At only four episodes long and each episode lasting less than half an hour long, it is no surprise that "Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness" was a disappointing series overall. Fans of the video game series might appreciate some of its action sequences but the extremely short running time meant that everything else felt unnecessarily rushed, under-cooked, and inconsequential.
Years ago, a U.S. special forces helicopter goes down in the middle of a battle in Penamstam. The U.S. Army unit Mad Dogs tries to save the survivors. However, upon the arrival of the Mad Dogs, the special forces have been captured and mostly killed. Even with the failed rescue, the members of the Mad Dogs are declared heroes while Penamstam is eventually liberated by the United States in mysterious circumstances. Years later, four agents, including Leon S. Kennedy (Nick Apostolides) and Jason (Ray Chase), one of the men from the Mad Dogs, are invited to the White House to investigate a hacking incident. However, when the lights suddenly go out, they are forced to take down a horde of mysterious zombies. Who could have unleased a zombie outbreak within the White House and how could it be connected to Penamstam and the Mad Dogs?
Visually-appealing, there are instances in "Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness" that could easily fit inside a big-budgeted video game's cinematics or even straddle the line between reality. The visuals were the highlight for us for "Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness". Sadly, it was also probably the reason for its problems as most of the project's budget probably went into making the visuals a reality at the expense of more time and more episodes. At only less than two hours of total running time, "Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness" has too many broad strokes and too many jump cuts in its narrative to be satisfying at its core. Any writer would be hard-pressed to make anything cohesive and coherent especially with the amount of actual material they needed to work with. Certain characters and key dilemmas will disappear from episode to episode. And overall, while the series added back stories to the characters of Leon and Claire, it was non-essential in our opinion. Now you might be wondering if you need to be a fan of the video game series to watch it and the answer for us is actually no. You don't even need to know who the key characters from the video games are because the series mixes new and old quite well due to its limited narrative.
Rating: 2 reels
Why you should watch it:
- adds some additional (but not essential) back story to the characters of Leon and Claire
- animation was excellent especially for a limited series
Why you shouldn't watch it:
- with very limited time, the series as a whole and its narrative was just rushed and unsatisfying
Comments
Post a Comment