Zombie franchise that won't die

“Resident Evil: Afterlife” is the fourth installment in a completely unnecessary franchise so prolonged it no longer bares any resemblance to the game it was actually inspired by, and I am embarrassed to be reviewing it.

It is a zombie of a film, so lifeless and devoid of any redeemable human qualities it is nearly indistinguishable from the zombies that populate its cast.

And yet it takes the title for being the first video game movie to ever be shot completely in 3-D. I suffered through the cinematography and the surcharge and would chop off a star from its final grade if there were any more stars to remove. 

Paul W. S. Anderson from the original returns to direct, certainly excited by the gimmick of blood, bullets, barrels and body parts he can now launch from the screen.  
His mindless action scenes are an incorrigible bore. Unable to choose between fast motion, bullet time or a complete freeze frame during which to navigate his virtual camera, he elects to switch between them all. This gives him the luxury of leaping, plummeting and gliding through a world that makes no spatial sense.

How the plot could be nonsensical when the objective is “survive zombie apocalypse” is a credit to Anderson’s (also the screenwriter) disfavor. He wisely provides the story with human characters solely so they can be killed. 

He elicits entirely phoned-in performances when a zombie B-movie has often been the starting point of many a young career.  

He succeeds in never dropping the illusion that the special effects are 100 percent green-screened and artificial. 

He remarkably reverses the one staple common to all the previous “Resident Evil” movies: nudity from Milla Jovovich.

He mercifully promises there will be an equally unnecessary sequel. 

He has proven that “Resident Evil: Afterlife” has as little reason to live as the underdeveloped characters simply dying for an ending to this tragedy.