Film Review: Resident Evil : welcome to raccoon city

 Genre: Horror / sci-fi / action

Cert: 15

Director: Johannes Roberts

Screenwriter: (screenplay by) Johannes Roberts

Starring: Kaya Scodelario, Robbie Amell, Hannah John-Kamen, Tom Hopper, Avan Jogia, Donal Logue, Neal McDonough, Lily Gao, Chad Rook, Marina Mazepa, Nathan Dales, Josh Cruddas, Pat Thornton, Holly de Barros, Janet Porter, Lily Gail Reid, Daxton Gujral, Dylan Taylor

Running time: 1h 47m

Parents advised reading before viewing the film as some scenes may contain scenes unsuitable for younger viewers.

Sex & Nudity: A dissected female zombie is laying on a table and you are able to clearly see pubic hair, no labia is visible but it's clearly insinuating female bottom nudity.

Violence & Gore: Extremely gory graphic violence with plenty of glorious blood detail shootings, stabbings, and dismemberment.

Gory images, and bloody violence.

Profanity: 66 excessive uses of "fuck", "shit" and "damn"

many f-words (several paired with the name of Jesus Christ) and another 15 s-words. We also hear "a-," "b-ch," "d-n" and "h-."

Alcohol/Drugs/Smoking: None

Frightening/Intense Scenes:  There are scenes that are Extremely bloody, and frightening for anyone under the age of the film cert, Not a film suitable for anyone under 15.

Story: Once the booming home of pharmaceutical giant Umbrella Corporation, Raccoon City is now a dying Midwestern town. The company's exodus left the city a wasteland with great evil brewing below the surface. When that evil is unleashed, the townspeople are forever changed and a small group of survivors must work together to uncover the truth behind Umbrella and make it through the night

Likes: Resident evil welcome to raccoon city, is it any good?  Well First of all we were promised a frightening and faithful adaptation to the game which granted the director did give us correct pieces of the game, like the children's school, Mansion and police station, and the truck scene which is in resident evil one and two games, as for characters Lisa Trevor lore was perfect, Burkins transformation is Faithfull to the game. Sadly this is all that faithful to the game, the rest of the film just brings this entire film down.   

Where this film goes wrong is instead of trying to make a film with two stories, this first film should have been focused on the mansion, giving more expectation that every corridor could lead to danger, the story could've led to an underground hive where the real danger was with a Tyrant like Mr. X chasing them at every turn, it would have made for a better film.

So can I really say this was a good film, unfortunately for a fan that knows the lore of resident evil and played the games, this film is nowhere near frightening and faithful as we were told it would be, I would go as far as to say if you're a die-hard fan that knows the lore of resident evil, this film will piss you off, it really not worth watching!         

Dislikes: (Spoilers) There is really no way to explain just how bad this film is without giving spoilers of why this film utterly fails on so many things.

Here are the mistakes:

1. casting feeling out of place bar two-character Robbie Amell actually looks the part of younger Chris Redfield which he does give a badass performance, and I can see Hannah John-Kamen as Jill Valentine because there is potential there, I could see her running away as she is being chased by the nemesis in a future film if it ever gets done. But the other casting is just really miscasting and bad writing. 

Avan Jogia as Leon Kennedy, I wouldn't say he's bad casting, it's more of bad writing for the character, which most people would compare Leon to being this badass rookie cop that supposed to know what he's doing, yes I would agree here because the way this character is written is so bad it unreal.

Leon Kennedy in this film is made out to be the stupid dumb ass cop that clueless on how to use a gun, which is the stupidest writing ever because he would have never made it as a cop in the first place, which makes his character unbelievable straight away, Leon didn't turn up at the police station until after the events of Resident 2 outbreak when the city was infected and after the police station was overrun with zombies, Again something this director get so wrong. 

Not to mention having his character in a scene where he's only 2 to 5 meters away from the front gate to the police station, fast asleep as the truck blows up 4 meters from the main gate, yet still asleep through that explosion -  who thought this scene would work.

Here what the director that calmed to be a die-hard fan that knows the lore of resident evil got so wrong, Wesker played by Tom Hopper, Wesker was never friendly nor was he ever there with the team like the film shows, Wesker in fact was already infected with the T-virus, he lured the Stars team to the mansion to be slaughtered which is in the lore Barry was meant to be with Chris and jill at the mansion, which the film absolute get wrong. 

Resident Evil 2 story, Claire Redfield didn't meet Chris, because after the mansion Chris was in Europe at the time raccoon city was infected. Because in 1998 July 23: bravo team was at the mansion, it wasn't until September 28 that raccoon city was infected setting the events of resident evil 2 and 3. This is something this film gets Majorly wrong. 

2. Lore: Clearly as I've said the lore between character is completely wrong, what this director get wrong as well is Raccoon city isn't an abandoned town like the film portrays, Raccoon city is a full city full of people. Changing this lore for the film is what destroyed any frightening Element of the film, which also took away the police station battle for survival which would have made for a frightening and amazing scene on the big screen not to mention take away the nemesis moments to the police station to tease for a 3rd film.

Raccoon City was destroyed by a tactical nuclear missile, which this film gets completely wrong with a scene of a town collapsing and sinking underground with a dumb moment with a cow flying off in the air. 

 Chief Irons played by Donal Logue, was supposed to be a secret child molester, which the character had been hiding for years, as he had the mayor daughter kidnap and Burkins daughter as well, which the film total got wrong. 

 This couple with Bad CGI that looks like it was from a Playstation 2 era, just made this film so bad, that resident evil fans will be so pissed off with yet another resident evil film being ruined but writers and directors that don't know how to handle this franchise. 

Overall: While the set pieces are correct, the film as a whole is so bad that it shouldn't have been released like this.

Rating: 3 out of 5 for Entertainment / 4 out of 10 for adaptation