Parents' Guide to Resident Evil: Vendetta

Sharper animation and real scares make this the Resident Evil anime film that works. Resident Evil: Vendetta improves enormously on Resident Evil: Damnation, which looked unfinished and had no story worth watching, and while this sequel still looks like a video game, this time around it feels purposeful. The action sequences run longer and carry far more detail, the characters have stopped moving like clunky mannequins, and director Takanori Tsujimoto, who built his career in live-action Japanese action cinema, lets his fights unfold at full length, so viewers watch characters perform choreography, instead of watching a barrage of quick cuts. The jump scares terrify and make this the first of these animated films that functions as horror.

Everything outside the action falls apart, though. Glenn Arias wants revenge for a drone strike that killed his wedding guests, a grievance lifted from real American military intervention in Latin America and everywhere else it happens, but the film turns him into a cartoon who forces a hostage into a wedding dress. The Latino characters register as nothing in particular while White men run both sides of the operation. As for female characters, Rebecca Chambers stands as a real example of a woman with authority, but then Nadia walks out of an explosion through a crowd of zombies with her neckline cut to her belly button, which is laughable. The film works great as a last adventure for Leon S. Kennedy though. Nobody will mistake this sequel for a great movie, but as a genre exercise, mission accomplished.