Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (2021)

(Amazon Streaming, July 2022) I’m not sure I ever expected to praise Paul W. S. Anderson’s handling of the Resident Evil series, but here we are: stuck with a reboot of the franchise that reportedly sticks close to the lore of the video game series (don’t look at me—I haven’t yet played them) but can’t quite recapture the slickness of Anderson’s take on the previous six films. (Or rather three-and-a-half of the previous six films—I don’t like the entire series.)  Of course, Anderson’s penchant for crazy action sequences and high-tech glossy aesthetics matched mine far better than the darkly lit small-town horrors that writer-director Johannes Roberts prefers in adapting the games to film. (I won’t try to fool myself: Anderson pretty much went his own way on his series.)  Alas, the result is quite generic—it’s a succession of familiar moments, useless subplots and predictable plot turns. I regret that the film, shot near Sudbury (Ontario) in a wild addition to the Sudburypunk SF movement, doesn’t feature Sudbury as well as Toronto was showcased in Resident Evil: Annihilation—at best we get a quick fuzzy look at life in a small northern town but nothing more. The script feels rather routine, giving little to the actors. (I did like Hannah John-Kamen as the celebrated Jill Valentine, but she doesn’t have a lot to do here.)  The result is rather dull: familiar in all the wrong ways and barely scary enough to make an impression. If you’re a video game series fan, then have your fun—but for everyone else, this return to Raccoon City is an underwhelming dud. I may, on the other hand, order the Anderson film collection…