Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (2021)

★★½
Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City is a refreshing return to the source material to create a movie that fans will instantly recognize. Rather than introduce new characters and situations, writer/director Johannes Roberts faithfully brings the stories of the first two video games of the series to the big screen, perhaps because he sensed how tired the Paul W.S. Anderson adaptations were getting by the end. It’s a commendable goal. Anderson jettisoned much of the series’ mythology in favor of his own narrative, and though his formula was financially successful (his movies grossed over $1 billion), it nevertheless felt like something was lacking. Anderson’s series peaked at the third entry (Resident Evil: Extinction) and went on the decline afterwards, with each installment making enough money to justify another sequel without any sense of direction on where to take it all.

The video games series is as popular as ever, meaning that another movie was inevitable. However, since Anderson had the good sense to give his movies a finale (albeit a weak one), a reboot was the only way forward. By combining the storylines of the first two games, Roberts gives fans what they expect to see while offering those unfamiliar with the games a complete plot without the exploration elements. A faithful adaptation of the first Resident Evil would have delved too deeply into the origin story while showing too much of the characters running around.

All the main video game characters are here. Chris and Claire Redfield are played by Robbie Amell and Kaya Scodelario. He’s a cop with the Raccoon City Police Department and she’s his younger sister, returning to town after some time away. Raccoon City is the home of the Umbrella Corporation, a pharmaceutical company that conducts bioweapon research in addition to its legitimate business ventures. Jill Valentine (Hannah John-Kamen) is Chris’s partner, while Leon Kennedy (Avan Jogia) is a rookie cop on his first day on the job, which is unfortunate for him as Umbrella’s research leaks out, turning the living into zombies and overwhelming the city.

Players of the games will find the movie’s plot familiar, as the Spencer mansion and the police station are the two primary settings. The games secondary characters (Chief Irons, Brad Vickers, Lisa Trevor, et al) make appearances, making this a who’s who of the Resident Evil lineup. Unlike Ghostbusters: Afterlife, which also reached into its past to please the fans, Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City has a tight narrative and a greater sense of urgency. Roberts not only combined two game plots into one, but he also allocates a very limited amount of time for the proceedings to unfold. Raccoon City’s time is running out, and the main characters have to beat the clock as well as zombies.

The action moves swiftly, maybe too swiftly, because despite its positives, the movie trips over itself. Most of the city is deserted. We are told at the beginning that Umbrella is relocating, leaving only a few people behind. The notion that a city of this size and with the infrastructure seen here would be abandoned is unbelievable. There are also Umbrella goons running around trying to prevent people from leaving and thus spreading the virus, but we only get a tiny glimpse of this secondary threat. Leon Kennedy is especially disappointing. Instead of the inexperienced but confident rookie from the game, we get an emasculated clone who can barely take care of himself. Maybe Roberts had to knock him down the ladder a few rungs in order to give room for Jill and Claire to shine, although he salvages Leon at the end, in a token effort to ensure Leon is ready to go for a sequel.

A sequel, by the way, is a possibility. Series antagonist Albert Wesker (Tom Hopper, looking like a young Aaron Eckhart) leads Chris and Jill into the mansion before he reveals his true intentions. He reappears in a post-credits scene, offering a glimpse of where he’ll go next. The way Wesker is presented here makes his motives ambiguous. Fans know him as the main villain, but here he’s singing a different tune. This is good. A little misdirection thrown our way keeps us guessing, so it isn’t so clear whether he’s with the protagonists or against them. The other villain here is William Birkin (Neal McDonough), the developer of the virus. If Wesker seems restrained, Birkin gives us a clearcut foe. He’s dangerous in a way that most of the biohazards are not.

Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City takes the film franchise in a new direction, closer to the source material and thankfully leaving behind Paul W.S. Anderson’s series, which ran out of ideas at the halfway point. It still isn’t good enough to be an effective horror film, but if this reboot effort, should it continue, follows the same trajectory as Anderson’s effort, then the next entry could be interesting.

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