THE DEAD TIMES

RATING:

ZOMBIE RATING:

DESCRIPTION:

A desperate group of survivors from the dreaded Raccoon City incident travel across the Nevada desert in the hope of reuniting with the rest of humanity. Upon hearing of a possible sanctuary in Alaska, they hightail it northward but, as soon as Alice joins the ramshackle caravan, they quickly become embroiled with the fight against the evil Umbrella corporation.

MY VERDICT:

This one is easily my least favourite of the action-heavy Resident Evil movie series. The main reason for my distain is that the story and environs are so separated from the game series from which the movie franchise draws its inspiration it makes it hard to watch. For one, the entire world has been overrun with Zombies, turning the Las Vegas area - where the story takes place - into a desert wasteland; fans of the games should note that none of this relates to the RE universe in any meaningful way, forcing the fairly unique tale of conspiracies, viruses and genetic experimentation into a bog-standard Zombie-apocalypse showdown. The evil Umbrella corporation is there but they mostly take a side-role in this movie as we follow the quest of Dr. Alexander Isaacs to recapture Alice so her amazing bond with the T-virus can be studied. There is also a heavy emphasis put on cloning and Alice's 'psychic' abilities which seems a bit unnecessary and silly to me. Another major flaw is that the sound recording is far out of balance with spoken-lines being whisper quiet and sound effects like arrow-bolts into cars and crackling fire effects being ear-quakingly loud; just plain frustrating as there is a fair amount of dialogue used to explore the minor details of the plot. Still, it's not all doom and gloom as the same high-flying action the film series is known for continues and, when the survivors come across Isaacs' Nevada outpost, I love the huge number of Zombies crowded up against the gates, drawn by the only obvious source of human prey left in the region. I also like the idea of Dr. Isaacs capturing and trying to tame the infected Zombies - to teach them how to do simple tasks so they can be used as a crude workforce. It does not workout, obviously, leading to a new breed of Zombie but it is nice to see a film's characters attempt the same 'capture and educate' policy as used by the bunker-dwellers in legendary Zombie movie, Day of the Dead.