Written by John Scalzo  on January 26, 2009

DVD Review: You gotta shoot 'em in the head.

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With the Resident Evil film action film series most likely over and done with, Capcom has taken the idea of movies based on Resident Evil back in-house and created the new computer generated feature Resident Evil: Degeneration. Degeneration does away with the ruined Mad Max-like world and Milla Jovovich's Alice for a tale that is actually considered Resident Evil 4.5 by the folks at Capcom.

The movie follows the further adventures of Claire Redfield and Leon Kennedy (who has somehow morphed into Jack Bauer over the years). After the events of Resident Evil 4, Leon has become a member of a special government agency dealing with the zombie problem while Claire has joined an activist group called TerraSave that is trying to help stop the spread of the T-Virus. The group's latest efforts involve putting pressure on a Senator who they feel is holding back a vaccine for the T-Virus.



The two survivors of Racoon City meet again after a terrorist releases the T-Virus in an airport (and on an incoming airplane). From there the story shifts to Dr. Frederic Downing, a researcher for WillPharma, a drug company that has developed a vaccine for the T-Virus, which soon becomes the target of a terrorist named Curtis Miller...

As an extension of the Resident Evil universe, Degeneration is a nice little treat. The airport battle is filled with some nice action setpieces and plenty of zombie carnage. Another nice touch is that Paul Mercier and Alyson Court, the voice actors for Leon and Claire from the games, reprise their roles in Degeneration. Unfortunately, this leads into the movie's biggest problem: it's too much like a video game.

The rest of the voice actors turn in performances that could charitably be called stilted. The stilted dialogue is not helped any by the script, which painfully shows its roots as a foreign language production. Also, the characters move in a very unatural way that just looks fake. To top it all off, there is very little in the way of eye-popping CGI visuals here. The graphics look like they could have been pulled straight out of a game.

But that doesn't change the fact that the whole movie is still so fun. The entire second half of the movie doesn't even make any sense (even die hard Resident Evil fans will be picking apart the plot holes the second its over), but then Leon takes on a character mutated by the G-Virus and you can't help but smile. Especially since the mutant looks just like the form Birkin takes after injecting himself in Resident Evil 2. For all its faults, the whole movie will do that to you.

Resident Evil: Degeneration is what it is: 96 minutes of video game cutscenes without an actual game attached. Fans of the series will want to check it out (especially since the plot leads right into Resident Evil 5), but even fans of the series will be left scratching their heads over the stilted dialogue, unnatural character motions and non-sensical plot.

On a scale of one-to-five Resident Evil eye closeups, Resident Evil: Degeneration rates a...

3/5

from Amazon.