The Resident Evil franchise has never quite managed to find its feet on the big or small screen, with a few notable exceptions.
Now new CGI movie Resident Evil: Death Island is hoping to be one of the more favorable offerings
in the series and the first trailer sees three of the franchise’s icons coming together for a new survival horror adventure.
The only Resident Evil movies that have managed to obtain a fresh rating in over two decades are
two CGI movies; 2008’s Resident Evil: Degeneration and 2012’s Resident Evil: Damnation.
Although a third movie in the series, Resident Evil: Vendetta in 2017, fell back into the “rotten” category,
Resident Evil: Death Island will now try to get this arm of the Resident Evil IP back on track.
Resident Evil: Death Island is a direct sequel to 2017’s Vendetta and is bring together Leon S. Kennedy,
Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine on screen together in the same movie for the first time.
“D.S.O. agent Leon S. Kennedy is on a mission to rescue Dr. Antonio Taylor from kidnappers, when a mysterious woman thwarts his pursuit.
Meanwhile, B.S.A.A. agent Chris Redfield is investigating a zombie outbreak in San Francisco, where the cause of the infection cannot be identified.
The only thing the victims have in common is that they all visited Alcatraz Island recently. Following that clue, Chris and his team head to the island, where a new horror awaits them.”
It was something of a shock when 2012 CG movie Resident Evil: Damnation managed to maintain a 100% approval rate on Rotten Tomatoes.
However, the film was only reviewed by 5 critics, although it still managed a 69% audience score which is one of the higher ratings of any project from the IP.
As if it prove a point, after two reasonably successful movies, 2017’s Vendetta saw scores tumble into the 40%s.
The franchise has not fared much better in the live action arena. The Milla Jovovich-led movie franchise was very loosely based on the games,
but never managed to hit the right notes even though it spanned five sequels with 2016’s Resident Evil: The Final Chapter being the last entry.
Outside of that collection of movies, a new reboot, Resident Evil: Welcome To Raccoon City promised a more faithful adaptation,
but once again failed to capture anything that made the games popular.In 2022, Netflix released a Resident Evil live-action series,
which combined some game lore with a time-jumping narrative centering heavily on the character of Albert Wesker and his daughters.
The show was canceled after its first season after average reviews,
dwindling viewer numbers and a fair amount of online ridicule for including characters and storylines that just seemed
very far removed from the things that made the original Resident Evil games so scary and popular.