The story picks up a little before the last one left off, to help introduce the new characters and set the scene. Racoon City has fallen foul of a viral outbreak. The T-Virus is a medical breakthrough with massive military applications. Its formula can reanimate the dead cells of a body and bring the subject back to life. Albeit in a very basic motor functions, I just want to eat lots, kinda way. But it serves a purpose for some. It was being researched in The Hive, an underground research facility owned by Umbrella, a very influential commercial company. The virus escaped into the city with enough warning for Umbrella to evacuate its most precious researchers. Dr Ashford (Jared Harris, B Monkey 1998, Mr Deeds 2002), inventor of the T-virus, is one of these people. His young daughter is also on the list. Thanks to a car accident his daughter is left stuck in the city, which quickly falls into chaos as dead people amass and kill and rise to kill again.

The story is taken from the hugely popular Resident Evil playstation games, of which there are many. However, Paul WS Anderson’s pen does stray from the games in some places. It’s very easy to draw comparisons with Escape from New York (1981) because of the very similar isolated city and rescue themes, but the overall story does offer more than just this. The material mostly by passes the second game and uses the third as its core. The Nemesis is handled well and is thankfully not overused. There are a number of attractive locations, including the finales curved glass skyscrapers, making good use of outdoor spaces. It captures the scale of the event well visually. The undead dogs were again one of the best moments, there is something particularly fearsome about these speedy killers. But I would like to have seen more from the S.T.A.R.S. team. They were heavily referenced, but essentially played no part in the story.

Unfortunately despite some good sequences the first half of the film feels rather untidy and disjointed until the last half hour, which brings all the elements together quite nicely. I also thought there was a potential plot hole in the Umbrella plan to conceal the incident as a nuclear power plant meltdown nearly 24 hours after the outbreak. In today’s world of modern communications I would expect the story to easily leak out, especially as we see newspapers with the headline ‘The Dead Walk’ on them. They are asking us to believe Umbrella has a ridiculously large influence over the United States.

The characters don’t get the chance to fully develop beyond their stereotypical roles. Dr Ashford is a good man whose ideas have been used for evil. Jill Valentine is a renegade cop with her own sense of the law. There is Carlos, a regular macho special forces type. Major Cain (Thomas Kretschmann, Blade 2 2002) is the obvious and, for these movies, necessary bad guy in a suit from Umbrella. Angie Ashford (Sophie Vavasseur in her second film) is the only real heroine; surprising in such a messed up world, but I guess they’re all dead. Oh, and LJ is he glaringly obvious and unnecessary comic relief. Although surprisingly amusing. I’m tempted to think that the lack of any character development is a good thing as it would probably prove disappointing and it helps shave the running time down to a nice action packed hour and half. Anyhow, it’s not a film about people. It’s about dead people.

When I look at the overall production crew they seem to have largely come from numerous smaller and foreign films that have not had proper exposure. This is even Alexander Witt’s first stab at direction. He has previously done a lot of second unit director of photography work on famous movies like Black Hawk Down (2001) and XXX (2002) and here proves competent in the job. They are all still trying to prove themselves in some respect and this will be a good stepping stone for them, being the largest film for most to date.

All in all the film has an impressive look and delivers on the action front although not so much on the horror front, and no matter how much action there is it never seems to befit its grandiose title of apocalypse. It’s definitely enjoyable but not one that’s going to strain your brain. And so long as you’re not trying to second guess it, it may give you a few surprises. Milla Jovovich for the most part held it all together, largely because she has the only truly interesting character and room for some real acting. I’m still interested in where they are going with the story but may not fork out to go see it at the cinema.