spindizzy | Pretty sure it's the OTHER super cursed town that's supposed to have sirens (Reply)

I went to see the new Resident Evil movie twice, because of who I am as a person. Somehow my friends, who know better, actually agreed to let me drag them along! Despite

splend's endless question marks over how the previous Resident Evil movieverse ended! And then it hit streaming services like a month later as well, because the apocalypse is fucking wild!

TL;DR Jill Valentine is great, 10/10, favourite character, she deserves to climb the guy from Black Sails like a tree; I guess the other storylines are there too?

Okay so fair warning: I've played one (1) level of a Resident Evil game (Outbreak?), because they're all too scary for me. I didn't watch a let's play of it until after I saw the film, so assume that any game-based canon went over my head. I basically assumed that anything that sounded like complete bollocks was from the games and no one's contradicted that yet!

I briefly considered watching the first two Resident Evil movies again, and then I remembered that Paul W. S. Anderson doesn't give a fuck about canon so why should I? Although due to me getting my filmmakers called Anderson confused, I did accidentally speak into being a world where Wes Anderson made the Resident Evil movies, and I refuse to imagine what that would look like.

OF COURSE Umbrella has an orphanage of future test subjects. Why WOULDN'T they have an orphanage of future test subjects. Like, I get the cult-y posters about Umbrella sheltering them from the storm, but also uh. It looks like it also has classrooms, which minimises the children's need to interact with the outside world and thus how many people are able to notice when kids go missing?????? (Also I don't know about 90s social care in America, but that seems like a suspiciously large amount of children who have no other family to take them in, I'm just saying.)

Young!Claire is completely unphased by Lisa Trevor. I am very phased by Lisa Trevor, in that I want to know what the hell Umbrella was doing when they stuck the face-hood on her. The most upsetting thing is the hair growing through the eyehole, okay, literally every other part of this I can deal with.

There was a brief moment where I was like "Aw, they got a kid with the same teeth as Ali Larter!" before I remembered a) she's not playing Claire in this one, and b) what the hell brain?!

Huh, feeding the audience Claire's backstory through a gross third party is honestly better than feeding it to us directly in a way that I can't put my finger on. I guess because she can roll her eyes at him and he can give all of the scepticism that an audience might feel to it?

Awww, what a good dog! You are 100% not going to make it to the end of the film!

The trucker whining that it's not his fault that he didn't see someone walking in front of his truck because he was sexually harrassing someone to the person he was sexually harrassing is a fucking bold move! Absolutely believable character choice, especially because Claire has to validate his feelings to get him to pay any attention.

Damn, dog didn't even make it through its first scene.

The woman staring silently at Claire from the woods: EFFECTIVE CREEPINESS.

SUPER 00S TEXT INTRO TO THE CITY YEAAAAAAAAAAAH

Also hey, look at that, actual acknowledgement that not everyone can afford to "just leave" when shit gets bad. And also how companies can just decimate towns when they decide to move away! I was gonna be like "Oh, why are they moving?" and then I remembered the whole. Y'know. Leaking the T-virus into the water supply for literal months thing.

And I'm JUST SAYING that there are a surprising amount of Umbrella zombies at the Spencer Mansion considering this is supposed to be the skeleton crew. What did you all do?!

All I know about Leon Kennedy is that he's voiced by Matt Mercer in the CGI films and he has no genre savvy. Possibly he's not as cool as he thinks he is, which explains why he's EXTREMELY out of his depth in this.

JILL VALENTINE IS SO PRETTY AND TOUGH THOUGH. LOOK AT HER. LOOK AT THAT CURL OF A SMILE. WHAT A MASTERPIECE.

Everyone going "JESUS FUCKING CHRIST VALENTINE DON'T SHOOT THE KETCHUP WITH A REAL GUN!!!" brings me joy.

splend has pointed out that Valentine, Wesker, and Claire are all played by British actors and this still amuses me. Wesker's played by Billy Bones from Black Sails! He's like eight foot tall and from fuckin LEICESTERSHIRE!

His face as he pulls the suction cup off his face is very "I don't know what I expected" and I love that for all of us.

See! No one is allowed to explain their own backstory! Which I guess is making every scene serve two purposes, as it establishes that every tertiary character is a douchecanoe.

WHO REPORTED A BODY UP THERE. GENUINELY, TRULY, WHO THE FUCK WAS ALIVE AND PHONING THE POLICE UP AT THE SPENCER MANSION WHEN THIS CITY IS A GHOST TOWN AND UMBRELLA IS SUPER SECRETIVE ABOUT EVERYTHING?! I'd assume it was Claire calling in the hit and run, except that she only reports it to Chris!

"I wouldn't go there. She's only got eyes for the big fella and I don't fancy your chances against him." I mean, yes, they felt the need to say that Jill has a crush on Wesker which would make you think that maybe they weren't confident in the actors ability to sell it, but also: LOOK AT THEM. And the fact that the waitress at the diner is spreading this gossip makes me think it's common knowledge and everyone is just ignoring it as best they can. Compare to Chris' crush on Jill, which they also needed to verbally highlight so we didn't miss it, but which has no other evidence.

Suggesting that someone go to see a medical professional about their literal bleeding eyes? In the US? Pretty sure that's illegal.

There are some really random bits and bobs in this movie where I'm 90% sure it's bad CGI, but also am I just assuming it's CGI because it's bad. ... That bird is bad CGI though. Pretty sure.

I went "Oh hey, Raccoon City's on a train line, cool!" and it took me until the next day to remember that the climax of the film is getting to a train.

"It probably wasn't as bad as it seemed, right?" says harrasser who hit a woman WITH A TRUCK. Dude had the dog bite coming, you cannot change my mind.

Important question: did the kid eat their own fingers or did the woman eat them?

The picture of Chris and Birkin looks so badly done. Which could well be because global pandemic means lets minimise how many times we have the cast in the same room, but – it's not a good shopjob my dudes.

Claire roasting Chris for waxing his chest amuses me for absolutely no reason. ALTHOUGH I'm very confused about the timeline here, because Claire and Chris were what, eleven? When she ran away? And they're late twenties now? So I'm assuming the timeline here that Claire ran away when they were kids but still showed up in Raccoon City sometimes, because that's what makes the most sense, but then I don't know how long she's been gone.

"You realise I'm a cop right?"
"Yeah. You need better security."

"What the fuck's a chatroom?"

WHY DOES CLAIRE HAVE A CONSPIRACY VIDEO TAPE FROM A GUY SHE MET ON THE INTERNET. HOW OFTEN DOES SHE BRING CONSPIRACY THEORIES TO CHRIS LIKE A CAT BRINGING A DEAD BIRD. Seriously did her internet buddy snailmail her a literal actual video tape?????

I think Welcome to Raccoon City feels more claustrophobic than any of the other Resident Evil films. Everything is either narrow corridors, dark as hell, or full of smoke; anything could be happening and you can't see it! I think it helps that the focus is on a Raccoon City that's crumbling into urban decay, rather than the functioning big city vibes that RE2 had – we see very little of the city, which makes everything else feel cramped by association.

The little girl having a nightmare that WASN'T plot related, whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat. And "I'd never let anything hurt you" says man who is about an hour of movie time away from attempting to murder his daughter.

"Do you promise there's no monsters?" "I promise." Well you're about to be disappointed the pair of you.

WHY DO YOU EVEN HAVE AIR RAID SIRENS. ARE THEY HURRICANE SIRENS? WHAT IS THE POINT OF SIRENS WHEN NO ONE KNOWS WHAT THEY MEAN.

Chris is not a good brother, but he's not the worst. Solid C average.

"Lockpick the door when you leave."

Claire referring to Chris as "big brother" feels like a 90s 4Kids dub thing.

ITCHY TASTY

I T C H Y

T A S T Y

Interesting thing: people don't immediately become zombies! Presumably due to the way the infection is done this time; it's a slow infection that becomes or passes for a chronic illness? But people don't seem to die of it, they just sorta... Decay...? Which thematically ties into Raccoon City decaying, I get it. It's just interesting to see who gets the fast transformation (the dog, the trucker, anyone in the Spencer Mansion, maybe some of the people in the prison), and who gets the slow one.

Someone who is smarter than me please do the meta analysis of the T-virus in the original films (fast acting, violent, serve your capitalist overlords even in death) versus this one (slow poisoning, we'll never know if it could be treated because the US healthcare system is a nightmare, breaks you down slowly). I don't know if there's a way to do it that doesn't feed into covid conspiracy theories, but if there is I would read the shit out of it.

... Whoever decided to make a film about a fatal virus running rampant while in the middle of a global pandemic is either an arsehole or a genius and I don't know which.

She touched the bike.

I mentioned I watched a Let's Play of the first Resident Evil, right? Because I got to the bit in the Let's Play where Richard is eaten by a giant snake and was like "OH, THAT EXPLAINS JILL ASKING WHETHER HE'D RATHER BE SWALLOWED WHOLE BY A GIANT SNAKE OR EATEN ALIVE BY A GREAT WHITE SHARK!" Because honestly: these games apparently do not and have never made sense.

"I plan on dying peacefully in my sleep, in bed, snuggled up in Wesker's big burly arms" gets instant agreement, but the idea that Vickers might have missed the team? NO. THAT IS TOO FAR.

I love the casual background storytelling that's accomplished with the bulletin boards FULL of missing posters. splend mentioned that it'd be a perfect place to some callbacks to the other films, but I've not gone digging to see if that's what they did.

"... until his death in the year of WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING HERE LEON?"

Irons is the woooooooooooooooorst. The shift in his tone and the panic people show when he's actually focused on them: STRESSFUL. TOO FAMILIAR. MOSTLY STRESSFUL.

Oh my god a fucking PalmPad? That is ANCIENT TECHNOLOGY.

It occurs to me that if he actually gave a shit about his family, he probably would have sent them out of town while he collected his work. Or he would have sent them on to the train instead of making them wait in the lab, if he didn't trust that they'd make it past the checkpoints. But either of those would require him to have a shred of empathy, and we've already established that Umbrella specifically screen that out of their staff!

I think that this apocalypse has officially proven that we can't recognise people from just a slash of their eyes.

Wow, it's SUPER LEGIT that they hustled Claire out in the middle of the fucking night without waking anyone else! Definitely doesn't suggest that kids in this orphanage wake up to find their bunkmates have disappeared on a regular basis!

Listen, as someone who owned multiple headphones in the 90s: I refuse to believe that Leon was tired enough being asleep + wearing headphones was enough to NOT HEAR THE FUCKING TRUCK CRASHING AND EXPLODING, but the gunshot woke him up! No! I do not believe in this!

Dude strolling into the police station while on fire WAS pretty cool though.

Irons is WAY too calm about all of this mess, which suggests to me that he knew some of what was going on in town.

Umbrella cut the phonelines too? WOW. No one is allowed to contact the outside world to explain there's a problem, which suggests that they knew there were people still of sound mind and/or body in the city. Also omg Irons just casually packing up and bailing out without warning anyone! While just leaving Leon alone in a strange city where he's going to be eaten by zombies!

"Radio in that we found Bravo team's jeep," he says, not mentioning the damn thing is upside down.

NIGHTMARE BIRD, NIGHTMARE BIRD!

"Really?"
"What?"

THIS MANSION IS SUPER LEGIT AND EVERYONE SHOULD FEEL SAFE FOLLOWING A BLOOD TRAIL INTO IT. ESPECIALLY WITH ALL THAT BLOOD ON THE FLOOR. AND THE WALLS.

Clearly the problem here is that they didn't have Barry here to be MVP.

Splitting the party is fine, right?

The shakycam of Irons in his car feels really natural and works for the panic situation! Like, the swinging between him and the shooting feels like a passenger viewpoint and I kinda like it.

sithe assures me that the gas mask guy is actually plot relevant, but I've no memory of why.

Do you think they followed the flames, or that they know that Leon is one of the like six uninfected meatbags left in town? Because either way I am mildly wigged by the trying to press through the bars and peeling off their own skin and hair.

THE DOG SURVIVED THE EXPLOSION! But is not on fire likes its human. Also this section is real fucking creepy! Really effectively done! Don't know why the lights are going out sequentially beyond "It's creepier like that" though. Like, the shakycam could be excessive, but again, I think it works here. Especially when they're faking out whether they're using te dog's POV or not. (Respect to how gross the textures on the dog are, btw.)

"What's happening to them?" "Clearly some bad shit."

"I'll explain in a minute," Wesker lies, like a liar.

I feel like a lamp that ugly has to be a plot point. Gotta be. Because the alternative was someone looking at a really ugly lamp and going "Yes, that's exactly what I'd expect to find in our fake mansion!"

That slow shot of the guy slowly turning around with blood on his face: griiiiiiiiiiiiiiim. I recognise it now, it's apparently a whole iconic Thing, but also: GRIM.

Yes Chris, leave Richard alone in the house that definitely only contained ONE cannibal.

Farewell Richard, your very poised body language, and your weird little hair fwip. We hardly knew ye.

I have no idea how Chris or Richard made it as far as they did without being ripped limb from limb, tbh.

Vickers: *plays snake on duty because he is not being paid enough for this shit*

This film really telegraphs its jump scares, but the opposite way round to where I expect them to be. Which is better than Prometheus, where all of the jumpscares were telegraphed and still made me fucking jump! It just kinda surprised me.

Wesker having to play a piano to open a secret entrance cracked me up, because yes! That is the tier of bullshit I expect from Resident Evil!

"How do you know so much about guns?" Well you see, I have Player Character Backstory number three...

Okay, Leon, I gotta ask: you've never been in the armoury, and you've never been into the cells. What have you been DOING all this time?!

"He okay?" "Him? Oh yeah no, he's fucking fine. Who doesn't cough up a little blood on the floor when they're feeling sick?"

Leon you are SO FUCKING BAD AT YOUR JOB.

"I'm done taking chances" says man who's about to get eaten by his cellmate.

Does Claire know that the zombie got up again? Or does she just think that Leon went and shot the shit out of a corpse?

Jill and Wesker leaning their foreheads against each other's when he's a good head and shoulders taller than her is so good. Look! Intimacy! Caring!

Wesker is no longer a weird scientist, he's just a money-hungry muscle dude? I mean, I'm okay with this! Just somewhat confused.

He doesn't try to convince Jill to come with him, and I don't know if I'm supposed to take that as him not caring about Jill, or knowing damn well that she'd say no. But in his best case scenario, they would have all split off and he would have disappeared, right? With the optional extra of his entire team dying when the city detonates. ... I think Jill being so angry at him makes more sense if she knows that he's leaving them to die, but at this point I think the main thing she knows is that Vickers is dead and they have four people MIA, not that they have a zombie problem or a timer.

The motion of Wesker drawing his gun and dragging Jill out of the way: *chef's kiss*

Okay, Irons clearly knows that Umbrella are going to do SOMETHING to destroy the town, he just didn't rank high enough for advance warning.

I keep thinking that the lullaby is going to turn into It's a Small World.

sithe: It's so weird that they made Irons a good guy in this.
Me: I don't think he was supposed to be a good guy, what with the whole leaving people to die twice and taking money to let Umbrella make kids disappear.
sithe: I mean in the grand scale of things I feel like "Serial Killer who is into human taxidermy" to "Slightly scummy coward who you are meant to feel bad for when he is being menaced by dogs" is still a pretty big promotion.

Man, the CGI was... Not great. Like, the licker was really creepy when it was just a shadow making the lights shake! Excellent work building tension, especially with Lisa trying to give a warning! I just wasn't a fan of it when it was actually visible. My least (most?) charitable interpretation was that it was an effort to match Resident Evil's 2002 level of CGI, and I should not feel like that's actually a valid interpretation.

Seriously did they move all the employees out and leave Lisa to run riot? Or did she escape when all of the Umbrella employees at the mansion got zombified?

I CAN'T BELIEVE THEY LEFT LISA TO FUCKING DIE. SHE HELPED YOU SKIP LIKE EIGHT BULLSHIT PUZZLES AND KILLED A LICKER FOR YOU! AND YOU JUST! LEFT HER! Which I assume is because they didn't want the actress to have to spend more time in those prosthetics than they had to, but COME ON!

I fucking hate strobe lighting, but the fight scenes in the manor that are lit only by gunfire and a frantic sputtering lighter? SO TENSE. SO DELICIOUS. I have no idea if those jumpscares would work in meetspace where he'd presumably feel a zombie leaning on his shoulder, but visually cool!

I don't know how Chris got out from under that table to a place where Jill could rescue him, but I'll take it. Although I notice that she doesn't ask about Richard, which seems like an oversight. Maybe she could just infer that Chris would be in less of a state if Richard was still there with him ?shotgun?

I'd say WHO LEAVES THEIR PROJECTOR OF WEIRD SHIT SET UP LIKE THAT but honestly it's me. I would do that. Also, appreciate the sheer confidence Umbrella had that nothing and nobody was getting out of this city alive that they just left it all there. Why worry about moving shit you'd have to hide anyway, right?

Birken brought his wife and daughter into a room with the zombie he's doing an autopsy on. What the fuck. I know I made a point earlier about how he doesn't have the empathy that the universe gave an egg sandwich, but seriously! He doesn't think he's doing anything wrong, he doesn't think that this is objectionable in any way, he just rattles right along. I don't feel like we actually got his motives at any point, did we? I remember the "What were you doing down here?"/"God's work" exchange feeling very out of the blue, but I don't know if it was set up and I missed it.

I thought Wesker shooting the evil scientist was a deliberate thing, but it doesn't seem like it was? Although Wesker is very firmly in camp "Look what you made me do," so I'm not giving him a get out of being a bad guy free card for both murders.

I appreciate the film makers understanding what I'm about and giving Jill a scene where she shoots the person who betrayed her/her team and then immediately tries to save him so that he can escape with them. Content that I'm here forrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

"Jesus, Valentine, you and that fucking gun."

The progression of time in this movie is arbitrary bullshit. I'm pretty sure if these times were accurate, Wesker would have been walking through a tunnel for an hour and Chris and Jill wouldn't have time to catch up.

I assume the thing with the nightmare twins is a game reference that I just did not get at all.

The effects on evil scientist guy are... Not great. Like, I appreciate he has all of the development and characterisation of a potato, but I think going straight to "Allow me to villanously monologue about how much Chris FUCKING SUCKS while extra eyeballs erupt out of me!" is a bit of a jump.

Everyone's emotional and moral payoff is shooting the mediocre white man who betrayed them and I support that.

How is this clown immune to being shot in the head when every other zombie isn't?

"This is really nice but I think I broke some ribs."

"Rookie?" "Yeah, I'm as surprised as you are."

Ah, I see! Leon's true purpose in this film is to be the guy who knows how to drive a train.

"We're gonna get out of here," says woman with no genre savvy.

"I may have scratched the paint on your bike."

Q: Hey Susan how mad are you that Jill was shoved out of the way for the final boss fight?"
A: Don't fucking speak to me.

THIS MONSTER DOESN'T LOOK GOOD, OKAY. I RESPECT THAT BOTH REDFIELDS GOT TO DO IT SOME DAMAGE, AND THAT IT HAS BIG WEAKPOINTS FOR MASSIVE DAMAGE, BUT ALSO: IT DOESN'T LOOK GOOD!

A ROCKET LAUNCHER? REALLY?!

"Found it in first class." Oh my fucking god Leon.

Welcome to Raccoon City gets a 2 on the Twister Scale of Flying Cows; there's only one cow and its flight is short, but it does definitely leave the ground.

I am kinda squinting at the staging choice of having Claire so far away from everyone else in the dramatic Walk Out Of Tunnel thing. Like. It's not a HEAVY squinting, it's just that someone made a choice about how these people were grouped, and having Claire be the only one not clustered in the group feels like it should be significant even if it's not.

Wesker freaking out inside a bodybag is really funny to me. Especially because THEY HAD TO PUT HIM IN THAT ON PURPOSE. They got his body out of the exploding mansion somehow, they did their Weird Science to bring him back, and then they stuffed him into a body bag and sat back to wait. It just makes me snicker okay, because I am a cruel and unkind person.

My "Wesker shows up and Jill gets to shoot him again fic" can all be canon compliant, fuck yeaaaaaaaaaaaah! Although now I'm gonna need to go on the wiki to find out what the actual fuck Wesker's deal is so I can write it. Ugggggggggggggh.

I love Ada Wong. That's it. That's the post. I want there to be a sequel just so Ada gets more screen time.

I don't know if I have an actual tl;dr except for "GIVE HANNAH JOHN-KAMEN ALL THE WORK SHE WANTS!" It's not the worst Resident Evil movie overall or that I've seen in the last three months! I'm informed by people who have actually played the games that Welcome to Raccoon City does a pretty good job of cramming RE1 and RE2 into one thing; I know literally nothing about any of the games that involve Claire, so I'm guessing that's what RE2 is. Does it actually feel like a lot of set-up, or am I just impatient because I was more interestd in the mansion branch of this story than the rest of it? Who could say.

... But it definitely needed more Jill Valentine.