Horror: American Film Review 2 - Resident Evil: Afterlife

Resident Evil: Afterlife, the fourth instalment in the Resident Evil film series (loosely based on the Capcom game of the same name), was released in 2010 and directed by Paul W.S. Anderson. Resident Evil: Afterlife opened in 2,904 theatres in the United States -2,203 being 3D-equipped - along with 141 IMAX openings. The film has grossed $60,128,566 in the United States and Canada, and $233,985,429 in international markets for a worldwide total of $296,221,566. In the United States, the high box office gross was attributed to the ticket price inflation of the 3D presentation, but the film had the lowest opening weekend attendance of the series. The film was also nominated for a multitude of different awards including “Favourite Horror Movie” at the People’s Choice Awards.

The film starts with the opening credits playing over an establishing shot of Tokyo; the titles are in a serif, silver/metallic font which increases in size and fades out. The camera zooms in every time a new title is overlaid, until we reach a bird’s eye view shot of a woman standing in the rain when everyone else has Umbrellas (direct reference to the “evil” corporation in the film - Umbrella Company). The song “Tokyo” playing over this opening sequence is recorded by “tomandandy”, who are known for their work as composers for film.

The camera then cuts to a close-up shot of the static woman’s feet as the music intensifies, and a focus pull is used once the camera reaches her face, so the audience focuses on her. The music slowly quietens as the woman slowly turns, and then breaks as she screams and lunges towards a passerby teeth-first. The camera cuts again to bird’s eye view to show the woman pinning the passerby down and gnawing at his flesh, and then quickly zooms out until the only things visible are the lights of major buildings. These lights fade out in large clusters, representing a quick ripple effect which occurred on a global scale.

During a scene later on, clever editing is used to show a wireframe diagram of the underground headquarters of Umbrella Corporation; the camera navigates throughout the wireframe until it reaches a set of stairs, at which point it transitions OUT of wireframe and back into actually footage.

During an extremely well choreographed fight scene involving Umbrella drones and an Alice clone, editing is again used to slow the clip down greatly and show the effect a bullet has on sound waves, evadible in the screenshot below.