4/10 Netflix’s first foray into the “Resident Evil” universe begins with this animated series and next year will be followed by a live action series. In honor of the release of “Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City”, I figured I would check out this four-episode series to see how it holds up. After watching all six “Resident Evil” films from the worst director working today, Paul W.S. Anderson, I thought that anything would be an improvement. Despite this series not being any good, I would still rather watch this then that six movie waste of time. One big problem right off the bat was this this series is four episodes with each episode lasting roughly 25 minutes. If we do some simple math, this entire series could have been laid out in less than two hours AKA the length of a feature film. Why this content was made a season of a show instead of just a single movie still baffles me. There is no reason to take this singular story and break it up like they did. That being said, the first two episodes are much stronger than the second two. I was instantly impressed with how visually stunning this is. As someone who grew up playing video games as a kid and remembering their graphics and how dated they look by today’s standards, to see these cut-scene esque graphics fill the entire running time and how far the technology has come in 25 years is truly a sight to behold. The voice cast was strong and the score worked well with everything unfolding. The cinematography and lighting really stood out. Since this is animated and you don’t have to worry about natural vs. artificial lighting, shadows, reflections and other problems you deal with in a real life, live action shoot, the animators were able to craft the lighting any way they saw fit and they did a tremendous job. The action, particularly in the first couple of episodes was exciting and I loved that they embraced the violent, gory, grotesque nature of the video games. Despite the production values, casting and strong start, the story begins to fall apart by the end, becoming predictable and silly. While I appreciated the creative team having the guts to kill off characters, so many characters who should have died didn’t and some characters who did die had easily avoidable deaths. I didn’t connect with any of the characters on a deep level and part of that probably had something to do with the short episodes and spending more time on the action/set up/pay off as opposed to a deeper story and character development. The “good guy” characters made some absolutely baffling decisions and by the end of the final episode, I was agreeing with the villain and not understanding the motives of our protagonists, which is not a good thing. While visually stunning and a well-paced binge watch that won’t take up too much of your time, “Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness” should have been a movie with another few passes being done on the script before getting greenlit. Let’s hope “Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City” and next year’s live action series fare better.
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