Resident Evil: Retribution 3D

Written and directed by Paul W.S. Anderson. Starring Milla Jovovich (Alice), Sienna Guillory (Jill Valentine) and Michelle Rodriguez (Rain)

Bottom line: Resident Evil: Retribution 3D is so terrible that it becomes fun with the right company but, otherwise, I wouldn't wish this on anyone.

1/4 (for the movie) 3/4 (for the experience)

In school, I took a class about Science Fiction film. We watched John Carpenter's The Thing. It is about an alien who takes the forms of people so you never know if someone is a human or an alien. One guy, who turns out to be housing the alien, has his head cut off. The disembodied head falls on the floor, sprouts six legs, looks at another character and roars. The character responds with "You have got to be fucking kidding me..."

We read an academic article about the significance of that line (which was called "You have got to be fucking kidding me"). The author claimed that at that moment the film becomes self-aware. On one level, the character speaks only as a person in the film's world; he is watching his friend's head roar. On another level, he is speaking as a spectator in the audience, that is, he knows this is a fake movie but it is such a stressful scene, that he comments on it. Let me know if you want me to try and explain it a little differently.

I love those types of movies. It is like you are having a conversation with the film.

"Isn't this a little ridiculous?" you ask.

"Yeah. Definitely. But it's just for fun," the film answers back.

I hope. I really hope that Resident Evil: Retribution is one of those movies.

The movie opens with an extended fighting sequence, reversed in slow motion. Before I get any further, let me comment on the slow-mo. IMDB says that the running time of this movie is ninety-five minutes. I am pretty sure that there was only about a half hour of movie but the use of slow-mo extended to an hour and a half. In this movie, slow motion is used both to emphasize a fight scene and a deep thought. I'd say the slow-mo is the only way they could get feeling in this movie.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, the introduction. After the lengthy slow motion sequence and after it plays back in real time, Milla J comes on the screen and tells the plot of the past five movies to bring the audience up to speed.

Cutting over to a dream sequence, Milla wakes up in a suburban bed. Her husband is late for work and her daughter is having breakfast. Zombies break in and eventually kill everyone. Which brings me to my next problem with this movie; it's painfully predictable. So much so I feel like I am missing something. How exactly am I supposed to be on the edge of my seat when I know that character X will, without a doubt, survive?

Normally, I would go into more of the plot to point out the painful dialogue and “story” but, it isn’t really worth it. In my score, I gave this a 3/4 for the experience. By this I mean, I went with a friend and we laughed at the movie the entire time. But something about this seems wrong because this is, after all, a "movie review" not a "movie experience review". If it was all about the experience, what stops someone from giving a bad review because the cinema's air conditioning was broken? That said, looking strictly at the movie, the fancy 3D effects couldn't nearly save this from being a terribly bad movie.