Zombie flick a mindless affair

What's one to think of a horror movie if the idea of seeing the God-forsaken mess a second time is scarier than whatever took place onscreen? Obviously, very little. "Resident Evil: Apocalypse," the lame-brained sequel to 2002's equally-inane video game adaptation "Resident Evil," is one such film. And by calling this crappy confection a "film," I'm already giving this malarkey too much credit.\n"Apocalypse" picks up where its predecessor left off, with the nefarious Umbrella Corp. unleashing its dreaded T-virus in an underground laboratory known as The Hive. Soon thereafter, The Hive's inhabitants transform into zombies. Eventually, Umbrella Corp. opts to open The Hive, thus infecting a majority of Raccoon City's citizens. \nAlice (an uninspiring Milla Jovovich), former Head of Security for Umbrella Corp., is called in to save the day. Alongside her are Jill Valentine (the equally-wooden Sienna Guillory), a demoted cop with a penchant for wearing skirts short enough to necessitate two hairdos, and Carlos Olivera (Oded Fehr of "The Mummy" and "Deuce Bigalow" -- apparently this cat wouldn't know a good movie if it snuck up and bit him in the ass), the leader of an elite tactical unit known as S.T.A.R.S. Together, the trio sets out to rescue Angie (annoying child actress Sophie Vavasseur), daughter of former Umbrella scientist Dr. Ashford (Jared Harris). In exchange for extracting the tyke, our heroes will be choppered out of Raccoon City before an inevitable virus-quelling nuke is dropped.\nThis is a flawed genre exercise from top to bottom, though, most of the fault lies with Paul W.S. Anderson's hackneyed script. Anderson, writer/director of "Alien Vs. Predator" and the original "Resident Evil," wastes the flick's first half-hour by attempting to develop a story and characters that just aren't there. Essentially, this is a third of the film wasted. And worse yet, it's boring -- a cardinal sin amongst movies of this nature. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if Anderson wrote this debacle on a series of cocktail napkins with a fat crayon, the script is so inept.\nFirst-time director Alexander Witt also bungles the material badly. Witt, who cut his teeth as an assistant director under the tutelage of expert visual stylist Ridley Scott, can't seem to make a coherent film on his own. The action scenes look as though they've been shot by an ADD-afflicted monkey and edited by a grade-schooler's Fiskars.\nThe only likable element of "Apocalypse" is comedian Mike Epps ("Next Friday," "How High"). This dude's very funny, but his character is a racist caricature and belongs in an entirely different movie.\nFans of the zombie sub-genre should seek their fix elsewhere -- see "Shaun of the Dead" when it drops later this month, watch "28 Days Later" on HBO, pick up the newly-released "Dawn of the Dead" four-disc set, whatever. The only thing scarier than seeing "Resident Evil: Apocalypse" is knowing the filmmakers left themselves an out for yet another sequel.