I am trying to work out to these movies, damn it, zombies make me wanna get on the treadmill or clinch the heaviest of the dumbbells I got. But I end up writing about them. Again.
The beginning of Resident Evil: Afterlife is pretty cool. Glittering red shoes on legginged black sticks that never end are always good. Never thought Alice, the protagonist, was a model, I think. As the camera slides up lovingly, hugging the absence of every curve and the folds of a Gaga-like concoction of a gown, I learn it’s not Alice. It’s a Japanese girl who is probably a model because she is tall, gorgeous and looks like she hadn’t had dinner since she turned 13. It’s a busy street and it’s pouring. Why doesn’t she hold an umbrella, like everyone else? Why doesn’t she mind the rain? Something is not right with her and if we haven’t got it yet tomandandy’s soundtrack will prompt us with notes hinting at 28 Days Later desecrated with a venerable politeness. The girl stares at a man passing her by. She stares hard. Then she jumps for his neck. Now, women, haven’t you all been warned about these diets that just make you gorge on anything that happens to be in your way? Gets me every time.
As the lights of the Earth go out, I start wondering why everyone hates this movie. So far so good.
Allice is such a malleable character. When Warwick-graduate hubby wants to show off how she can kick, bend and duck, she does just that (even though she has superpowers to kick everyone’s ass without lifting a finger, or a long, lean leg). When he wants to show off some impressive CGI he just makes her blow on her enemies or look at them menacingly (that funny stuff with the pupils is from Men In Black, no?) which makes the walls go all rubble in miniature earthquakes, burying dozens of her enemies underneath. She looks cool, but why is her mouth always open? Wow – there are many of them, many of these perfectly shaped open mouths (let’s keep our fantasies to ourselves, shall we?).
The freeze frames that look like sci fi glamour shots, the close-up of a bullet leaving its cosy abode (now where had I seen that before?) and plenty of carefully choreographed slow-motion sequences all make for stunning visuals especially since Alice, or Milla, to be more precise, is wearing a hell lot of makeup for the last girl on Earth which further proves the point that women just do it for themselves (big hairy things, my apologies). And the girl that she rescues from an empty beach in Alaska is a muddy mess in one shot and spotless perfection in the next – heavy eyeshade, shimmering tone and luscious lips. All that free makeup in the post apocalyptic world will not go to waste (wait for the expiry dates to strike and real horror will begin). And when you are the only two women left in the world, now that’s what I call competition. (Neither of you can stand a chance with Boris Kodjoe flaunting his stuff around. Even the zombies moan and groan).
For a loving hubby, Mr. Paul W. S. Anderson likes to see his beloved wife die a bit too much. She gets gunned down, poisoned and blown to pieces. She crashes in a plane but survives that. By the way, I gotta start learning to fly to survive the zombie event, I wonder if Max Brooks knows (anyone to volunteer – driving only took eight takes?) And don’t you just love when people in movies put on makeup, wave their hands about and look at their interlocutors for ages instead of watching the road while driving? Here Milla (played by Alice, or maybe it’s the other way around) is narrating the end of the world to a winking camera while flying a plane. Who does think she is, some kind of film student from Diary of the Dead?
There are lots of CGI zombies in the movie, or am I going blind? Their presence is not visceral. You can’t smell them, can’t take a good look at them. Nobody gets bitten. They only make unproductive noise. Then there is a huge ‘zombie’ who doesn’t die from a shot in the head (how fresh!), a character from the game, I am told, plus some amphibian zombies with mandibles and tentacles coming out of their mouths – H. R. Giger would be proud, but I am not really impressed. As Alice reverts to her human imperfect form, the undead are evolving into Executioner and "Majini" zombies. The slow motion zombie crowd scene with blood all over your screen is pretty cool. There is also some new eye candy for the genre: Milla swinging down on a long long rope with zombies mid air behind her back, an eloquent explosion to top it all (a splash of some red in this largely grey palette), the score drowning the same seven notes over and over again against a psychedelic beat.
With no layers, no philosophy, no homage to anyone but lots of plain steals, this is a perfect treadmill movie with great visuals and great music. There is no real payoff in the end. When the Executioner gets executed, all you want is for the slayers to lift the hood and stare into his ugly face, but of course they have to blow it off completely and leave you wondering… The third act suddenly features white capsules with heavy made up people in white costumes, hair straight from the nano keratine cloud, and the movie goes all Matrix or Alien and nowhere near Dawn Of The Living Dead (that was a boat they got on to, not a fucking space ship!). I completely forget why I started watching it in the beginning… ah, the zombies! But it’s more about unhappy Dobermans with a bad case of conjunctivitis or caries, or both.
With the 2000 last human survivors, all of whom look like they’ve stepped right down from a Paris catwalk, I say it’s time for a big sex party. Strictly with intentions to procreate, of course.
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