Quartile rating: 6/10 · 1 rating
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.
A video game reboot that attempts to honor the source material more faithfully than the Anderson films, but stumbles in execution. The plot cramming of both RE1 and RE2 storylines into one film creates a rushed, unfocused narrative. Acting is serviceable but unremarkable across the board, with characters feeling underdeveloped. Cinematography manages some atmospheric moments in the Spencer Mansion and Raccoon City Police Department, capturing the gloomy Midwestern decay reasonably well. Novelty is low — it's a reboot of an existing franchise adapting an existing game, and while the fidelity to game iconography is appreciated by fans, the filmmaking approach is largely by-the-numbers. The ending feels abrupt and unsatisfying, failing to deliver meaningful payoff for either the horror or character arcs.