspect, having not read the original comics, that this film is based, at least partially, on the same source material that would have gone into that third part that was never made. So, yeah, some of the questions posed by that last movie are, I think, answered here.

And the movie had me right from the start. Opening with a flashback and narrative provided by Mr. McShane which takes us back into Arthurian legend and upping the gore factor right from the outset, the film pulled me in very quickly. This is soon followed by a scene where Hellboy has to fight a masked luchador wrestler with vampire powers and, frankly, by this time I was already hooked on this movie, it has to be said. The action sequences are well put together, solid and, frankly, surrealistic, giant demons completely trashing London in the last reel really put a smile on my face. This is, as I said before, an epic piece of pulpy exploitation and it goes over the top in all the right places it needs to over the course of the story. And the special effects are handled really well too with my favourite being the ectoplasmic undead who are channeled physically from the mouth and into 3D representations via Sasha Lane’s truly epic character. I enjoyed her performance best, I think and her on-screen chemistry with David Harbour goes a long way towards selling this film and giving the emotional weight it requires at certain story beats.

Add into what is an already seductive mix, Benjamin Wallfisch’s score, which is a real corker and gives the movie a solid backbone. Can’t wait to hear this one as a stand alone listen when the CD is released in a few weeks.

And that’s really all I’ve got to say about Hellboy 2019 other than... some of the little reveals are a bit too obviously telegraphed but the frenetic pacing and post-modernistic tone more than make up for the lack of subtlety in the writing. This is a fun and entertaining movie and I would expect that, if you liked the last two Hellboy movies, you should have a good time with this one. And no one is more surprised than me that I would be delivering such a positive review of this movie but, there you have it. A little masterpiece of bloody excess and another winner, as far as I’m concerned, from director Neil Marshall.

Survivor

Boom Watch

Survivor
2015  UK/USA
Directed by James McTeigue
UK cinema release print.

Okay, so Survivor is a film I knew nothing about going in other than what I saw in a trailer at the cinema the week before. That much being that it had Pierce Brosnan and Mila Jovovich in it, two very competent actors, playing a deadly game of cat and mouse with the pre-requisite mix of explosions plus running, jumping and shooting that seems to be part and parcel of all modern cinema these days. Fine, no complaints, I like the two leads and so I figured I’d give it a go.

As I watched the movie, it slowly began to dawn on me that this was the same film that I’d heard Brosnan was making about a hit man which was originally going to be called The Watchmaker. Now let’s face it, The Watchmaker is a way better title than the assuredly bland Survivor and how many films are they going to release with this title in the history of the cinema anyway?

So, anyway, this is the story of an American security agent, Kate Abbott (played by Jovovich), who has been relocated to London’s American Embassy to handle security on passport control and, when she gets wind that something is afoot, including a corrupt element on the staff, she is targeted for assassination by someone who calls in Brosnan’s watchmaker character... a highly paid assassin who is also doing another job for the same boss with a tryout in London for a terrorist attack in New York, set for a slightly later date.

And, of course, since Kate has a narrow escape when several colleagues die in an attempt on her life, not to mention being caught with a smoking pistol on the corrupt official who has not been actually revealed to her bosses yet, she has to stay alive while being hunted by both her own people and Brosnan’s ruthless assassin... while finding out what it’s all about and averting the terrorist act Brosnan will try to get away with at the end of the film. Standard set up and a pretty standard action movie, to be fair, but with a nice level of performance from all of the cast, including veterans like Robert Forster and, um, Frances De La Tour (funny how she’s started popping up in everything again these days).

So it’s kind of like a Jason Bourne film but with maybe a bit less intelligence on the part of the main heroine... for some reason she’s been written to not be that much ahead of the game which, I guess, makes things easier for the scripting to keep getting her into hot water with the killer but makes her a slightly less credible security figure in some ways... not Jovovich’s fault though, who does an excellent job. As does Brosnan playing a basic riff on the “hard man” side of his old James Bond character, only with less charm and more ruthlessness than audiences might associate this actor with... although it’s always been something he’s brought to the table in his performances in these kinds of action roles, to be honest.

The direction is very ‘work a day’ with nothing too flashy and a variety of different styles of shooting scenes that bring to mind no immediate signature. Sometimes he’ll go with long swooping shots, other times he’ll go with static shots with various cuts and still other times he’ll switch to hand held camera when it makes sense to do that dramatically or as an echo of the pacing and mental state of the main characters being shown on screen. There’s some nice framing in certain scenes and less obvious, less aesthetically pleasing frame designs in others.

 For instance, the bulk of the action takes place in the heart of London, on streets I know fairly well, and there was a nice piece of framing where Milla Jovovich is walking through Chinatown and the director has taken the shot from a point of view where the vertical posts are all cluttered together and truncating the screen in a whole bunch of sections. This then transitions to a different character coming out of a flat where the fences on the right hand side of the screen echo the verticals thrown up by the previous shot. Then, the main part of where those verticals lead is again echoed as a single vertical splitter in the cut back to the previous character, by now at a different location.

So yeah, there’s some nice stuff going on in certain scenes but, for the most part, it’s a fairly straight, run of the mill action fest and... it’s no worse than a lot of the ones out lately and certainly has some good performances in it, as I said earlier. However, it seems to be set around the Christmas and New Year period and, what with the title change too, I’m guessing this film has had a somewhat delayed release... possibly due to a lack of confidence in it by the producers, I would guess. There would have been no need to worry though.. it holds its own pretty well and I think it would have been better if the studio would have gotten behind it a little more with the marketing, in all fairness. I wasn't aware of any real push on this and it was a surprise release for me.

One thing which they may be worried about is the baggage that Brosnan brings with him to the role. To be fair, both Brosnan and Jovovich have proven very capable of heading up their own franchises (Jovovich has the Resident Evil series) but I can see how the producers might be wary of having the former James Bond playing a villainous role. As it happens, Brosnan is absolutely fine playing against type but there was one moment, I have to admit, where I think his past role got in there to haunt him... although it’s absolutely not his fault, it was written that way. The thing is, Brosnan goes all the way through the film showing that he’s a) a ruthless killing machine who would end your life rather than leave a witness and b) that he’s not a superman and he does, in fact, fail to kill his prey many times throughout the movie... and it’s not for want of trying. Which is all very well and good except for one little scene involving a stairwell where, I have to say, Brosnan’s character pulls off a stunt which is much more worthy of his earlier, super spy roles and... while nice to watch... I think seems totally out of character for the role and I have to wonder if that particular sequence would have been tooled like that if it had been anyone other than Brosnan doing it. A slight mis-step there, I feel, but a forgivable one seeing as the rest of the film brings it back down to earth in terms of the action sequences fairly well.

Another good thing about this movie is the score by Ilan Eshkeri. He’s not a composer I’m that familiar with and I’m not the biggest fan of electronic, synthesiser scores either... which is what this one is. That being said, this is one of the more effective scores I’ve heard of that nature and it never seems inappropriate to the various on screen antics of the characters, helping to fuel some of the action scenes for sure... giving them a little extra as the baseline and percussion elements kick into overdrive. Such a pity this particular score doesn’t seem to have had a soundtrack release as I would definitely have liked to pick up a CD of this at some point. I’m beginning to come round to the electronic score as a viable alternative to orchestra a little more in later years, I have to say.

And that’s about all I’ve got to say about Survivor. There’s some really clunky dialogue in here, especially at the end of the movie, but the performances are strong, the action is well staged and the editing doesn’t get so confusing that you don’t know what’s going on... which is half the battle these days, it seems to me. Definitely should be a hit with those of you who like action spy thrillers and certainly not the worst work either Brosnan or Jovovich have done. By no means is it a terrible time at the cinema so, if you find yourself at a loose end anytime soon, this movie could be one to go on your “to watch” list, I reckon.

The Fourth Kind

Depending On The Fourth Kindness of Strangers

The Fourth Kind 2009 USA/UK

Directed by Olatunde Osunsanmi

Entertainment In Video Region 2

Okay, here’s the lowdown for all you spoiler junkies.

For starters, there’s nothing really I could possibly spoil, by the very nature of the subject matter of this movie, that the title hasn’t already given away. Seriously, if you don’t know what Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind are (even though I’ll recap it later on for “extra” clarification) then don’t read this review before you see the movie.

Secondly, and perhaps unfortunately, this is where people who don’t know me very well (or, you know, at all) get to realise what a fruit loop I really am about certain subjects which I have a passionate interest in. Whereas people who do know me will probably just tut at me and point.

Okay, so I took another look at this one the other night and I actually thought I’d reviewed this film when I first started up this blog but I couldn’t find it on here so I did a quick check of the dates and realised I’d actually seen it in cinemas waaay back in those halcyon days of... um... 2009. So I didn’t review it and so here I am... being probably one of the few people, I would imagine, who actually quite liked this movie.

Now then, if you don’t know already but you’re still here reading this, a close encounter of the fourth kind is the term for... after sighting (1), physical evidence (2) and contact (3)... alien abduction and other up close and personal altercations with an extra terrestrial species that go above and beyond the definition of contact. Now most people would probably laugh at the concept of alien abduction, or at least raise an eyebrow ironically in the general direction of the person bringing the topic up. Heck, most people would do the same if you just mention a UFO... but I have been deeply interested in UFOs since I was a kid and then in later life when, I remember, about 15 years ago I watched a movie adaptation of Whitley Strieber’s self proclaimed true experiences with alien abduction (called Communion). This movie scared me sufficiently to make me read the book and from then on I was hooked. I remembered reading a news report from years before that saying, something along the lines of, “dear old dodgy horror novelist turned fruit loop Whitley Strieber has spent a small fortune securing his home from other wordly intruders again” and this added a certain credibility to the account I was reading because, whether these things had happened to Mr. Strieber or not, it was quite apparent that he obviously believed there was something horrendous going on his life. So I read the book and... it was quite chilling.

But that wasn’t enough because I needed to find out why someone who may, or may not, have had these encounters could be so sincere... so I started reading a lot more books on the subjects (by credible people such as world-renowned psychologists, psychiatrists and government hired debunkers who couldn’t quite bring themselves to unequivocally debunk) and, to my absolute horror (and it really was my absolute horror), I began to realise that the overwhelming evidence (yes, recorded and found evidence which is just routinely ignored or sometimes even stolen) points squarely at the fact that there is something both highly unusual (if not extra terrestrial) and worthy of serious concern going on in the world.

After a few years (and one short story I wrote) later, I had to stop reading this stuff. Things were too damning and frustrating and, frankly, I was losing most nights of sleep because of the nature of this particular subject and its relationship with the “night terrors” phenomenon. I was going loopy and I was running scared ... well okay, for me it was perhaps modestly ambling scared! Either way... I started actively trying not to think about this stuff when I went to bed at night and hoped that would be an end to it.

Still, every now and then an itch needs to be scratched and when I saw the trailer for this movie... I knew I would be straight around my local cinema to see it when it hit the screens.

So okay. That’s why this kind of movie is something which is always going to grab my attention and finger pointing and laughter, while not welcome, would be generally preferred to the option that I be reminded that I, quite against my will or desire, genuinely believe in this stuff.

So what’s the movie like?

Well it’s a horror movie, of a sort, no two ways about it. It starts off with the lead actress talking to the camera as herself and explaining who she is portraying in this movie and that actual footage of the people involved in these events in real life will be intercut into the movie alongside the actors. This is great and gives a brilliant sense of truth to the terror as you go through the movie, which is both shot remarkably well and edited with a certain dynamism to various split screen shots which is so “right on” that you might not even notice how powerful the editing is until you get to a second viewing. Seriously, the added “footage” lends the movie an almost “Blair Witch/Paranormal Activity” sensibility and at the moment these kinds of movies are still very effective with the general public at large.

However, there’s a downside to this movie... two downsides in fact.

One is I’m pretty sure the degraded in quality “real footage” is actually not “real” footage at all, just shot with a different bunch of actors to give the movie a sense of authenticity. Secondly, there’s only so far you can take an alien abduction story before you get to a point where the audience’s suspension of belief isn’t stretched to breaking point. So some may feel this movie is a tad anti-climactic but... personally I didn’t have a problem with it.

Ok... so there’s two things right there that’s wrong with the movie. Not actually a true story as claimed on the tin and with a bit of a weak third act (although still pretty terrifying for the likes of me, when I’m this close to the subject matter). That being said, however, it’s got a heck of a lot going for it.

Standout performances by great actors such as Milla Jovovich, Elias Koteas and Will Patton are matched, if not blown out of the water, by the cast of unknowns playing the “real” (or pseudo-real) versions of the people. I’ve already mentioned how great the editing and photography are but the music score also serves its purpose fairly well and as for the research that went into the scripting...! All I can say is that if this specific event isn’t a true story... it damn well ought to be. The writers have managed to encapsulate and include many of the main common elements of modern “abduction lore” and presented it in a way that truly shows how terrifying the recollection of these experiences can be. And if you don’t know what I mean by common traits, let me ask you this... how does an “abductee” from Western civilisation and an “abductee” from a native tribe completely untouched by fellow man and free from any experience of any form of media or civilisation describe exactly the same events, sequences and antagonists as each other? This stuff gets kinda scary the more little Russian Dolls you open on the subject... and the filmmakers have really done a good job at weaving a dramatic tale out of these common threads and themes and turning them into a scary movie... even if it is a scary movie which was pretty poorly received at the box office.

So ultimately on this one, I don’t have an unbiased opinion. I would have to warn cynics of this kind of material to approach with caution... but I would recommend you do approach at some point if you’re into low budget, psychologically suggestive sci-fi horror movies. But, if you are an impressionable soul, it’s probably remiss of me if I don’t warn you that if you start reading into the subject and doing all the research like I did... you might not sleep so easy in the future.

A Touch of Resident Evil

Resident Evil Afterlife 3D 2010 US

Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson

Screening at UK cinemas now

Here be evil spoilers!

I’ve mostly kinda liked the Resident Evil movies... (see my review of the first three here) even though I’ve never really got on that well with the game. I remember trying to play one of the first two Resident Evil games periodically only to keep getting either eaten or “crow’d to death”. I never really got in to the idea that I had to outrun things or sneak around them because I’d run out of bullets. I just wanted to mow all the zombies down Quake-style in a powerful ballet of gory violence... not worry about where my next shot might be coming from.

The movies though, I’ve pretty much enjoyed and this fourth installment is no exception. Like the last two movies, the opening sequence doesn’t quite pick up where it left off and the pattern seems to be that these movies can sometimes take a little while to hit the synch points from the last movie. On this one we have a really beautiful sequence of a babe standing in the heavy rain in Japan while pedestrians walk around her. This movie has been released in 3D and for once this really works “with” the movie... instead of against it. This is what 3D was meant for... giant axes popping out the screen at you and blood splashes coming at you from the back of people’s heads. And this opening sequence is probably the best bit of 3D I’ve seen in a while because it is dark but brightly lit in the heavy rain so it gives you a bit of texture and a lot of the focus is on a pair of extremely sexy legs clad in fishnets (if my poor memory serves) as a woman stands in the rain. At first I thought the 3D rain effect was so good that it was falling out of the screen onto me, on discovery of a wet patch down my shirt. After a minute or so though I’d figured out it was just where I’d been drooling at this woman’s legs.

But, of course, from the start it’s obvious that this lady is a zombie and as the big-beats title sequence ends with her taking a bite out of one of the passers-by, it’s obvious that you are right back at the outbreak of the T-virus again. What’s not obvious is what the heck this sequence is doing in the movie at all when it really touches upon nothing in the film... but it’s not too much of a problem, I’m fairly forgiving of it because it’s a cool looking title sequence. Also, how the heck would just one woman in Japan suddenly find herself infected with the T-virus and all zombied up on her lonesome. This makes no sense... but again, it’s a nicely shot opening so I’ll let it slide.

Straight away after this you get the Milla Jovovich voice over narrative along with, well a glorified diagrams and slide show I guess, catching us up with the plot of the previous movies and pretty much being a dead spit for the opening “catch-up” on the third movie.

Then... and only then... does it make good on the ending of the last movie, where a cloned army of Jovovich’s character Alice was plotting revenge against the bizarrely and consistently surprisingly evil Umbrella Corporation. After the Japanese Umbrella HQ is penetrated by a mysterious and deadly force it’s clear that Alice has decided to “Send in the Clones”. Unfortunately, all the Alices apart from the one true original seem to get taken out (although possibly not if the end of this film is anything to be given a clue by) and the one true Alice gets her superhuman powers taken away from her via an antidote injection... there’s lots of holes in this movie though... like why, if the supreme bad guy was able to be fast enough around Alice to actually inject her with this thing before she could stop him... why would he not just put a bullet through her head instead. He has no plans for her.

But no problem... we’re basically in reset mode as far as the status of our main girl is and it isn’t long before she comes across a machine controlled, amnesiacal version of the Ali Larter character from the last movie who tries to kill her. The two of them land on the roof of a prison to try to help some survivors who have decided, quite unwisely it turns out, that the absolute safest place to hide from a gazillion zombies surrounding your hideout is a maximum security prison. They’re kidding right. Anybody who’s ever had to deal with surviving a zombie holocaust knows that the absolute safest place to hole up and wait things out is a shabbily padlocked shopping mall with fragile glass windows and awkwardly positioned safety points. Blimey, these guys are amateurs.

Soon, of course, these fearless... well quite fearful in some instances it turns out... survivors are being attacked by squid-faced zombies that come out from the floor and, my favourite, a giant pointy hat-masked man with a giant axe-hammer who is following our heroes. It’s a completely surreal character, very reminiscent of a similar character in the Silent Hill movie, just a complete non sequitur of a character who is given no explanation for being in the film at all and who I assume is from one of the video games. One thing's for sure about this cool and menacing character though... the costume is a darn sight better than that awful Nemesis costume which totally destroyed the mood of the second movie.

Anyway, moving on from here a handful of characters end up on a ship fighting bad guys and rescuing a load of survivors in the process... however, this movie leaves the action in even more of a cliffhanger than the previous installments in that a whole fleet of lethal black flying machines carrying Umbrella Corp soldiers is descending on our heroes. Can they escape? Well, if there are still a large number of soldiers from Alice’s clone army lurking somewhere nearby then I suspect they can... but we’ll know more when the fifth movie gets made. If you want to catch a brief glimpse of long standing game character Jill Valentine, who also appears in the second movie, wait until just after the first batch of credits... where you can see her in her machine controlled amnesiac form about to unleash hell on Alice and her friends.

All in all this film hits a lot of the marks from the previous installments... lots of guns, gore and explosions plus those hounds are back again, this time in mutant form but the one point it didn’t hit and which I sorely missed were the weak pretensions to Alice's Adventures In Wonderland... could have really done with that.

Ditto the music. This time the score is by Tomandandy but the main theme from the first film which was alluded to in the third movie is not present here. Having said that though, the tone of the score is very much in keeping with the tone of the movie and the style of the first and third movies in the franchise. Probably the least successful score for maintaining a sense of synchronicity with the first film was the second installment... although it is still a pretty good score.

If you like movies with zombies, gals and guns and you like whizzy things popping out at you in 3D, then you could do a lot worse than to give Resident Evil: Afterlife some of your time. Be warned, though... it doesn’t feel like a stand alone experience and to get the most out of it you really need to have seen the three previous movies.