resident evil degeneration

I've noticed this pattern before with the rentals I get sent.

Two rentals ago it was the most recent Resident Evil live action film (zombies), last time it was zombieland (zombies) and this time it was Resident Evil: Degeneration (zombies).

In particular I remember it happened with films featuring Jason Statham - I had several of them sent in quick succession. I don't fundamentally mind, but it is a bit weird that this themeing exists in whatever software it is that picks out which DVD to send you next. Well, I assume it's software - perhaps it's done by hand?

Degeneration is a CGI Resi movie made in Japan and that actually features some of the characters from the games and, I believe, is canon, which is to say it forms a proper part of the Resi game series stories, unlike the films.

I have to say, though, that it's not all that good. The main problem with it is that it just wasn't scary. A big part of why the Resi games that I played were scary was the intense atmosphere. They were played in a third person, fixed camera view that gave a cinematic feel and through the use of creepy music they built up a very intense atmosphere.

There are very few scenes that even try to be scary in Degeneration, and to be frank the almost total lack of gore also suggested to me that this was part of an attempt to get a relatively low rating.

Instead, the focus is on trying to be an action film. In this regard it sort of works, but I think the CGI aspect hampers it. I dunno, part of the fun of live action films is that it involves real people. I know these days a lot of CGI is used, but they still try to do lots of stunts and use the CGI to enhance it.

Here you can't really tell. I mean, it uses motion capture, but you don't really know if this is used in all the action parts or not.

Also, everything feels quite wooden. The CGI being used seems more on the level of that used in video game cut sequences, rather than that Final Fantasy film. I mean it looks okay, and it's great for monsters and the zombies, but the living humans didn't look good enough for me to really get into it properly.

Something else that didn't help was that the plot was a bit weak. I don't know if it has more resonance if you're properly familiar with all of the Resi games, but for me it all felt a bit predictable and overly familiar. There also seemed to be quite a few plot holes. A good example of this was the plane crashing into the terminal.

This isn't really a spoiler, since it's plastered all over the trailers, but a plane crashes into the terminal building where the zombie action is centred. Obviously, the human characters need to escape from the building, and there's going to be issues over zombies getting out. So wouldn't a plane crashing into a building leave a very big hole in it? Well, you would think so, but this doesn't really get mentioned as an escape route for either humans or zombies.

And there's lots of other stuff like that - things seem to happen (or don't happen) for reasons that don't really make much sense.
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