Resident Evil: Degeneration (2008)

Directed by: Makoto Kamiya | 97 minutes | action, horror, animation, adventure | Original voice cast: Paul Mercier, Alyson Court Laura Bailey, Steven Blum, Roger Craig Smith, Michelle Ruff, Crispin Freeman, Michael Sorich, Salli Saffioti

Every self-respecting gamer with a preference for senseless digital violence has played a ‘Resident Evil’ game. The survival horror series is still immensely popular and the game world is eagerly waiting for part five. Hollywood also sees bread in the zombie saga. Meanwhile, three feature films have been released around the stumbling undead infested town of Raccoon City, the highlight of which was the visual contribution of fashion model Milla Jovovich.

As mindless action movies, the ‘Resident Evil’ movies were reasonably successful, but it never got as exciting or spectacular as in the games. The Japanese game maker Capcom watched with dismay as a bunch of Americans took off with the franchise and turned nail-biting horror into a bizarre violence fest without intelligence. Created by the creators of the series themselves, Resident Evil: Degeneration picks up where the games left off. The biggest difference between this Japanese production and the Hollywood vehicles is the design. ‘Degeneration’ is a computer-animated film.

The story picks up where the third game ended. Raccoon City has been bombed to the ground and seven years after the city’s fall, almost everyone has forgotten the infernal scenes that transpired in the cursed settlement. Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield survived the zombie plague, but are haunted by nightmares. The zombies have not yet been destroyed and soon another plague breaks out. That’s going to explode again! The first thing you notice about ‘Resident Evil: Degeneration’ are the hopelessly dated graphics. The movie looks very outdated. The facial animations in particular are laughably bad. It’s like watching a cutscene from a five year old computer game. The characters’ movements also look unnatural. The emotions of the characters don’t come across because of the wooden and bad dubbing. a huge turn-off, especially when you consider that the main characters are already quite colorless figures. Kennedy and Redfield are anonymous characters who evoke just as much sympathy as the average zombie.

The story is also not very interesting and requires prior knowledge. You must have played some games to understand all the references. Not such an issue in itself, but the brackish appearance makes it difficult to keep the focus. ‘Resident Evil: Degeneration’ is dull, static and hopelessly dated. Waste of time, even for diehard fans.