New Resident Evil Movie Brings Back The Best Character, See The Trailer
Resident Evil: Death Island is a CG animated film reuniting Leon Kennedy and Chris Redfield as they infiltrate Alcatraz.
Resident Evil has the Guinness World Record for “Most Live-Action Film Adaptations Of A Video Game,” and has also earned over a billion dollars at the world wide box office. At the same time as the hit live-action films, Capcom was also also producing a series of CG movies set directly in the world of the video game. Now 6 years after the last one, Resident Evil: Vendetta, IGN is reporting that a direct sequel, Resident Evil: Death Island, will continue the story of fan-favorites Leon Kennedy and Chris Redfield.
Resident Evil: Death Island brings Leon and Chris to San Francisco on parallel missions that point the heroes to Alcatraz. The famous prison is going to be broken into one more time to find the source of the latest zombie outbreak. Unlike the live-action films, the four CG animated entries exist within the established world of the video games, which haven’t featured either Leon or Chris since 2012’s Resident Evil 6. The last two entries in the gaming franchise have followed Ethan Winters in Eastern Europe, introducing other supernatural beings including vampires and werewolves.
While the trailer for Resident Evil: Death Island doesn’t have any other supernatural entities, it does give brief glimpses of new zombie variants. One quick shot shows aquatic zombies that resemble mermen being released from a cage. Another seems to be of an infected shark, which is still not nearly as terrifying as the very first appearance of the zombie dogs in Resident Evil.
Since Resident Evil: Vendetta was released in 2017, the franchise expanded into a new realm of media: streaming. Netflix produced both an anime (Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness) and live-action series (Resident Evil) starring Lance Reddick as the series’ villain, Albert Wesker. Death Island is a back-to-basics approach that eschews the post-apocalypse setting of both the cancelled Netflix show and the latter films to again focus on one location filled with zombies and corporate secrets.
Resident Evil: Death Island will likely be more successful than the short-lived live-action series. Cancelled after just one season, the adaptation was panned by critics and largely ignored by fans. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes shows the series was 54% fresh from critics against a 26% audience score, with most reviews pointing out the mish-mash of tones from a YA storyline to body horror, as why it failed to connect with anyone.
The best games in the franchise retained a tight focus, from the original’s mansion to Resident Evil 7’s creepy family manor. Death Island captures that focus by using Alcatraz, a prison that’s served as a film location for longer than it ever was in service, to its true claustrophobic potential. Hopefully the continuing story of Leon and Chris will tie into Resident Evil 9.
Resident Evil: Death Island currently has no release date beyond a nebulous “Summer 2023.” As with the other CG animated entries, the film will likely be direct-to-DVD and given the past association, maybe even directly to Netflix. For now, the upcoming film will be the only entry in the long-running franchise with no announced sequel to Welcome to Raccoon City and only the faintest hints of a new mainline game.
