Even when expectations were not particularly high following the franchise’s track record, Paul W.S. Anderson still manages to fail them with what could be arguably one of the worst entries in the Resident Evil live-action series.

The major problem with Retribution is obvious within the first five minutes, as Alice (Milla Jovovich) delivers yet another plot recap – she’s using the same script as the last three movies, but with each movie she has to talk a little bit faster to fit in the new details of the last movie you saw – the series has become way too convoluted. There is far too much material in the film for anyone to take a breather from shooting guns for a moment to have any emotional connection in the story (even the games had their emotional moments). Anderson is like a child in a candy shop, picking all the Resident Evil things he can find and cramming them into his movie as tight as possible.

For a Resident Evil nerd, it’s always fun to have references thrown at you (there is a little in-joke played at Leon’s (Johann Urb) unluckiness with women, a scene similar to the Hummer car chase in Resident Evil 5 and the many world locations in simulation centres poke fun at the globe-trotting nature of the latest games in the Resident Evil series). But once you strip away all the nerdy Resident Evil references, it is clear that Anderson has not given Resident Evil: Retribution a good foundation as an action film or indeed a horror film, failing to deliver in both those genres. Sure, there are the odd scares that weren’t stolen from Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead or Dead Snow, and there’s the occasional stunt that wasn’t ripped off from The Matrix and Kill Bill, but the scenes are mostly uninteresting, generic gunfights.

3D slow-mo shots for throwing things at the audience come on about a 10-second average, from rain to coins to bullets to blood to axe blades (this will surely become even more irritating on a 2D home release). The production set design is great (the clinical Umbrella labs always look especially stylish), but some of the zombies and monsters look pretty horrendously made up (particularly the Russian zombie soldiers, who look like they’re sporting Halloween masks rather than an organic infection with their caked on grey face paint), and there is a fair load of dodgy CGI moments, such as a scene when Alice encounters thousands of poorly rendered warehouse clones that rips off I, Robot pretty badly. Unfortunately a lot of aspects of the film were added just for aesthetic rather than reason, such as a rather out-of-place Rolls Royce. Anderson had said once-upon-a-time he wanted his first movie to feel “glacial” in its aesthetics. Retribution, ten years later – despite being set around the Arctic Circle – is anything but. There is no expense spared with bright flashing lights, explosions, product placement and massive recreations of world cities.

The wooden acting doesn’t do the film any favours. Urb in particular does Leon S. Kennedy absolutely no justice, offering the most plain and emotionless line delivery imaginable. Li Bingbing can do a fantastic Ada voice and all the stunts, but has none of the same presence as the trickster vixen that is Resident Evil’s iconic agent. In the games, she is known for always having the upper hand, and whilst they try to get this across in the film (“She always has a plan”, Leon explains) she seems to be pretty quiet and vulnerable in the latter half of the film. Not the Ada Wong we know and love.

However the writing is unfortunately the downfall of the piece, and Anderson’s tendency to cram in as many characters as possible leaves most of them undeveloped and left as bullet fodder. An example of this – and a major disappointment – is Kevin Durand’s Barry Burton, who may as well have not been in the movie with the amount he contributed to it. Aside from the red bomber jacket, beard and Magnum, he could’ve been anyone else in the generic wooden crowd – he has no personality or history. We could have had a snippet of his background, perhaps remembering his former family (as in the game) but no. Not even so much as a Jill sandwich. If he barely contributes to the plot, and then barely contributes as fan-service, then what on earth is the point of including him?

The plot holes are rife, and whilst one may be tempted to forgive Resident Evil for its accepted reputation as shoddy action horror there is only so far that one’s suspension of disbelief is willing to be stretched when major contradicting plot points slap you across the face. How the hell did Wesker survive? Why doesn’t Alice have an emotional reaction – at all – to the use of clones of her former deceased allies being used against her? Why is protagonist Luther West (Boris Kodjoe) suddenly working with Albert Wesker after all he’s done? Why does Alice scream “WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS??” at a Resident Evil 5-style brainwashed Jill Valentine controlled by a beetle-like chest device when, in Afterlife, Alice saved Claire Redfield from the very same device and knew it was a device that Umbrella used to control people? And why, most importantly – when in Extinction the White Queen computer explained that the Red Queen computer’s actions in the first film were necessary evils to save and prolong human life by preventing the virus from escaping – does the Red Queen computer suddenly adopt a completely contradicting attitude of ‘destroy all humans’ with no explanation whatsoever?

So, unfortunately, this film is essentially a very prolonged monotonous gunfight with as many underdeveloped characters and as many monsters as possible. Whilst even some of the previous instalments could be enjoyed as guilty pleasures, there is almost nothing to enjoy about Retribution. Underneath all the Resident Evil nerd glitter is a barren skeleton of a plotline and an even more barren wasteland of talent.

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