I am in constant awe of Resident Evil’s prevalence in our lives. How one of the first games I fell in love with as a kid, a campy zombie shooter, is somehow still around and constantly gaining momentum. Not a year goes by without a new Resident Evil game, film, or TV show, and while they aren’t always successful - like the recent Netflix adaptation - the fear of oversaturation hasn’t slowed Capcom down at all. Another live action movie is reportedly in development, while Resident Evil: Death Island, the fourth canonical Resident Evil animated film, releases today.
Death Island has been advertised as the ultimate team-up movie for Resident Evil fans; an Avengers-level meeting of the greatest heroes in RE history. If you want to see Leon and Chris two-man a rocket launcher or Jill and Claire do slow-motion backflips there’s plenty of that, but there's also a level of thematic depth here you might not expect. Death Island is a story about how our trauma transforms us and the difficult process of unburdening ourselves from guilt. It’s a much more affecting film than it has any right to be, and it doesn’t sacrifice Resident Evil’s iconic action and gore to do it.
Death Island is set in 2015, one year after the events of Vendetta, and two years after Resident Evil 6. Leon, working with the D.S.O., is searching for a kidnapped DARPA researcher when he runs into Maria Gomez, who has survived the events of Vendetta. Meanwhile, Chris and Jill are investigating a zombie outbreak in San Francisco where they discover a new strain of the T-Virus. They bring it to Rebecca Chambers to research it and develop a cure, but soon discover that none of the infected were bitten. At the same time, Claire learns of a mysterious sea creature that’s been killing whales in the San Francisco Bay. All of their separate investigations lead them to Alcatraz Island, where they encounter a villain unlike any they’ve faced before.
This is the first time we’ve ever seen all five of these heroes on screen together, so it’s remarkable that the film’s villain ends up being the most compelling character of all. I love Resident Evil antagonists for their grandiosity, their archness, and their commitment to the cause of evilness. They’re larger than life characters even before they transform into hulking abominations of sinewy horror. They’re histrionic and ostentatious, and they give Resident Evil a lot of its melodramatic identity.
Dylan Blake is not that kind of villain. Yes, he has aspirations to end the world through biochemical warfare. And of course, he turns into a virus-filled abomination in the end (it’s still Resident Evil, after all). But Blake is a far more sympathetic character than Wesker, Saddler, Miranda, or any other bad guy before him. Blake was an Umbrella security officer in Raccoon City during the outbreak who survived, like most Raccoon City survivors, by killing people close to him.
Umbrella instructed him to leave no survivors, and though he tried to resist, he was attacked by his own partner and forced to turn his gun on him. Blake escaped Raccoon City, but the experience changed him and led him down a dark path to destruction. The emotional and psychological consequences of events like the Raccoon City incident aren’t something the series often spends time exploring, but here it helps ground the villain and add complexity to his character.
Blake’s story mirrors Jill’s, who is still dealing with the aftermath of being brainwashed by Wesker during the events of Resident Evil 5. They, along with Maria Gomez (who is working for Blake now) represent the spectrum of grief at different stages. Jill is in denial about the effects she’s experiencing from her trauma, Maria is anger-incarnate as she misguidedly seeks revenge against Leon for her father’s death, and Blake demonstrates a twisted form of bargaining. He believes he can only relieve his pain and make things right by erasing the harm caused to the world, and in effect erasing everything that exists.
This is Jill’s movie and her character arc is front and center, which was a smart choice. Though this story deals with the fallout of Resident Evil 5, which feels like a different version of Jill now, Death Island canonizes the Jill from Resident Evil 3 remake by keeping her same look and performer (Nicole Tompkins is fantastic once again) while setting up some important beats for the future of the series. Death Island juggles a lot of themes, characters, and narrative elements in a brisk 90 minutes, and while some things get less attention that they should have, it does a masterful job of balancing so much while delivering a variety of impressive action set pieces.
There’s a lot of setup, but once the heroes meet up in Alcatraz, Death Island puts the pedal to the metal and doesn’t let up until it's over. Everyone gets to have a hero moment, and seeing Jill and Leon together for the first time is a delight - though it isn’t able to commit to making this a true introduction. It’s an ambiguous meeting that doesn’t celebrate the fact that we’ve never seen them together before, in the event that Capcom wants to tell a Jill and Leon story later down the line that takes place before this movie. I know the movies are supplemental to the games, but if you’re going to make the films canon, you have to go all-in. I’m not expecting Kingdom Hearts levels of interdependence between entries, but Death Island would be a much stronger film if it didn’t need to be purely supplemental to the games. It’s going to be awesome to see Jill and Leon meet for the first time, but this technically isn’t it.
Other than being Jill’s closet confidant, Chris is the one that gets pushed to the side here. This is a problem endemic to Chris as a character pre-RE7, so I’m looking forward to seeing films that take place after 2017. Leon and Claire both have some great moments with Jill and some memorable hero shots as well, but Chris is just kind of there this time. Ditto for Rebecca Chambers, but that shouldn’t surprise anyone.
This is a technological leap for the series, and a significantly better looking film, even compared to 2021’s Infinite Darkness. It still dips into uncanny valley territory at times when the characters are just standing around talking, but the action scenes are breathtaking in their verisimilitude. As impressive as video games look these days, they still don’t look this good.
Death Island is easily the best of the canon films. Though it doesn’t do anything groundbreaking narratively or make an important mark on Resident Evil history, it shows signs of greater ambition than the typical RE romp. It also blends the film and remake versions of the characters together in a way that feels organic, establishing a consistent look and identity for the team that will hopefully take the series forward in a cohesive direction. I wish Capcom would give these filmmakers great license to make their mark on the world of Resident Evil, but for a purely supplemental movie, I can’t imagine it could get much better than this.