In Frame: Every movie in the original ‘Resident Evil’ series ranked

In preparation for reviewing Zach Cregger’s “Resident Evil” reboot, I educated myself by watching the original from 2002, followed by its five sequels.

Released over a 15-year-period, it was at one time the highest-grossing film series based on a video game.

The movies, loosely inspired by Capcom’s survival horror games, follow Alice (Mila Jovovich), a former security operative who battles the undead and tries to destroy the Umbrella Corporation, the obscenely powerful pharmaceutical company she used to work for.

Following an outbreak of one of Umbrella’s genetically engineered bio-weapons, the T-Virus, which causes mutations and quickly turns everyone into mindless, flesh-eating zombies, Alice joins forces with other survivors to take down Umbrella once and for all.

This film series is fascinating to me. The mythology is borderline incomprehensible, but even still, there are things to love about it.

So, please join me in revisiting what might be the bloodiest, most fun, bonkers, and ridiculous series I’ve ever watched.

Ranked from best to worst, this is “Resident Evil.”

1. ‘Resident Evil: Afterlife’ (2010)

The thing about this series is that no matter how bad any one entry might be, it still made an insane amount of money at the box office. And honestly, thank God for that because if “Resident Evil: Extinction” was as successful as it deserved, we would have never gotten the quasi-“Matrix” spin-off that is “Resident Evil: Afterlife.”

I may have been slightly influenced by watching “Extinction” directly before this, but I have to say, “Afterlife” is a certified banger. Does it make any sense? No, but who cares! It’s fun!

In this film, Paul W. S. Anderson returns to the director’s seat after relinquishing control to Russell Mulcahy, as we see Alice and her army of clones attack the underground Umbrella HQ in Tokyo. After trying and failing to kill the Umbrella Big Bad Albert Wesker (Shawn Roberts), Alice is stripped of her superpowers.

After Alice reconnects with Claire Redfield (Allie Larter), they happen upon a group of survivors holed up in a abandoned prison in L.A. Together with Luther (Boris Kodjoe), a former baskeball star, and Claire’s brother, Chris (Wentworth Miller), Alice and the others attempt to escape the city and board Arcadia, a cargo ship that claims to offer food and shelter from the virus.

This movie is perhaps the most tonally consistent of the whole series. It knows exactly what it is and it commits to it. Anderson establishes the film’s self-aware, Matrix-style action right from the beginning. “Afterlife” knows how silly it is. That’s kind of the point.

For the first time, Anderson does a decent job of developing the characters not played by his wife. I like Alice a lot, but she’s the only one who ever gets to do anything fun. In “Afterlife,” Anderson manages to redeem Claire, a staple character from games, by having her actually do something. She still doesn’t have much of a personality, but she does have two prominent action scenes that are really cool. Luther is also a fantastic addition to the series. Kodjoe’s performance is warm, sincere, and personable, in a way most Resident Evil characters never get the chance to be.

“Afterlife” can’t escape all of Anderson’s most annoying isms, though. Per usual, the movie doesn’t do anything with the set up from the last film. Anderson throws away that premise in the first couple minutes of the movie. The characters are mostly just fodder for killing.

However, “Afterlife” is a breeze to watch. It’s well-paced, striking visually, and has the best action scenes of the series.

2. ‘Resident Evil’ (2002)

The original “Resident Evil” has more in common with generic action movies of the early 2000s than with the game’s defining survival horror roots. There are no puzzles to solve, no ammunition to ration. There’s just a lot of gore, cheesy dialogue, and a laser room that inspired the one from Resident Evil: 4.

In this film, someone steals the T-Virus from the Hive, the Umbrella Corruption’s genetic research facility underneath Raccoon City. With the Hive contaminated, the facility’s artificial intelligence, the Red Queen, seals the Hive and kills everyone inside to prevent the virus from infecting the outside world.

Then, we meet Alice for the first time, after she wakes up in an abandoned mansion, with no memory of how she got there. It is soon revealed that she, along with a partner Spence (James Purefoy) were tasked with protecting the Hive. Together with other employees, Alice wanders the labyrinthine facility in search of a way out, encountering zombies and booby traps along the way.

This movie has a low-budget feel and its gruesome kills and production design of the Hive reminds me of the 2001 remake of “13 Ghosts.” “Resident Evil” is definitely more of a straight forward horror film than its sequels.

3. ‘Resident Evil: Retribution’ (2012)

This movie is of very little consequence and has nothing to do with anything, but it still looks good and is fun so there’s that.

After being attacked the Umbrella Corporation while onboard the Arcadia, Alice once again finds herself trapped in an underwater Umbrella facility, being interrogated by Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory), a former ally who was captured and brainwashed by Umbrella following “Apocalypse.”

A former Umbrella operative Ada Wong (Li Bingbing) then breaks into the facility to rescue Alice at the behest of Wesker, for some very vague and silly reasons. Wong and Alice then fight their way through the facility, along with prolific aura farmer Leon S. Kennedy (Johann Urb) and Luthor (Boris Kodjoe), who is alive somehow (yay!).

I’m not kidding when I say this movie starts three separate times. It has three beginning sequences that take up half the runtime. So, it feels like we’re spinning our wheels for the majority of the movie and by the end, it doesn’t feel like we’ve accomplished much.

As usual, Anderson takes the cliff hanger from the last film and does nothing with it. However, I did enjoy seeing characters from the previous movies, especially Carols (Oded Fehr), but as usual, they did nothing interesting.

It also feels like Anderson was forced to include popular video game characters like Leon and Ada. But out of spite, he makes them the flattest characters ever and are forbidden from doing anything to upstage Alice. Bringing Jill back was also a missed opportunity because again, she, surprise, surprise, she does nothing.

The end of this movie is so ridiculous I honestly have no choice but to respect it.

4. ‘Resident Evil: Apocalypse’ (2004)

This movie is perhaps the most tonally consistent with the games, but unfortunately, it’s also boring and has very few redeeming qualities.

We pick up right where we left off (shocking, I know), where a team of Umbrella personnel are investigating the T-Virus leak from the first film. This goes poorly, they’re killed by zombies, and the virus spreads to nearby Racoon City. In response, Umbrella quarantines the city and evacuates a few people they deem worth saving, including Dr. Ashford (Jared Harris).

Alice has escaped the hospital and makes her way to Racoon City, where she bands together with other people left behind including former S.T.A.R.S officer Jill Valentine and Carlos Olivera. The video game villain Nemesis makes an appearance in this movie and this is also the first appearance of Dr. Isaacs ( Ian Glen).

Also, crucially, Alice was experimented on by Umbrella, so she is basically a superhero now. The movie spends most of its time showing us how cool she is. That’s basically it.

5. ‘Resident Evil: Extinction’ (2007)

Five years after the t-virus spread throughout Racoon City, it has now infected the whole world. Umbrella is still around somehow and is continuing to make Alice clones for a project called Project Alice. Real Alice, on the other hand, wanders around the barren land, fighting zombies with her superpowers, and uncovering information about a possibly uninfected place in Alaska. Meanwhile, Alice meets up with Claire Redfield, who is escorting a convoy of people and children through the wasteland along with Carlos and L.J. (Mike Epps).

This movie tries really hard to be “Mad Max” for some reason and completely abandons the visual style of the previous movies for the dusty wasteland of the California dessert. The dialogue is especially abysmal in this one and if you don’t watch it, you wouldn’t miss much.

The supporting cast, as is the norm with this series, are a bunch of non-characters, who do nothing interesting aside from die.

Also, Alice has a very “I will not be the last Jedi”-coded moment that made me giggle.

6. ‘Resident Evil: The Final Chapter’ (2017)

As the finale of a series that spans 15 years, “Resident Evil: The Final Chapter,” is disappointing in every way imaginable. It’s obsession with tying up lose ends and bringing the story to a satisfying conclusion, leads the film to Frankenstein a deeper lore out of jagged pieces from other movies, that is not in any way convincing.

After being given her powers back by Wesker and we’re left contemplating this huge final battle with everyone in D.C., this movie picks up after that battle, where everyone is die except, Alice, of course.

And also, Wesker apparently didn’t give her back her powers. But she’s still the most badass, capable person in the movie so it doesn’t matter.

Claire is back, but not Chris because who knows (his absence is never explained.) Alice and Claire make one last stand with other survivors in Racoon City, where Dr. Isaacs is leading any army of the undead.

This movie is silly and makes no sense, and tries super hard to convince us that Anderson had this grand plan from the very beginning, and it was all leading somewhere. It doesn’t work.

Also, the Anderson’s editing in this one is more disorienting than usual, and since it was made in an era when we forgot how to light scenes, everything is so dark, I barely know what’s going on.

“The Final Chapter” wants to go out with a bang, but it barely makes any sound at all.

But hey, the laser room is back!

In Frame is a weekly arts and entertainment column focusing on everything from pop culture and new movie releases to the local arts and culture found right here in NEPA. News reporter Margaret Roarty contributes to this column.

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