REVIEW: ‘Resident Evil: Death Island’ Brings Lots Of Action

Zombies are cropping up across San Francisco, a weapon researcher has been taken by terrorists, and an orca has washed ashore with bite marks larger than any living creature could’ve made. What links all these events together? And why do they draw Leon Kennedy(Matthew Mercer), Jill Valentine(Nicole Tompkins), Rebecca Chambers(Erin Cahill), Chris(Kevin Dorman) and Clair Redfield(Stephanie Panisello) to Alcatraz Island? Resident Evil: Death Island by director Eiichirô Hasumi and writer Makoto Fukami take viewers to learn the answers to those exact questions. 

While I’ve never been able to get into the games that spawned the Resident Evil franchise, and the live-action movies did very little for me, the CGI offerings that the franchise has crafted manage to hit a sweet spot that I have always been able to get behind. While never great, they have always found a fun balance between action, character, and the RE franchise’s convoluted lore that lets them be part of the games’ larger narrative, without getting so deep into the weeds that it makes your eyes cross. Resident Evil: Death Island continues this pattern of fun, if mixed, results.

The first thing that most fans will notice about this offering is that it brings the entire core cast of the franchise together, a first as far as I can tell. Having the entire team drawn together to face a new menace is exciting in and of itself. How the movie draws Leon, Chris, Claire, Jill, and Rebecca manages to avoid any truly absurd narrative leaps to get them in place, allowing fans to enjoy the all-star roster, even as it comes with its drawbacks.

With a brisk hour and thirty minute run time, Resident Evil: Death Island is hard-pressed at times to give all of the star characters their due. Fans of Leon and Rebecca may be disappointed with the screen time their favs get, as the story comes to center much more on Jill and Chris. Adding more strain to this movie’s time crunch is the need to explore the franchise’s latest villain.

Sporting a haunted past that takes viewers on repeated flashback trips to the familiar Racoon City incident, the newest antagonist Dylan(Daman Mills) is given a solid amount of time to flesh out his character. Rather than a greedy corporate tycoon looking to get rich, Dylan’s motivations are based on revenge-driven, along with a hint of social justice. While this hint feels added to try to give the character a more complicated motive, it largely falls flat. The man is out to burn the world because the world burned him all those years ago. And he’s looking to start by taking down the so-called heroes he perceives as serving the status quo.

While its sometimes rushed nature can hurt some of its narrative elements, Resident Evil: Death Island still finds plenty of time for some fantastic action sequences. From motorcycle chases to the endless waves of the undead, the movie manages to find ways to keep the action going in exciting ways, instead of devolving into a zombie version of whack-a-mole. The final climactic battle even features what I’m confident is the franchise’s biggest monster to date. Huge explosions, a multitude of weapons, and some smoothly animated hand-to-hand combat bring all of these sequences to gorgeous visual life.

The voice acting does a solid job of reinforcing the movie’s tension and danger. Headlined by vets like Mercer, the cast manages to help build the urgency and desperation of the movie’s scenario within the limited time they are given. The story takes some time to highlight how long the characters have been fighting these battles and the toll it has taken on them. The cast does a great job of emphasizing this theme through the delivery of their voice work.

Resident Evil: Death Island delivers what long-time fans of the CGI movies in this franchise should expect. Lots of explosions and exciting fight sequences dot a story that is good enough to get you from one dangerous encounter to the next. Coupled with solid voice acting, this film manages to deliver enough to make it worth the time of those invested in the franchise, or just want to see zombies get blown up.

Resident Evil: Death Island is available now on VOD.