Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004)

To put it simply, Resident Evil: Apocalypse feels like it dove off the stupid bridge on the way to the big screen. It's loud and hokey, with not a brain in its head, which should please the cheese-lovers in the crowd but anger the more civilized moviegoers out there. The sequel picks up where the first one left off, though this time it's Alexander Witt behind the camera instead of the genre's heavily hated Paul W.S. Anderson (who returned to his script duties here). The result is a hodge-podge of style gone wrong, with blurry effects made to "heighten" the zombie horror that only make the viewer disoriented and confused. This cheap technique continues with each and every action scene, as the filmmakers bypass cohesive action in favor of impossible-to-follow editing techniques. On the plus side, it does feature a main baddie with a ridiculous rubber mask and, yes, scrumptious star Milla Jovovich does go one on one with this laughable creation in a fistfight that's every bit as ludicrous as it sounds. Filled with accents galore (another Anderson staple), the cast spouts out schlocky dialogue either in their own mixed-up tongue or with an accent they're desperately trying to hide -- either way, it's just another delicious piece of the puzzle in this guilty-pleasured train wreck. Throw in a bootleg Newt character ripped straight from Aliens along with more than a few lifted lines from that and other well-known genre projects, and Resident Evil 2 is quite possibly too familiar with its predecessors, but then again, what should one expect? In a movie where the star runs down the side of a building as if she were wearing magnetic boots and a villain whose main weaponry is a rocket launcher, it's obvious that this sequel is shooting straight for the stereotypical gamer crowd that could care less about any of the above, just as long as the explosions are big and the females are hot -- which funny enough, really wasn't what made the game series so great to begin with. ~ Jeremy Wheeler, All Movie Guide