Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City is a film which comes written and directed by Johannes Roberts who some may know as the director of 47 Metres Down (2017). This movie stars Kaya Scodelario, Robbie Amell. Hannah John-Kamen, Tom Hopper, Donal Logue and Neal McDonough.
According to IMDB, the synopsis of the film is as follows: “Set in 1998, this origin story explores the secrets of the mysterious Spencer Mansion and the ill-fated Raccoon City.”
Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City Trailer
Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City Review
When I heard about this movie a few weeks ago, I was very excited about it. The film is the first time I think I’ve seen Claire, Leon, Jill and the rest of the well known Resident Evil characters in a movie before. I’ve always liked the old film franchise starring Miila Jovovich, they were always fun movies. Never really big on story or anything, but were always a fun time out at the cinema. The only thing about them though, was that they didn’t really ever have much of a connection to the actual characters in the video games. So when I saw that this film did, I was excited to see what could be done with them.
Did this movie do a good job with the characters though? I guess it depends who you ask. For me, I go into these films just for a fun time and I really enjoyed watching Resident Evil: Welcome To Raccoon City, so much so that I am definitely going to go and see this movie again when it releases. However, one glaring issue with this film is, is that while it does use the same characters from the video game, the way some of them is written is completely different. I’ll give one example, if you are a very big Leon fan, you might get disappointed. The Leon in this film seems to have been turned into a comedic relief character. He’s a amateur cop, he doesn’t know what’s going on and is a complete waste really. Is it funny? Yes. But long time fans of the video game are likely going in there wanting a remake of the video game Leon, not this. They might get pretty mad with what’s there.
One of the highlights of the film for me after watching it, was that there were some pretty heavy horror elements. Some of the movie is actually kind of scary. I was surprised. A lot of this is aided by the music which is used. The film’s soundtrack is very spooky and actually very good. Not in a way that I’m going to go and find it Spotify and listen to it over and over, but as something used within the film, it elevates many of the scenes to a much higher level. The biggest thing that they did get right in this film was probably the music.
In terms of the action scenes. There’s many. People will be going into this film this weekend to experience a some action. I think there’s a lot in here. There’s certainly quite a few horror scenes, with a mixture or slow moving enemies and fast ones. But there’s also some heavy scenes where characters just unload bullets into waves of the undead. Some of it was awesome to see.
When it comes to the acting, I think it’s fine for what this is. I really enjoyed Kaya Scodelario who played Claire Redfield. She was great and if there’s ever to be a sequel for this film and I’m sure there will be, I do hope they focus on this character a lot more. Donal Logue who played the police Chief, was very entertaining. He was a lot funnier than Avan Jogia (Leon). Hannah John-Kamen (Jill) and Robbie Amell (Chris) were both great as well in this, I’m happy to see them in another sequel if possible.
One of the things I wonder about this film is where to from here? Not every character was great. Leon for example was really bad. The character didn’t seem likeable in this film and isn’t really close to his video game character enough to want back. I’d say, they should probably just drop him in the sequels. If they were to make a sequel, the characters I would suggest would be great would be Claire, Jill and Chris. But I doubt anyone from Sony is going to take my advice haha.
For video game fans. There is something special. I won’t say what it is exactly as it’s best left as a surprise. But there are a few famous locations from the video games in certain scenes and they’re recreated almost exactly the same as they were in the game. As a fan of the games, I really enjoyed this and appreciated it a lot.
Overall, in the end this film is a bunch of fun. I liked it enough that I’m happy to see again. The things I appreciated the most were the spooky music, the horror scenes, the action scenes. The actors such as Kaya Scodelario, Robbie Amell, Hannah John-Kamen and Donal Logue were all great. There’s a lot of characters in the film though and some don’t work well, Leon mainly is the worst of the bunch. The film is a lot of fun, but if you’re a hardcore Resident Evil fan wanting an exact retelling of the video game story, this isn’t it. It’s similar but not the same and there’s many changes to how the story plays out. Most people will either love the film or hate it, there’s no middle. I for one, really enjoyed it and it’s my current film of the week. Just don’t take things too seriously okay…
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