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Parents' Guide to

Resident Evil: Apocalypse

By Nell Minow, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 18+

By-the-numbers gory horror flick -- not for kids.

Movie R 2004 90 minutes
Resident Evil: Apocalypse Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Community Reviews

age 14+

Based on 9 parent reviews

age 15+

Closest of all Live-Action to Quality

Resident Evil Apacalypse is not only the closest entry to an actual adaptation of the franchise into a movie (that isn't a sequel that is), and along with that is the one with what is easily the best cinematography, blocking, practical effects and zombie acting. It also manages to have fun with itself despite how grim everything around it is. And I must say, hats off to the Director for actually making a zombie movie give a true feeling of scale; even the best zombie movies, far better than this, are not able to achieve this as well. And the Nemesis vs STARS scene was legitimately gripping if too short. Now, having said that, the main protagonist is just about as unrelatable as with the rest of the series, the writing is still mediocre at best, its over-edited, and really just feels like some genuinely talented people made a movie that they were over-qualified for. In relation to vices, this movie has characters swear at random times - not in ways that work like horror or shock (like in the recent RE2 remake), but rather they swear to sound tough. The heroes also seem to smoke heavily for no real reason other than the fact that Writer/Producer Paul WS Anderson thinks that this makes them look cool, when really it just makes them look like a bunch of punks playing dress-up as police. I will not say that the violence is excessive, however, despite how much there is, as none of it is beyond what would be realistic if such a situation presented itself.

This title has:

Too much swearing
Too much drinking/drugs/smoking
age 16+

Ages 16+

Second installment

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say (9 ):
Kids say (16 ):

Still more video game than story, this film mostly a series of confrontations -- in a church, in a school, on the street, with guns, with knives, with kick-boxing, with rocket launchers and grenades. And there's hand-to-hand combat with a beauty and a beast.

It's pretty much by the numbers, and this stuff works a lot better as an interactive game than a story. But Resident Evil: Apocalypse is a slight improvement over the original, thanks to a lively and likeable performance by Epps and a couple of funny moments to break the tension. Pay attention at the end of the scene with the zombie Dobermans for the best one.

Movie Details

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