Biohazard: Damnation movie

Alternative title:
Biohazard: Damnation (Japanese)
Genres: action, horror, science fiction

release: 2012

Original Creator: CAPCOM

Biohazard: Degeneration sequel to open in 2012 in stereoscopic 3D theaters

The American television network G4TV began streaming a 91-second trailer for Resident Evil: Damnation (Biohazard: Damnation) film on Monday. The game company CAPCOM and the production company Sony Pictures Entertainment is making the project as a sequel to the 3D computer-animated Biohazard: Degeneration (Resident Evil: Degeneration) feature film.

The trailer will be included with the live-action Resident Evil: Afterlife film on 3D Blue-ray Disc and DVD in North America on December 28. The Resident Evil: Degeneration film itself is slated to open in 2012 in theaters with stereoscopic 3D equipment.




The series' 3D CG hasn't improved any—it still resembles a video game—and the 2D animation is frankly embarrassing, so the burden of beefing up the adrenaline falls on the series' less technologically dependent merits. Director Tsuneo Tominaga choreographs the races well enough, combining sweaty close-ups, Hong Kong slo-mo, and whimsical automotive flourishes (following combusting gasses as they burn from piston to tailpipe, for instance) to drive home the frequent reversals of fortune. The series' real force, however, is in its soundtrack. Chimera-izing techno dance beats, rap, and hints of guitar rock in ways that only a work completely divorced from the genres' original contexts can, it's a pulsing monster with an almost Pavlovian effect on the heart rate. Predictably it weakens when tinkering with acoustic emotional tripe, but like the series as a whole, never for long.

By this point it's clear that Funimation's slang-tastic rewrite is here to stay. The cast plays it admirably straight, delivering lines like "it'll take a real man to go up against its curves and straighten them out" without so much as blushing, which makes them just that much funnier. Unfortunately the niggling self-consciousness that accompanies the ribbing further wrecks the dramatic sequences and also opens a distance between show and viewer that isn't flattering to the dialogue that isn't subverted by surfer-dude accents and '90s slang. It's a trade-off, if a generally equitable one.