I confess to totally rating this reboot of the Resident Evil film franchise on an unfair curve. As a stand-alone horror film, it’s not so good. It has real problems but isn’t exactly a disaster. As a Resident Evil movie that dares to be based on the games themselves and not the flights of fancy of Paul W.S. Anderson, it’s not so bad (though with its own problems).

Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City restarts the franchise with the inciting incident(s). it follows two parallel stories in order to retell the events of the first two Resident Evil games (and kind of the first two RE movies). In one story, we have Claire Redfield and Leon (S) Kennedy surviving a zombie outbreak in the city and in another we have (among others) Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine, and Wesker as they investigate the mansion.

If all that is gobbledygook, you might want to stay away. This movie will probably seem like overstuffed nonsense to a non-gamer. A grab-bag of random ideas. Probably because it is just that… only to a fan of the game, it’s more like a grab-bag of storylines and fan service that may or may not work.

As a pure horror flick, it has its moments, I guess. The zombies are pretty underwhelming and nothing is particularly scary. The action scenes are sometimes woefully clumsy and poorly executed. The flick then tosses in zombie dogs, random mutants with longue tongues (fans, you know the ones), and mutant humans with giant eyes on the shoulder (fans again, up high, down low… too slow). It’s all a little clumsy and overstuffed.

As Resident Evil fan service, it’s at least a live action flick that believes the video games have stories worth telling. Sometimes the fan service and in-jokes are amusing (early reference to Jill and a sandwich anyone? Anyone? Well, I chuckled). Sometimes the translation and changes will annoy.

Take, for example, the assassination of Leon Kennedy’s character. For a hardcore fan, this will be unacceptable. I’m not that hard core a fan and even I found it kind of disrespectful (to a CGI character). But, when I analyzed the film, we already have two himbo stuffed shirts in Chris Redfield and Wesker… tossing a Leon Kennedy with the same grim, serious persona would be a bit overkill. So, as the rookie his character is in the game, he’s turned into more the comic relief. A semi-incompetent buffoon at times.

Also, they seriously botch the zombie outbreak in the city. However, I suspect – even though the movie has a decent sized cast – that this was (ironically) a Covid movie. Things feel very small scale and we get maybe six or seven zombies roaming the streets instead of the hordes it should have. The film makes an excuse for it, but you can still sniff Covid limitations.

So shake your fists in anger at the gods of Hollywood… they get some things wrong. But they got a lot more right as far as an adaptation goes. Doesn’t really have the qualities that makes for a solid stand-alone film though. It’s not a very good movie but I’d still say it’s better than all the Resident Evil movies before it (barring the original which still works reasonably well).

Score: 70