RESIDENT EVIL

Stars: Ella Balinski, Lance Reddick, Tamara Smart, Sienna Agudong, Adeline Rudolph and Paola Núñez.
Writers: Andrew Dabb, Garett Pereda, Shane Tortolani, Jeff Howard, Kerry Williamson and Lindsey Villarreal.
Director: Bronwen Hughes, Rachel Goldburg, Batan Silva and Rob Seidenglanz.

8 episodes to stream on Netflix from July 14, 2022

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ½

The RESIDENT EVIL franchise is proving harder to kill-off than one of its own cannibalistic T-virus infected bad-guys (or girls, or dogs, or whatever). Since CAPCOM launched the first Playstation video game version in 1996, it has been a blockbuster - since its inception, no less than 31 versions have been released on gaming platforms, making it the most successful horror gaming series of all time. The seven live-action films, six of which starred Milla Jovovich, have grossed over a billion dollars, making it the most successful film series based on a videogame ever. This is before you add in graphic novels, animated films and TV shows, merchandise and, I shit you not, live theatre productions, of which there have been three in Japan since 2000.

Such hot-property legacy IP means that Netflix and their safe-bet programming strategy couldn’t be far behind. They dipped their toes in the Resident Evil waters with last years’ CGI-series Infinite Darkness and have now gone all in with this new 8-episode arc, boldly calling itself simply ‘Resident Evil’, suggesting this is the new and defining narrative for the brand. With zombies or zombie-adjacent types having bought in big bucks for streamers in recent years, it’s seems only fair that the starting point for the re-animation of the undead as legit pop-culture iconography shouldn’t enjoy the spoils - without Resident Evil, there’d be no Walking Dead or 28 Days Later or World War Z, so good luck to all involved.

But does this fresh spin on the mythology of New Raccoon City and the spread of the T-virus earn its own stripes, under the showrunning of Supernatural alumni Andrew Dabb? He takes the potentially risky step of splitting his story into two distinct timelines - the first, a future-set dystopian vision where 6 billion infected roam the Earth and freehold outposts provide shelter for the uninfected (a bit like in Mad Max 2). British actress Ella Balinski plays Jade Wesker, a lone figure monitoring the herd actions of the infected, until she is knocked unconscious by a monster caterpillar (yeah, in this Resident Evil, there are monster caterpillars!) and becomes collateral for the nomads to barter with the evil Umbrella Corporation.

Storyline #2 is not quite so ambitious, or compelling; it is 2022, and teen Jade (now played by Tamara Smart) and her sister Billie (Sienna Agudong) have relocated to the oh-so-white suburbia that is the pre-T-virus outbreak New Raccoon City. Their emotionally-absent father is Umbrella bigwig Albert Wesker (a typically compelling Lance Reddick), who is struggling to raise the two girls, who struggle with their own PTSD moments from the life they’ve left behind. An animal rescue attempt, during which Jade and Billie gain (surprisingly easy) access to the Umbrella labs, starts to align the two story strands.

The intercutting of the present and future plotting is handled skilfully, even if the high stakes of 2036 Jade’s undead-infested existence and the teen beats of 2022 Jade’s high-school/homelife world seem initially mismatched. Corporate horrors and homeroom villainy find a surprisingly satisfying balance. Those in for the traditional Resident Evil thrills will be happy to know zombie dogs turn up in Episode 1, and that the infected are shriekers, not shufflers. Balinski, who was so good in the recent Charlie’s Angels reboot it was like she was in a different film entirely, is great as a hard-edged action heroine.

As a refresh of the Resident Evil mythology, the series exhibits a strong pulse…

SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 2

Stars: Jim Carrey, James Marsden, Tika Sumpter, Natasha Rothwell, Shemar Moore, Adam Pally and Lee Majdoub.
Featuring the voices of: Ben Scwartz, Idris Elba and Collen O'Shanussy.
Writers: Pat Casey, Josh Miller and John Whittington
Director: Jeff Fowler

Rating: ★ ★ ½

It’s been a scant 23 months since the Sonic the Hedgehog movie came out. Who can forget the whirlwind of fan disgust when the first glimpse of the speedy blue Eulipotyphla (not ‘rodent’, as I learnt today) hit the web, forcing a hasty redesign, and the subsequent whirlwind of fan glee when the film turned out to be pretty good. On the back of a well-told tale of family values and good-vs-evil and a cartoonishly villainous turn by Jim Carrey, rediscovering his ‘Ace Ventura’ wackiness, Sonic The Hedgehog took $320million worldwide - a legit blockbuster, considering COVID cut it’s run short in some territories.

With two years of pandemic-impacted box office revenue to catch up on, Paramount Pictures rushed into production on this sequel to their last pre-plague hit. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 reunites all the major creatives, including director Jeff Fowler, Carrey as megalomaniac Dr Robotnik, Ben Schwartz voice-acting Sonic, James Marsden as the human element, and all below-the-line effects talent that brought Sonic to life the first time around.

New characters in the adaptation mix are Tails, the ‘flying fox’ (Collen O'Shanussy) who was glimpsed at the end of the first film and who lands in Sonic’s hometown of Green Hills Montana, just as things are about to turn dangerous for our spiky hero. In a pre-credit sequence set on the Mushroom Planet, the banished Robotnik aligns with red-hued tough guy Knuckles the Echidna (Idris Elba) to get back to Earth, promising to deliver Sonic while fiendishly scheming to purloin the all-powerful Green Emerald and see out his plans for world domination.

There’s a lot in there that fans of the game, which debuted 31 years ago and has been a Sega cash-cow ever since, will recognise and appreciate, and Fowler and his writing team fill the screen with easter eggs to keep their attention. What they don’t fill the screen with is any of the charm or laughs that made the first film a happy diversion for non-gamers. Instead, Paramount have pushed their spiky teen hero into an MCU-style ‘end of the world’ effects extravaganza, banishing to the periphery all that was engaging about the first film in favour of rote heroics and tired CGI.

It is also runs an unforgivable 122 minutes, the length blown out by time wasted in a Serbian bar watching Sonic win a dance contest and a frantic and unfunny ‘Hawaiin wedding gone wrong’ set piece, featuring Natasha Rothwell as a shrill ‘African-American bridezilla’ caricature. Notably, neither sequence features Carrey, who is absent for long passages and/or called upon to play straight man to Knuckles, thereby robbing the film of its strongest comedic asset.

And poor Sonic, the cocky teenager occasionally called upon to be the plucky superhero, is dwarfed by the ill-fitting scale of his own movie, often all but disappearing amidst the mayhem. In the inevitable Sonic the Hedgehog 3, not so subtly hinted at in the final moments of #2, just give the franchise back to the simple charms of its titular hero.

UNCHARTED

Stars: Tom Holland, Mark Wahlberg, Antonio Banderas, Sophia Ali, Tati Gabrielle and Steven Waddington.
Writers: Rafe Judkins, Art Marcum and Matt Holloway.
Director: Ruben Fleischer

Rating: ★ ½ 

I vaguely knew Uncharted was a successful video game series and that fans have been frothing at the mouth over a bigscreen reworking of the adventures of petty crim Nathan Drake and his recruiter, sly ol’ treasure hunter Victor ‘Sully’ Sullivan. I do know that they haven’t been pining for this film, it’s fair to say.   

It’s been 20 years since Drake (Spidey himself, Tom Holland) has seen his older brother Sam, so when Sully (Mark Wahlberg) promises both a huge payday and some hope for the bros to reunite, Drake is all in. Two bejewelled amulets are the keys to a series of adventures, first in the tunnels below San Sebastian, where they are joined by fellow adventurer Chloe Frazer (Sophia Ali), then to the tropical island resting place of the bounty they seek - all this while, dodging ruthless billionaire Santiago Moncada (Antonio Banderas) and the blade-wielding Braddock (Tati Gabrielle).

Wikipedia describes the gameplay as “jumping, swimming, climbing, swinging from ropes, shooting, combat, puzzle solving, driving, boat riding, and other acrobatic actions.” In that regard, the film has people doing all those things. But there is little connective tissue between the character and their actions; like the game, it feels like Drake and Sully just have to go through this bit to get to that bit. Holland and Wahlberg are repeatedly made to look like not-quite the action film buddies they were paid to be.

An obvious template is being employed here to transfer the platform game format into a movie, or at least back into a movie; the game was apparently a riff on globe-hopping adventures like Raiders of the Lost Ark and National Treasure. That partially explains the ‘copy-of-a-copy’ dullness, a film so relentlessly derivative, so cut from the shopworn, tatty cloth of dozens of better films, it never finds its own reason-for-being. Instead, it just creaks and groans towards its CGI-cartoon conclusion. 

Ultimately I could care less about this plodding dirge of a film but I do want to point out the most dispiriting thing about this whole mess. Every villain that is trying to derail our white-guy heroes is a) a woman, and/or b) a ‘foreigner’. It is wildly ironic that the only references to the action-adventure films of the past that Uncharted mimics with any skill are the ugliest, most outdated elements.

SONIC THE HEDGEHOG

Stars: James Marsden, Jim Carrey, Adam Pally, Tika Sumpter, Neal McDonough, Lee Majdoub and the voice of Ben Schwartz.
Writers: Patrick Casey and Josh Miller.
Director: Jeff Fowler.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ½

SEGA are very late to the party, but the videogame behemoth’s first deep dive into the Hollywood blockbuster pool* has been worth the wait. After a bumpy detour down the rocky road of social media, Sonic the Hedgehog hits the ground running in Paramount’s crowdpleasing, funny, spirited comedy/adventure romp.

Since its debut for the SEGA Genesis system in 1991, the little blue hedgehog with a cracking turn of speed has been a console megastar and inevitable talk of a film adaptation has been around almost as long. In 1994, it was set to film at MGM, then Dreamworks circled a treatment before Hollywood put it in the ‘too hard’ basket (the shadow of rival Nintendo’s mega-bomb Super Mario Bros darkened the prospects of many vidgame adaptations at the time). Sony Pictures Animation acquired the moribund rights in 2014 but stuttered, allowing Paramount to snap it up (the ‘mountain studio’ come to party, substituting the game’s gold rings for their own ‘flying stars’ in the opening logo).

SEGA execs have treated the brand extension of their flagship property with kid gloves, and some may say that the eventual emergence of Sonic as a ‘Roger Rabbit’-type funny-guy in a safe, middle America-set live-action/animated hybrid lacks daring ambition. But with the motor-mouth funny-guy Ben Schwartz voicing the confident critter and a bare-bones but effective narrative that allows for comedy and action beats to breath, debutant feature director Jeff Fowler (working under the wing of his hitmaking production partner, Deadpool director Tim Miller) exhibits storytelling skill and commercial instincts.

The fantasy landscape of the videogame is the setting for the film’s prologue, and it looks beautiful. Under threat because of his special power, toddler Sonic is plunged through time and space to Green Hills, Montana, where he grows into a remarkably well-adjusted albeit very lonely teenage blue hedgehog. In a momentary fit of pique, his energy surge blacks out the town and is noticed by military types, who descend upon the burg. Escaping their prying technology, Sonic is thrust into the life of Sheriff Tom Wachowski (a typically game James Marsden, who worked a similar schtick in the 2011 Easter Bunny dud, Hop) and they hit the road to San Francisco to recover Sonic’s missing pouch of gold rings.

Hot on their heels is the villainous Dr Robotnik, played with the unique comic energy of another megastar from the 1990s, one Jim Carrey. In his first fully frantic comedic turn since the underwhelming Dumb and Dumber To in 2014, Carrey certainly looks more mature but proves no less hilariously elastic in the bad guy role. He is clearly having a lot of fun (often at the expense of his unlucky offsider Agent Stone, played with good grace by Lee Majdoub) and his masterful ability to deliver all-or-nothing physical hilarity and throwaway lines is the pic’s biggest asset.

The main question hanging over the delayed release of Sonic the Hedgehog is, was the delay worth it? That is, was it worth sending the film back to the effects team to counter the bleating of the fanboys who lost their collective cool when the Sonic trailer first appeared in April 2019? Well, it was worth it, as the character looks great, although had the film just pushed through the web white noise it probably would have stood on its own merits.

*To date, the only US feature-length live action adaptations of SEGA properties have been Uwe Boll’s House of The Dead (2003) and its sequel (2005), directed by Michael Hurst. In 2007, Takashi Miike directed the Japanese feature Like a Dragon/Ryū ga Gotoku Gekijōban, based upon the Playstation 2 game, Yakuza.