Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City Leon

For some reason, video games never translate well to movie adaptations. It’s hard to fathom that an already structured and developed plot and characters for any franchise that’s successful in the gaming world can get ruined by Hollywood. We already had Mortal Kombat this year, and the direction of that movie was bottom tier with a handful of highlights. Now, we have Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City and it aims to stick to the video game lore that Capcom had established with the first two games. It ultimately comes down to a convoluted and half-measured cash-in that will anger fans of the franchise and confuse any newcomers looking for an inlet to Resident Evil.

Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City looks to combine the events of both Resident Evil 1 and 2 into one movie, which was no doubt error one on director/writer Johannes Roberts’ part. Yes, Roberts both directed and wrote this film and it almost feels like he hired a consultant who is familiar with the games to give cliff notes of major events in both games and Roberts was left to fill in the gaps. Other than a few bright spots, Roberts’ directing history points to a lot of low level horror films. Maybe he liked the franchise or just saw an opportunity to capitalize on a dormant movie franchise that needed a reboot. It doesn’t help when that Sony and Screen Gems logo pops up at the beginning, as these two companies have a bad history of movie releases.

If you’re looking to create a franchise, there’s no reason to cram the events of the first two games into one movie. That includes the original characters that inevitably create this convoluted mess. The idea should have been to recreate the first game in movie form, as there’s plenty of content, characters and antagonists to utilize. The pacing of this movie is putrid and with a game that relies heavily on atmosphere, there’s never enough time given to allow this to happen. The movie actually starts off in the city and later intertwines with the Spencer Mansion as the full plot continues to build and build and ends with no satisfaction to this build. Time is never allowed for any soft of tension to set in.

Most of the cast doesn’t offer any big names, but they all looks familiar. The two big names were actually casted well. Neal McDonough plays William Birkin and he has played villains in plenty of movies. His acting is almost too good for this movie, but it could be the other bad acting that makes McDonough stand out. The other big name is Donal Logue (Gotham, Vikings, Sons of Anarchy) who fits the look for Chief Irons, but the implementation of Irons into the story completely missed the mark as I will get into spoilers at the bottom. Jill Valentine ends up being more of a side character which is embarrassing. Albert Wesker is part of STARS, and outside of the patch on their shirts, offers no real mention of the team name. Wesker lacks his monotone and conniving demeanor that’s matched in the games. What’s even more ludicrous is the characters that you shouldn’t like you end up liking because of how they’re written in. There is no Barry Burton or Rebecca Chambers, but there are useless throwaway characters that play major roles.

Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City is a hard pass for fans of the series. For newcomers, there are plenty of times where they would be lost as the movie jumps around a lot. With random references sprinkled in that don’t tie to the movie but fans of the series will recognize, it leaves a baffling mark on what it means or why it’s even in there. It’s such a shame that everything was laid out for Johannes Roberts and he still found a way to completely ruin it. Even as a fan service movie at its basic level, or just a horror movie at its basic level, it falls utterly flat.

This spoilers section mainly shows where this movie went wrong based on the events of it, and also how the characters are portrayed. As I mentioned above, Leon Kennedy is an abomination of a character as he’s made to look utterly stupid. As a police officer, he can’t even properly handle a gun. The movie does begin with Chris and Claire Redfield as orphans and the movie does include the Raccoon City Orphanage. I guess this was a way for Roberts to incorporate a scene from a location from the Resident Evil 2. What’s even stranger is he added Lisa Trevor, the hunchback girl from Resident Evil Remake that hides below the mansion. In the movie, she’s just in the orphanage and attempts to reach out to Claire. She inevitably helps Claire and Leon get to the Spencer Mansion via a tunnel, and that must be an extremely long tunnel. Lisa Trevor was a strange way of fan service and she immediately pops up at the beginning of the movie. Chris and Claire have never been clarified as being orphans, either, especially for Umbrella experiments that were conducted by William Birkin.

There’s also some love triangle involving Chris, Jill and Wesker. I almost thought that when Wesker was introduced, it was meant to be Jake Wesker from Resident Evil 6. Albert Wesker doesn’t exude cocky confidence in the game series, but does here. He ends up being likable, and when it’s revealed that he is turning on the team, it was a lame moment as it involved money being the reason rather than bringing the team to the mansion to help test out the monsters. There wasn’t even any type of major conflicts when the team found what was left of BRAVO team outside of the mansion. They basically walked up like it was just a house in the woods.

Roberts decided to write in that it was Wesker who was there to take the G-Virus from William Birkin, even though there was some fan service with showing Hunk during the movie. Sherry and Annette Birkin are in the movie for the sake of showcasing that William has a family. Birkin does take the G-Virus and mutates into some terrible CGI and this is where McDonough’s acting feels awkward. An after credits scene does reveal Ada Wong as the one having Wesker get the G-Virus.

Speaking of Resident Evil enemies, there aren’t a ton of encounters even with zombies. There’s one licker and Sherry makes a reference to a Hunter for fan service reasons. There’s also only one dog, and the dog belonged to the truck driver who perfectly wrecks his truck directly in front of the police station. The journalist who is talking to Claire is the one who is found in the jail cell underneath the police department, which in the game world he was put there by Irons, but the movie never states this.

With the after credits showing Wesker being revitalized, it’s hard to imagine where they go with a sequel. They’ve already packed two games into one movie and the third game revolves around Jill in the same setting at the same time. It seems to be aiming more towards Code Veronica, where Claire is the mainstay. There’s a scene in the movie where Claire watches the exact recreation of the projector reel that features the Ashford Twins. If you haven’t played Code Veronica, you will have no idea why this scene was in the movie. At this point, this franchise might as well be rebooted again. Resident Evil isn’t a fast-paced game unless you look at RE5 and RE6.