REVIEWED - RESIDENT EVIL: APOCALYPSE: Made with zombies by zombies for zombies, this tiring thriller, the second film inspired by the splendidly brutal video game Resident Evil, deserves some praise for its sheer, unforgiving relentlessness. Making no concessions to structure or coherence, the film-makers begin with confusion, then move towards chaos before eventually plunging us into incomprehensible pandemonium. To tell the truth, I can barely remember a thing about it.
Should you be interested, scribbled notes (and memories of the game) tell me that the picture has something to do with a virus manufactured by a sinister corporation for medical use, but which has the unfortunate side-effect of turning users, including, one supposes, those driving motorcars or operating heavy machinery, into members of the walking dead.
Concerned that this might reflect badly on them and their product, the corporation's shadowy controllers wall off an infected city and plan its destruction by nuclear weapons. Little do they know - or maybe they do know, I can't really recall - that Jared Harris, the fellow who invented the virus, has made a deal with some hard men and harder women to help his stranded daughter escape the quarantined area.
One's thoughts go to some peculiar places during films this terrible. Is Jared Harris in a happier place professionally than his father, Richard, was at a similar age? Is Resident Evil: Apocalypse a better film than Orca: Killer Whale or Tarzan the Ape Man? Maybe, but then Jared has no glorious early work to look back on. Having said that. . . Oh, hang on, the movie's over.
