Hogan Reviews

I had somewhat high hopes for Welcome to Raccoon City when it was first announced, writer/director Johannes Roberts made it clear how big of a fan he was of the franchise, but the announcement that it was merging the first two games into one story put up some red flags, and sadly after watching it you can throw in two all-time great Resi characters being heavily rewritten for the worse as another strike against it. It’s far from all bad, especially for the budget, but the fan-side of me was disappointed after the hype of the film “being closer to the games”. Oh well, let’s take a look at the film as a whole.

This is a “bonus” review by the way because I’ve already covered Resident Evil 1 (HERE), it’s Remake (HERE), as well as Resident Evil 2 (HERE) and its Remake (HERE), so there wasn’t a game to review next to it, though I will throw in an extra related review after this goes up for the hell of it.

In the first major rewrite the film shows us that in this timeline (I guess) Chris (Robbie Amell) and Claire (Kaya Scodelario) Redfield grew up together in the Raccoon City orphanage, having some harrowing experiences related to William Birkin and Umbrella while they were there. (Neal McDonough play Birkin by the way, yes the same man who played “M. Bison” in the terrible Street Fighter film, why he got another crack at a classic Capcom villain I don’t know, not that anyone could’ve made that script work, to be fair…) This led modern day Claire to join Chris back in Raccoon City to investigate Umbrella after she was sent a mysterious tape, which despite this her brother insists is all still just her imagination. Chris heads to R.P.D. while Claire stays behind and is attacked by some zombies, having to escape by motorbike. A short while later Chris, Jill (Hannah John-Kamen), Wesker (Tom Hopper), Richard (Chad Rook) and Brad (Nathan Dales) are sent into the Arklay mountains to find the lost Bravo Team and shortly after that Raccoon City falls into zombie-filled chaos, so it does do the basic premise of both game justice, at least.

It’s the classic “zombie slowly turning around” scene from RE1! … Not much else to say about it, but that’s what it is!

Sadly where they don’t do the games justice as with the aforementioned Wesker and Leon (Avan Jogia). Instead of being a cold, calculating scientist setting up his team for the sake of research data (while planning to use the special virus to revive himself from death, though that was added in later…) Wesker is a generic muscle-head mercenary who is betraying his team for money but actually cares for his teammates and hesitates to kill. How they made one of the coolest villains in gaming history so dull and pathetic I’ll never know. Leon on the other hand instead of being a talented rookie cop arriving for his first day on the job, and who despite his age has a strong sense of justice and bravery this Leon is purely comic relief. He bumbles around the place, gets all wide eyed and screams when something shocking happens, not a shred of bravery or air of “cool” about him at all. Good luck ever adapting Resi 4 with this Leon, it would finally tip it over into pure slapstick. How such an obvious fan of the series did this I have no idea, especially after both characters were handled so poorly in the Anderson films and were due a proper crack at a good live action version.

It’s Claire and Leon… I think. The latter’s a bit blurry, sorry…

Well, anyway, while the S.T.A.R.S. Alpha team explores Spencer Mansion they find the Bravo team dead and Richard is eaten as well as Brad, which is a change from the games, plus we see a recreation of the Ashford twins film from Code: Veronica, which was a nice nod. Wesker saves Jill from Brad’s crashing helicopter and heads down a secret tunnel, where Chris and Jill soon follow him. On the other side of things the classic truck driver toppling over his fuel truck and it exploding outside of R.P.D. HQ happens (though with extra Leon comedy! … sigh) and Claire soon meets up with Leon, Police Chief Irons (Donal Logue) and reporter Ben Bertolucci (Josh Cruddas), though Ben doesn’t last very long in his cell (via zombie this time, no G Monster here! … yet) so the three of them get out of the soon zombie-infested police station and into the orphanage, where Irons says there’s a secret entrance to an Umbrella lab, confirming Claire’s theories.  Lisa Trevor (Marina Mazepa), a poor orphan friend of Claire from her time there who has been horribly experimented on arrives and helps Claire and Leon escape due to their old friendship, even though she’s some sort of twisted monster… though in this timeline, not really? Oh and Irons is killed by a Licker, so that’s that. No creepy taxidermy this time round.

That leads to the finale, which I’ll talk about in the spoilers. I do want to point out that beyond the butchering of Wesker and Leon’s characters and the shortening of both stories that had to be done due to adapting two games at once, the film is a perfectly fine “popcorn watch”. It’s not a horror film beyond the graphic violence and acting isn’t bad (I mean, nobody will win awards or anything, but they’re not B-movie bad) and I enjoyed playing spot the game reference and the location recreations were fun, though that won’t help if you’re not already a fan of the games, mind you…

Overall Thoughts:

The S.T.A.R.S. Alpha Team break into the mansion! Man, I wish I was talking about a film version of just this… that had a good Wesker in it.

Looking back at it, Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City wasn’t too bad an experience, but after it being hyped up as being closer to the games to see Wesker and Leon so badly butchered hurt even more than it did in the barely Resident Evil-like Anderson films. In the end its a cheesy action film masquerading as a horror film with an equal mix of honouring and crapping on the source material its director clearly must actually love. It can be fun to “spot the reference” for this long time fan, but at the end of the day neither the plot nor the acting will keep you entertained for long otherwise.

Wesker arrives in Birkin’s lab just as he, his wife Annette (Janet Porter) and his daughter Sherry (Holly De Barros) are about to leave. Wesker demands a vile of the G Virus for whoever hired him and they all point guns at each other, with William shooting Wesker non-fatally while he accidentally shoots Annette as well as William, but can’t bring himself to shoot Sherry, allowing Jill to shoot him actually fatally. Birkin injects himself with G Virus and begins mutating and attacking Chris and Jill but they’re saved by the arriving Claire, allowing Chris, Jill, Claire, Leon and Sherry to board the classic Umbrella staff train to get out of town before its destroyed.

The mutated G Birkin in glorious…ly average CG. Oh well, a practical effects version would be asking a bit much given the budget…

For that one final nod the train is stopped by an out-of-control mutating Birkin and despite everyone firing their whole arsenal at the creature things look bleak, until Leon arrives and fires a rocket launcher at it, destroying it and making funny faces and celebrating the fact he did something right for once, so that kind of took away from that moment. Oh well! The quintet manage to triumphantly walk away from Raccoon City as it explodes in the background. In a mid-credits scene we see Wesker waking up in a body bag confused at being alive and fumbling about the place until he’s given some sunglasses by Ada Wong (Lily Gao), who I guess works for whoever hired this merc version of Wesker. *shrugs*, it sets some stuff up and I’d definitely watch an adaptation of Code: Veronica because of course I would, but I can’t see this version of Wesker having a rivalry with Chris that would be particularly fun to follow, sadly…