Resident Evil is a Capcom created game for the PlayStation that has fleshed out its own story, characters and tone throughout a total of over 14 games, a full live-action movie franchise and several other outings involving animated material and comics. While the franchise has been up and down throughout the years, no one can deny that as video games about zombies go, Resident Evil is easily one of the most recognised and the one that tried the hardest to steer clear from becoming generic. As a side piece to the games, a series of CG animated films were to be made to add some tissue to the game’s story and tie in elements within these films as a means of branching out its story, with four in total being made. The one in question today, Resident Evil Damnation was made in 2012, allegedly being a disconnected sequel from the previous film Degeneration and being connected to Resident Evil 6, which many consider one of the worst Resident Evil games of all time. Regardless, the film came out under the radar and was a tricky film to hear about. Special Agent Leon S Kennedy (voiced by Matthew Mercer) finds himself thrown into a warzone and goes against his superiors wishes as he believes that the Soviet Union are using biological weapons in their country’s civil war. Coming at odds with an old rival named Ada Wong (voiced by Courtenay Taylor) and a man with the ability to control the minds of the evolved zombies Lickers called Sasha (voiced by Dave Wittenberg), Leon has to face off against enemies alive and dead in order to stop the president of Russia, Svetlana Belikova (voiced by Wendee Lee) from using the virus to win the civil war. With a much heavier focus on espionage and political hierarchy than zombie apocalyptic shenanigans, the film is pretty hard to follow and even more dull to sit through. That with the boring and meatless characters, hoaky writing and mixed animation quality makes it a serviceable film for fans, but nothing for casual viewers.

What many people may be surprised about is that Resident Evil has tried to expand upon its own story several times to create a fleshed-out narrative through their entire lineup of games. While it can be incoherent and mixed around in various occurrences, it did tap into territories that kept it from becoming stale and predictable, adding a more goofy but creepy enough vibe to make things a bit more interesting than typical zombie stuff. Here, the film is either too complicated or too boring to the point where it is practically impossible to follow along with. With way too many talks about political struggles, strategic efforts, civil wars, and government corruption, there’s no time to let the characters or world breath and get adjusted, leaving the narrative feeling bloated with information yet no connect tissue to hold people’s interest. It’s not like the film is in foreign hands either; the writers for the film are veterans to the video games and the director, Makoto Kamiya, has used his limited resume to do work on animes, Godzilla films and animation effects, so these people appear to be the right choices, yet something still comes across as off. Resident Evil had a ton of exposition and medical talks, but it was held together with a basic premise; search through a mansion, discover a lab in the police station, survive the roaming zombie mutant, it had room to flesh out from the starting point. Here since the motivation of every character is pretty weak, nothing feels payed off or earned by its conclusion. With that said, the atmosphere and pace does have a glimmer of what the original games feel like; whenever it takes the time to let an action scene play out or allow for the environment to be creepy and dark, it works surprisingly well and effectively gets its point across much easier without any dialogue.

The characters from the games aren’t the most interesting people, but they are remembered fondly by fans and even newcomers alike for being simple yet likeable. While some familiar faces return, it doesn’t use them in very effective ways. Since the movie is so heavily focused on the information being delivered and not on having its characters develop and change, they feel like afterthoughts in their own film. With so little characters to focus on and with no idea of how to use them in the movie, every character in the film is largely forgettable. Leon is just a ton of one liners with no character, Ada Wong who should be a pretty hardcore assassin type seems useless in the whole film, the villain is pretty forgettable and the band of freedom fighters that Leon meets are pretty one-dimensional and boring. Sasha is a pretty boring side character, the comic relief named JD starts off really annoying yet mellows out by the end and mostly everybody is a bit off in the vocal department. Everyone’s voice actors feel like they are in an older video game with the stilted and cheesy delivery and almost robotic tone they hold throughout. People like Matthew Mercer have good voices but lack conviction, while people like Wendee Lee and Courtenay Taylor feel really miscast and flat.

Unlike most video games films, this is one of the few films that benefits from having a CG animated style. While the live-action franchise did continue making films despite the lack of appraisal, this style would be able to achieve what live action wouldn’t be able to; capture the quick fast-pace nature of its threat and its action. Despite being a zombie style story, the action in the games can range from standard shooting to wild crazy action film levels of insane, and CG can help with that. This leaves some of the action scenes looking pretty decent with the quicker movements and kinetic camera work allow for a more on-the-rails kind of experience. It allows for some nice fast moments, but also handles the slower atmospheric stuff pretty well too. The backgrounds and environments look pretty good so they are able to mimic real life just enough that with a slower pace and effective lighting, some scenes can match a creepier tone. While they are few and far between, their inclusion is some of the only memorable parts of this film. The models themselves can look a little uncanny valley-esque; they work well enough for the film overall, but the mismatched lip movements and lack of character emotion can be a little distracting. The movie’s writing also lacks that drive that is needed to get people invested, instead it just comes across as saying stuff without actually delivering said stuff. It lacks that punch that keeps people with the story either coming across as too silly or too overly serious.

Resident Evil is a famous franchise whether for good or bad reasons; it has its high peaks and it has its low peaks throughout all kinds of media and it’s a franchise that won’t easily be forgotten, even though this film definitely can be. As a connect-to-video game film that came out around its darker periods, it could have turned out a lot more harmful but instead of it being a terrible game that people have to sit through, it’s a pretty bad movie that people have to watch to get through. Maybe with more time, energy and thought put into the writing department, this could have been a nice little picture with fun effects, but as is, it doesn’t even stand as one of the more memorable bad moments of Resident Evil. This franchise was not going to die anytime soon, but this period and even this film, showed that it definitely showed some sour symptoms.