When last we left our heroes, Claire Redfield (Ali Larter), K-Mart (Spencer Locke) and the gang were all headed towards Arcadia, Alaska for what they hoped would be the last bastion of humanity. Arcadia held the promise of no infection, and food and safety for those who made it there. Resident Evil: Afterlife opens with a horde of Alice clones attacking an underground Umbrella facility being run by Albert Wesker (Shawn Roberts). When the real Alice (Milla Jovovich) faces off with Wesker as he attempts to escape by air, he injects her with something that takes away all of her fantastic powers. Before he gets the chance to kill her, the aircraft crashes and Alice survives... but did Wesker? (Of course he did.)
Alice makes her way to Arcadia in the hopes of reuniting with the gang, but all she finds when she gets there is the abandoned helicopter indicating that they made it. Could it be that Arcadia was a lie after all? Alice is then attacked by a now somewhat crazy and amnesiac Claire, but Alice is eventually able to calm her and they escape together. When they arrive in L.A. by small biplane, they find the city in utter ruins. Everything is on fire and there are zombies everywhere. Alice and Claire happen upon a prison where a group of survivors are holed up, hoping for rescue from Arcadia. Wait, what? Alice and Claire soon find out that Arcadia is a ship in the Los Angeles harbor and not a town as they first assumed. The survivors include an entitled producer named Bennett (Kim Coates), his assistant Kim Yong (Norman Yeung), a famous sports figure named Luther West (Boris Kodjoe), a waitress/actress named Crystal Waters (Kacey Barnfield), and a handsome muscle man named Angel Ortiz (Sergio Peris-Mencheta). Alice and Claire band together with this motley crew to form a plan of escape, but their plan soon escalates when the undead begin tunneling into the prison and busting through the gates with the help of the Ax Man, a huge creature wielding a giant ax and wearing blood stained executioner's mask (straight from the game, mind you.)
But wait, there's an additional survivor who is caged in the center of the prison who claims to know a way out, but why was he caged is the question on everyone's mind. Chris (Wentworth Miller) soon proves himself to be a great ally for the group as he does, indeed, have some great ideas for escaping this hellhole and he also happens to have a deep connection to a member of the group. Now, if this bunch can only hold itself together and not devolve into a scene from Lord of the Flies before they make their escape, they'll be doing quite well. As always, Alice and Claire are in for the fight of their lives as they battle Wesker, the famous RE dogs (newly mutated, naturally) and a few new mutants modeled after the Majini from the last game.
Resident Evil: Afterlife was built from the ground up as a 3D experience and, as such, it is riddled with what we like to call "3D gags." Knives flying at the screen, zombies whose faces split open and become tentacle nightmares rushing towards the screens, mutated dogs coming at you, it's all here and more. I didn't watch it on a 3D TV and the gags, while present, really didn't bother me much. Sure, I knew they were thrown in there as "gotcha's" but eh. It was ok. What I really enjoyed was a all of the nods to the Resident Evil 4 and 5 games like Claire's outfit, the dog designs coming straight from the game, the iconic fight scene between Alice and Wesker and the Ax Man, who was a completely horrifying character from the game come straight to life in Resident Evil: Afterlife. The fight scenes were fantastic, especially the one between Claire and the Ax Man in the prison shower, and it especially pops on Blu-ray. The water dripping all around and the ax swinging towards the screen looked really amazing. With a film like this, high def on Blu-ray is the only way to go.
Besides the intense upgrade in your visual and audio experience, you'll also get a number of extra special features like 5 additional featurettes, deleted scenes and outtakes, and a picture-in-picture covering all aspects of the film and its creation. While I wasn't too sold on the deleted scenes, there are some laugh out loud moments in the outtakes and I really enjoyed the featurettes on design of the film, its characters and cast and especially the video game aspects of the film.
Overall, if you've enjoyed the previous Resident Evil films, you'll like this one. It's actually better than the last one and I really liked it. A 3D TV would only make the film more intense, I'm sure, but I enjoyed it just fine without it. Milla and Ali Larter are so much fun to watch as they kick ass all over the place. If action and twisted zombies is what you're looking for, you'll find it here.
