Movie review: Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City
Viewed on: Ultra HD Blu-Ray
Released: 2021
However, amidst all these movies and TV series releases, last year saw the release of Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City. A movie I’d seen behind-the-scenes set pictures of since it began production, with some promising attention to detail when it came to capturing locations from the early games.
Welcome to Raccoon City focuses on Resident Evil 1 & 2, even taking into consideration their remakes. It takes an ambitious jump of blending these two stories into one movie, spanning the events of both. Compressing them into a short time span, running the stories of the Spencer Mansion incident and the Raccoon City zombie outbreak in parallel. Herein lies some of the movie's problems for newcomers, we’ll get into that shortly.
Let’s begin with what is incredibly impressive about this movie; the attention to detail when it comes to visualising scenes from the games on to the silver screen. Familiar buildings, locations, characters and scenes turn up one after the other from the first and second RE game. At first glance it’s the movie I always wanted. Ever since the first Milla Jovovich movie arrived, where I lost hope of replicating the games, I’d hope for someone to better replicate what the game franchise is about.
Hollywood tends to shift its focus into what’s popular for the general audience and not the source material which fans prefer. Which, to be fair, is both a good and a bad thing. For this movie, I’d go as far as saying the care it takes into incorporating attention, down to even the smallest of details from the games, is nothing short of fantastic enjoyment for a fan like me.
However, the first stumble the movie does is the attention to detail. I know, this sounds like a contradiction. Take the scope for instance, it’s pushing not only one, but two, 10-12 hours, games into a single movie that falls a little short of the two-hour mark. Granted, a lot the gameplay is just wandering about, figuring out where to go and solving puzzles and finding items, not exactly movie material but that’s a lot of story and information to fit in one movie.
I know these two games by heart and as such introducing each character, location and event wasn’t really anything necessary for me, but for newcomers to the franchise it’s a necessity. Here enters the convoluted and confusing storytelling for those viewers. It moves fast, with a ton of events happening simultaneously and with a large cast to boot. All I can imagine is that a viewer not familiar with the games must feel very confused.
The cast spans RE1 characters like Jill, Chris and Wesker, while at the same time telling the story of Leon, Claire, Chief Irons and William Birkin. That’s quite a lot of people to keep track of and put character depth into. Combined with the shift from taking place at the Spencer mansion and simultaneously telling the events unfolding at the Raccoon Police Department. I could imagine it throws people off the plot and falls into confusion quickly.
Smartly, the movie changes up the design of the main game characters to something more realistic and casual. Real, rather than cosplay, which I personally had no issue with. I found most of the actors depicted their role well. Prior to watching this movie, I was familiar with Neal McDonough (Birkin), Donal Logue (Irons) and Tom Hopper (Wesker).
The problematic part for me with the cast was the dialogue. It often feels a little forced to coincide with the games. There’s little dialogue in the first place and it often sounds cheesy in it’s too obvious attempt at catching classic phrases from the games. There’s also little extra story to give the characters more depth and personality.
A smaller cast, fleshing out their personalities with more screen time each, would've helped. Claire Redfield comes to mind as being quite cool portrayed here, if not a little angry and careless. Leon is almost bordering on comical, not badly depicted, just badly written compared to his game persona. Chris is anonymous like the games and Jill is vastly underused. On the flipside, I appreciated a more grounded Wesker and Chief Irons, they both seem more human and believable here.
The location designs in the movie are spot on though, the Spencer Mansion looks decadent and antique. I liked that the lighting was cut in the mansion, resulting in some scary torch-lit moments bumping into nasty zombies in the dark. The Raccoon Police Department, complete with the massive gas truck crashing into it, is also replicated in great fashion. The woodlands surrounding the Spencer mansion are here, the orphanage from RE2make, the RPD parking lot and Birkins labs. It's all here, impressively so. Again, the problem is the timing, never settling in each location before moving on with the convoluted plot.
Zombies look good and the action when shooting them is intense, but I could have had more zombie slaying for my taste. Allow more splatter scenes to take place. Other creatures, like the licker or Spencers daughter, look either CGI heavy or a bit overdone with their costumes. Overall, the movie cleverly uses its smaller budget in a way that never requires massive, large movie sets. It’s a lot about more confined indoor environments, but perhaps lacking larger, city street, scenes.
A smaller cast, fleshing out their personalities with more screen time each, would've helped. Claire Redfield comes to mind as being quite cool portrayed here, if not a little angry and careless. Leon is almost bordering on comical, not badly depicted, just badly written compared to his game persona. Chris is anonymous like the games and Jill is vastly underused. On the flipside, I appreciated a more grounded Wesker and Chief Irons, they both seem more human and believable here.
The location designs in the movie are spot on though, the Spencer Mansion looks decadent and antique. I liked that the lighting was cut in the mansion, resulting in some scary torch-lit moments bumping into nasty zombies in the dark. The Raccoon Police Department, complete with the massive gas truck crashing into it, is also replicated in great fashion. The woodlands surrounding the Spencer mansion are here, the orphanage from RE2make, the RPD parking lot and Birkins labs. It's all here, impressively so. Again, the problem is the timing, never settling in each location before moving on with the convoluted plot.
Zombies look good and the action when shooting them is intense, but I could have had more zombie slaying for my taste. Allow more splatter scenes to take place. Other creatures, like the licker or Spencers daughter, look either CGI heavy or a bit overdone with their costumes. Overall, the movie cleverly uses its smaller budget in a way that never requires massive, large movie sets. It’s a lot about more confined indoor environments, but perhaps lacking larger, city street, scenes.
Picture quality on the UHD Blu-Ray I watched, was sublime. The darkness and lighting usage, combined with HDR, really gave me the vibe of Raccoon City from the games.
For what it’s worth, I really enjoyed Welcome to Raccoon City. It probably stands as the best movie adaption of the Resident Evil games I’ve seen. Then again, I’m also a biased viewer, probably allowing a few more bad choices slip through as I’m so impressed with the close resemblance of the games. Nostalgia can be a fanboy and I'm probably in that category.
It's definitely a movie that requires you’re familiar with the two first games to fully enjoy and keep pace with the many events and characters. For outsiders though, it’s most likely just another b-movie horror flick, with a confusing plot.
Does it finally dethrone the first Silent Hill movie as the best game to movie adaption? Probably not. As a whole, Silent Hill better came together as a movie not requiring as much inside gaming knowledge to enjoy. That said, Welcome to Raccoon City does visually represent the games, closer even than the SH movie did, and is probably my preferred choice of the two.
A one for the fans then? Absolutely.
For what it’s worth, I really enjoyed Welcome to Raccoon City. It probably stands as the best movie adaption of the Resident Evil games I’ve seen. Then again, I’m also a biased viewer, probably allowing a few more bad choices slip through as I’m so impressed with the close resemblance of the games. Nostalgia can be a fanboy and I'm probably in that category.
It's definitely a movie that requires you’re familiar with the two first games to fully enjoy and keep pace with the many events and characters. For outsiders though, it’s most likely just another b-movie horror flick, with a confusing plot.
Does it finally dethrone the first Silent Hill movie as the best game to movie adaption? Probably not. As a whole, Silent Hill better came together as a movie not requiring as much inside gaming knowledge to enjoy. That said, Welcome to Raccoon City does visually represent the games, closer even than the SH movie did, and is probably my preferred choice of the two.
A one for the fans then? Absolutely.
