Resident Evil: Degeneration Review

By: Cortez Leslie

Over the past few years, the Resident Evil franchise has always been a huge benefactor towards the survival/ horror genre in both games and movies. The newest entry in the RE series, Resident Evil: Degeneration the movie isn’t the best film for newcomers, however, it is pleasantly nostalgic for hardcore fans.
Resident Evil: Degeneration stars two former characters from the Resident Evil 2 video game on the original PlayStation. In that game Leon (Paul Mercier) and Claire (Alyson Court) were two survivors of a bio-terrorism incident in a fictional city named Raccoon City.

Degeneration starts ten years later after the Raccoon City incident. Leon now works as a government official for the President of the United States and Clair helps establish an organization that deals with Bio-terrorism. As Clair moves to a new city to begin her new job, another bio-terrorism incident suddenly happens and she is right in the middle of it. As people are infected and transformed into flesh-eating zombies right in front of her eyes. The President gives the order to send Leon to deal with the new threat.

This CGI film had a lot in common with its predecessors, but does a number of things better, such as the voice acting of Paul Mercier (Leon). He does an excellent job of conveying Leon’s heroism and “I-told-you-so” personality. Alyson Court (Clair) gives off the more sensitive and lighthearted role of Clair. In addition to that, its storytelling elements keeps you involved in what is going on, who is doing it and their reasons behind it.

While the story and voice acting is top notch, the films biggest faults are its action sequences and its survival/horror elements. The action scenes are amazing, but the only problem for me is that there wasn’t enough action to change the pacing of the film. Another fault is that Degeneration didn’t scare like most Resident Evil games do, which is kind of a disappointment.

Degeneration gives you a good story, great voice acting with amazing, but short action scenes, and with no scary moments at all. In the end, I felt that Resident Evil: Degeneration is a good attempt at bringing the series to the movies, unlike past Resident Evil films.