Unlike the live-action Resident Evil films, Degeneration actually follows something closely resembling the Resident Evil games’ storyline. It actually is part of the game series’ canon, with it sliding in between the fourth and fifth entries in the series. It features characters from the games, and has a similar, albeit better, animation style.
On paper, it also looks like it should be a successful film. The plot has numerous twists throughout, the characters, familiar as they are, get characterization and development, and it helps tie together two related but disjointed stories. As most sports fans know, things on paper rarely go the way they should, and Degeneration is no exception to this philosophy. The film just doesn’t quite work out the way that it should, and instead ends up being a somewhat boring experience for both Resident Evil fans and people who have no experience with the games.
I can see how Degeneration could make someone interested in the video games though, as if it does nothing else, it makes you want to play a game where you get to shoot zombies. It doesn’t even have to be a Resident Evil game, just something that you can use to let out some of the energy that the film builds up inside of you. It’s possible that someone watching Degeneration could want to go and pick up Resident Evil 4 and 5, if they had never played them, so that they could both discover the stories that surround this one, as well as have some fun shooting zombies.
Unlike potential players, the characters in Degeneration don’t seem to be having a lot of fun with their current situation. Leading a group of survivors following a zombie assault on an airport, Leon Kennedy (voiced by Paul Mercier) must help them escape. The group has Claire Redfield (Alyson Court) in it, who, as fans of the game series know, can handle herself fairly well. She is now working for TerraSave, an organization dedicated to search and rescue missions involving chemical attacks.
Leon is a special agent, who is tasked with evacuating Claire and co. After getting them out of the airport, (possibly with fewer people than he initially found), the story takes a sharp right into “contrived and confusing” territory, with the audience never getting the full story, until the very end where one character explains everything that happened throughout the movie.
While the story is complex, that doesn’t necessarily make it that interesting. It’s not as boring as some stories are, but it only barely held my interest, and I think it only did that because the characters were actually interesting. Even though the fan base surrounding the series is already familiar with the characters, the film does explain where the characters come from, their relation to one another, and why they act the way they do.
This is good for both fans of the series, who instantly regain the connection they had with the characters in the games, as well as for newcomers, who get to begin feeling for the characters. Falling into the latter category, you won’t get a full bond with the characters, but it will begin. I guess you can chalk that up as another reason to play the games, if you haven’t already.
Unfortunately, the characters and plot are about as good as Degeneration gets, as the film surrounding them doesn’t work all that well. This is apparent right off the bat, as we are first introduced to the setting of the film. We can notice right away that the animations aren’t all that well done, and that the faces especially need work. Most of the time, the faces look lifeless, and the animations, which were all motion captured, look clunky. The lip syncing actually wasn’t all that bad though, and in terms of graphical quality, is definitely the best part.
The action scenes, plentiful as they are, also don’t work all that well. In the beginning, as we start witnessing how accurate a shot Leon is, they work. It’s later on, especially with the final action scene–which I’d like to point out lasts approximately 30 minutes–way too long. The final one especially ends up being silly. They are incredibly over-the-top, unrealistic, and downright silly, even for a Resident Evil movie. They capture attention, but only in a “look at how silly that is” kind of way.
Resident Evil: Degeneration failed to be a great movie, but it did make me want to play more of the Resident Evil games–a series I had only dabbled in previously. It made me want to do this, as the story was interesting and the characters grew on me. The action scenes were humorous, but not in a good way. The animations were poor, despite being motion captured, and while the lip-voice synchronization was good, the faces as a whole felt lifeless. The film as a whole was moderately entertaining, if nothing more than a way for Capcom to bridge the gap between Resident Evil 4 and 5.