With a runtime of 107 minutes, however, the film feels a little rushed and the characters seem too underdeveloped for us to really connect with them. This may very well be because the movie tried to use material from two video games. You’d feel they could have been better off using one and fully committing to plot and much needed character development.

The cast and storyline is honestly pretty solid. You got Kaya Scodelario who plays Claire Redfield a badass girl who’s come back to her hometown to see her brother Chris (Robbie Amel) , who is now a police officer. Claire is also investigating reports of shady dealings by the big pharmaceutical company, Umbrella. Along with two other cops, Jill Valentine (Hannah John-Kammen) and Leon S Kennedy (Avan Jogia) they end up battling the undead as they try to find their way out of the city which is about to be destroyed by Umbrella.

Unfortunately the movie’s main flaw is in developing it’s characters and with its short runtime  it’s not difficult to imagine why. A lot of it feels so rushed that you end up not actually being able to feel the emotions that the actors are trying to portray. There are a lot of characters and subplots that are injected into the story and many of them aren’t fully explored. And when these half baked characters face a tragedy you’re expected to feel sad for them, but that’s difficult if you never fully understood what their whole deal was. You could argue yeah it’s a technique used by directors, as these are essentially supposed to be live-action versions of characters video game fans already know, explaining tons of character building in a vague phrase like ,  “I have a dark past… “ or something like that and it explains why they can shoot guns and do other questionable stuff, you know to sort of leave things to the audiences’ imagination. We don’t have a problem with that honestly, but if it happens to a lot of your characters then as the audience it ends up feeling like you don’t actually know any of them. They will all just seem like shadows, rather uninteresting ones despite being portrayed by a talented group of actors.

Having said that, the movie is honestly a good watch. You may find yourself amused by the several callbacks to the 90s, the period the movie is set in. We  couldn’t help but chuckle when we saw a VCR or cassette players in scenes used as the technology of the day (honestly gives you perspective on how far we’ve come). There was even a scene where someone was playing the snake game on an old Nokia. Add a 90s tracklist to the mix and you’ll find yourself being taken back in time by the movie in a way that’s a little more nowadays predictable but still incredibly fun.

Gore and general horror elements were impressive. However, hardcore fans of horror movies may find the jump scares a little predictable. Scenes where characters fight zombies had a lot of first and third person view styles, giving them a video game-esque feel (something we truly appreciated as fans of the games). There are some comedic elements which seem to predominantly serve the role of just easing the atmosphere a bit. But they are at the expense of Leon Kennedy. The movie portrays him as somewhat incompetent because he’s a rookie cop, which didn’t really feel right considering he’s one of the most badass characters you also play as and interact with in the video games. But, that shouldn’t be an issue for anyone who never played them.

In fact this is an easy way to tie up this movie: inoffensive. It definitely isn’t the most faithful video game adaptation, and it might be a toss-up between whether it did a better job  than April’s Mortal Kombat. However it serves both video game fans and movie fans enough to keep them entertained for 107 minutes.  Resident Evil : Welcome to Racoon City is a fun, fine movie.  It will give you a scare or two, a couple laughs and some chuckles. That’s seemingly all it has to be for now. And yes, it makes it leagues better than all the Mila Jokovich movies.

Related Stories: