Claire Redfield (Kaya Scodelario) returns home to Raccoon City to try to warn her brother Chris (Robbie Amell) that something is amiss with pharmaceutical company Umbrella who are busy vacating the city for pastures new. Before they can truly catch up though a warning siren sounds and Chris heads to his job as a police officer and all sorts of chaos ensue. 

Set in 1998, this reboot of the Resident Evil franchise is very much an attempt to return to its video game roots. Fans will be very happy to see the story focus on the Redfield’s, Jill Valentine (Hannah John-Kamen), Leon Kennedy (Avan Jogia) and Albert Wesker (Tom Hopper switching from The Umbrella Academy to the Umbrella Corporation). The plot line seems to focus on the first two games although I will admit my memory is a little patchy because they were released around the time the film is set allowing for palm pilots and beepers being the choice of tech. 

Whilst the settings and characters look the part unfortunately the other aspect of the games the film has lifted is the pretty basic bones storyline and characters. Video games are often fine without a truly brilliant storyline because quite frankly gamers want to play. Asides from the likes of Hideo Kojima making forty minute cut scenes in his games most developers know they need to keep their customers actually engaged and involved by playing their product and not watching it. When games then become films they often fall apart if they are too faithful because suddenly huge holes appear in the plot and the characters feel like ciphers with no actual personality. That absolutely applies here with all of our protagonists personalities being completely paper thin and the purpose of Umbrella Corporations actions making zero sense. 

Effects wise it’s pretty solid when it’s make up and gore and pretty awful when it’s CGI. Whilst the scare quotient is woefully low. I am pretty confident the original game would scare me more than the film did if I played it for 107 (the films run time) minutes now. 

So I can not recommend this to people who are not fans of the game in any regard. For those that are there is some mileage in what is up on screen, although it still does not truly work as a  horror movie. 

Hang around for a mid credits scene that will probably baffle non gamer fans even more!