phancy.com - horror reviews - MOH 2022

Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City



IMDb Info

Release Year: 2021
Runtime: 1h 47m
Country: Canada, Germany
Language: English
Genre Tags: Action, Horror, Sci-Fi
Plot Summary: Set in 1998, this origin story explores the secrets of the mysterious Spencer Mansion and the ill-fated Raccoon City.

Poster - Title Card


phancy.com rating:

phancy.com notes: Apparently this is faithful to the video games and combines the stories of two of them. Pity. We wind up toggling between two stories, not spending enough time with either one of them. This should've been two separate movies. It's moody and monster-ey, but nothing really amounts to anything, and I'm hard-pressed to remember anything about it.


Outside Reviews:

Brian Tallerico
2 out of 4 stars - rogerebert.com

In 2017, the "Resident Evil" series of games tore down the action-heavy experience it had built up over the last few installments and returned to basic survival horror with "Resident Evil 7: Biohazard." Four years later, the series of films of the same name does a similar hard reset, although this one doesn't go back to the beginning of the films but pushes deeper into the source material, really adapting the first two games, especially "Resident Evil 2" to the screen for the first time. Pushing aside the CGI-heavy action of the Paul W.S. Anderson films, writer/director Johannes Roberts has made a movie that is the most directly inspired by the games of any flick so far in "Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City." The characters and even the locations will be incredible familiar to "RE" players and the tone feels more connected to a game series that was originally inspired by "Evil Dead." However, choppy action and clunky storytelling hold "Raccoon City" back from becoming the dread-inducing nightmare that hardcore fans know the game series to so often be.


Charles Bramesco
Grade: C- - Welcome To Raccoon City lacks the stupid majesty of the previous Resident Evils

Audiences will overlook a lot of narrative-bungling if they're scared out of their wits, but Roberts' fundamentals of horror aren't strong enough to pick up that slack. The cast of monstrosities—such favorites as Mutant Hound, Lots-Of-Eyes Guy, and Exposed-Brain Behemoth—look sharper than they ever have, even if there's little inspiration in their mayhem. Roberts clearly landed this gig on the merit of The Strangers: Prey At Night, its standout swimming pool showdown set to "Total Eclipse Of The Heart" reiterated here in a handful of set pieces scored by '90s one-hit wonders. Karaoke staple "What's Up?" by 4 Non Blondes doesn't quite fit, just a shade too ironic for the occasion, though the mismanagement of space proves more problematic. Prey At Night turned a trailer park into a playground for a lethal hide-and-seek, its environment more interactive than the interchangeable rooms of the Spencer house.