Resident Evil: Bienvenue à Raccoon City

Greetings from Lithuania.

"Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City" (2021) is video an adaptation of 2 great video games "Resident Evil" and "Resident Evil 2". This movie smashes plots of both games into 1 movie. That wouldn't be a problem if the writing and directing were solid. In this movie's case, they are not. Writing and directing of this movie were pretty bad in my opinion. And performances were very forgettable, but you can't blame the actors much. I didn't like what they did with Leon character - he was more like a clown and comical dumb sidekick then game based character.

Overall, "Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City" is a poor movie. Its not a terrible one, there are some scenes that do work mostly in third act, but as a whole its a massive disappointment. It just shows that it is not as easy to make a good movie based on video games as it looks like. You can't just recreate the plot. You have to make a good movie, and as there two media's are very opposite they require different skills and techniques to engage the view or gamer. This movie unfortunately failed to do so.

Why this casting?

Why this director?

Why this story?

Why everything in this movie.

Unfortunately, as expected, this movie sucks. While the CGI is not that bad as it was in the trailer, everything else is.

Story is a chopped up blend of first and second game, but written badly. Casting is almost completely wrong. But even worse - characters are all written and crafted wrong. That's not Leon, that's not Jill Valentine, that's not the Redfields and that sure as hell is not Wesker.

Not to say anything against actors, ironically enough - as bad as they got casted - most of the actors in this movie are pretty good actors, from Donal Logue to Kaya Scodelario. They were just given trash script and story to work with.

Zombies look like generic vampires from SyFy tv shows or whatever. Also - there's some inspired but bizzare camerawork at times.

Locations are underutilised and most are kinda bland looking. Atmosphere is eaten pretty fast by the movie's runtime so there's none of that either.

I don't get it. It's not a unknown brand or something. Even more, RE series is on a high point lately as a video game franchise - one excellent remake, one good and two fantastic sequels in the past couple of years.

Yet, movie is given into the hands of a director/writer that hadn't made a good movie in his entire career.

Such shame and wasted potential.

People often hate on Paul W. S. Anderson Resident Evil films but this reboot makes the first 3 of his RE films look way better. This film just seemed so unnecessary at its announcement and now after watching it seems that even the director/writer believed that too. The story tries to follow the plot of the original video game at first and continues to do so decently until the end but tapers off somewhat in the end. Visually it's highly entertaining and possesses some moments that do have commendable aspects, but story and acting just doesn't help it overall. There are times of cgi that come off laughable and so sloppy, it makes you want the early to mid 2000s practical effects utilized way more in WS anderson RE films. The film has some fan service that is sure to please the die hards but overall just seems forced and rushed.

A decent Resident Evil movie with some gore, cheap jump scares and a lot of fan-service. Not everything clicks and it's incredibly easy to be overly critical of this movie but in my opinion it was certainly a lot better than the trash that was Resident Evil: The Final Chapter. I grabbed some popcorn, candy and a coke with my expectations firmly in check and I had a decent overall time. I'm a big fan of schlocky B-movies and it's nice to see something in theatres that isn't related to superheroes or overly-serious dramas. What I didn't like the most though was how Leon was portrayed but I guess that's because I got done playing RE4 on the oculus and I'm used to that representation of him.

After watching Resident Evil: Welcome to Racoon City I read a lot of the reviews on IMDB and the only reviews being liked are from people who bombed the film. Are people really that desperate to hate on a movie they haven't seen? What are your expectations going into a Resident Evil movie if you have seen it?

They really tried to cram a lot into this movie but it just never clicked. The movie had strong bones but suffered from weak writing and plot. The Redfields and Wesker were cast perfectly but Jill Valentine and Leon were horribly miscast. I don't know if it was because of Hollywood making everything diverse but not only did they not look like the characters they didn't sound or make decisions like them. Man I had high hopes but it just fell short.