Movie Review: Resident Evil - Welcome to Raccoon City

Resident Evil : Welcome to Raccoon City [2021]

a.k.a. the modern adaptation of Resident Evil that didn't suck!

Because I didn't know what Netflix did, but that wasn't an adaptation, just... just a borrowing of IP. Welcome to Raccoon City, mind you, is hardly perfect. It smooshes together the main characters and vague plotlines of the STARS team going into the Spencer mansion in Resident Evil, as well as the outbreak in the city in Resident Evil 2, mixes all the main characters of both games together, exorcises a bunch of others and shuffles around their importance and competence. Plotlines and characters like Mr. X, Ada Wong, the mansion Tyrant and many others are dropped entirely, while characters that aren't connected are given a tenuous connection here for sake of drama. 

There are also a bunch of wink-wink-nod easter eggs like the 'itchy scratchy' bit (which felt a bit forced), the Jill sandwich joke (very forced), the trucker hitting the lady, the Ashford Twins (raise your hands if you know who they are!) and the admittedly fun recreation of the first zombie head-turn from the first RE1 game. 

When you really stop to think about it, a lot of the stuff in this movie aren't explained particularly well, and some of the new connections -- making William Birkins a mad scientist who also has the Redfield siblings as part of his orphanage, and has been harvesting kids from the orphanage, and also Lisa Trevor from RE1 is just a hulking monster that lives in said orphanage and its catacombs leading to the Spencer Mansion -- none of them are really adequately explained and just handwaved over. Some of the others (like the presence of the Lickers, the G-Virus or Lisa Trevor) you could at least rely on second-hand knowledge from the games, but overall the movie itself is kind of a mess in explaining things. 

But other than those minor problems? I had a blast watching this movie. We get some fun recreations of some iconic shots from RE1 and RE2, albeit 'remixed' to be in a bit of a different order. We get some pretty great casting, even if not all the characters are used to their fullest potential. Leon Kennedy never really grew out of his 'confused, handsome newbie' phase other than that single bazooka moment, while if we're being honest, Jill Valentine and Chris Redfield really don't do much. But at least they were treated relatively with respect. Claire Redfield takes the brunt of the characterization and being the 'face' of the good guys, although I'm still not sure if the random decision to make her part of William Birkin's creepy orphanage is really necessary. I suppose it gives us a clumsy way to tie in the RE2 and RE1 cast members as far as plotlines go?

Wesker also has his plot going on in the background, which is... serviceable. I feel like they try a bit too much to humanize Wesker and make this kind of a sympathetic backstory for him before he dons the shades in the mid-credits scene, but I do feel like the movie might be better served by having Albert Wesker actually be a conniving cold-hearted bitch. But I do like the interpretation of him as someone who's a bit over his head, especially when he realized that he just shot a father in front of his daughter. 

William Birkins (played by the glorious Neal McDonough) and Chief Irons (Donal Logue, a.k.a. Bullock from Gotham) also share in being absolutely entertaining. Birkins gets to ham shit up -- probably not as much as I would've preferred to -- before turning into a giant eyeball monster. It is kind of a shame that we do get a shoehorned plotline about him being Chris Redfield's surrogate father... Chris, Claire and Birkins share so little screentime together that it really feels like just something random they tried to work into the main plot but ended up leaving on the cutting room floor. 

Chief Irons, meanwhile, lasts a lot longer than his video game counterpart(s), doesn't get to have creepy pedophilic vibes, is as much of a dick as Donal Logue's hamminess allows him to be, and gets the glory of being killed by a Licker. Which, by the way, we actually get to see being creepily stalking in the shadows, but also jumping out and being glimpsed by our heroes in its creepy, eyeless, bulging-brain glory. Yes, it's not that much more detailed than the Licker model we see in the RE2 remake games, but you know what? At least it looks like a Licker, and at least we see that. 

Lisa Trevor, meanwhile, is an... interesting addition. Her addition really does feel shoehorned in, and while she is amazingly executed as a friendly monster that befriends Claire as a kid and ends up helping them out later, her arrival is so out of nowhere, and there's not really too much explanation beyond her being one of Birkins' pervious orphanage victims. Appropriately creepy and soulful, though, again, thanks to the movie having a bit too much characters, Lisa basically disappears after her mid-movie scene. 

I do really think the movie does try to do too much. The orphanage plot feels a bit forced, and characters like Sherry Birkin seems to be shoved there just out of obligation since she was in the original RE2 plotline. I do really feel like the movie's version of events -- characters trying to get out of the city, while another group is investigating a creepy mansion, and the two being linked by some shared backstory -- could've worked a lot better... but perhaps after some exorcising of plot elements. Maybe if they really went all-in on Birkins being an abusive parent-figure to the Redfield twins? All in all, though, definitely a more truer-to-text adaptation of the games compared to anything we've gotten so far. And in terms of actually delivering as far as a horror-action mix movie, yeah, I think this one does a decent, if not mind-blowing, job.