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ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - September 10th

"RESIDENT EVIL: AFTERLIFE" released in 2010

Milla Jovovich is back as the genetically enhanced heroine Alice in Resident Evil: Afterlife! This time, we see Alice searching for and rescuing the remaining survivors  living in a maximum security prison in Los Angeles after the T-virus outbreak, and teaming up with Claire Redfield (Ali Larter) and her long-lost brother, Chris (Wentworth Miller), against the evil Albert Wesker (Shawn Roberts), the head of the Umbrella Corporation!

Watch the Resident Evil: Afterlife trailer below!

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Following the events of Extinction, Alice (Jovovich) and her clones attack the Umbrella headquarters in Tokyo, slaying the entire branch except for Albert Wesker (Roberts) who escapes in a modified tiltrotor plane and detonates a bomb that destroys the entire facility. Unbeknownst to Wesker, the real Alice boarded his plane beforehand and confronts him, only to discover Wesker possesses the same superhuman strength, speed and agaility as Alice, and disables her by injecting Alice with an Anti-Virus before setting the autopilot to crash the plane. Alice manages to survive, and months later is found travelling via a vintage airplane to Alaska to rendezvous with Claire Redfield (Larter) and K-Mart (Spencer Locke), who were searching for the mythic safe haven called Arcadia. Once landing, Alice is attacked by a feral Claire, who is being controlled by a spider-like device on her chest. Alice manages to destroy the device, which pacifies Claire, but leaves her with amnesia. Together again, Alice and Claire fly to the ruins of Los Angeles, where they find survivors living in a prison surrounded by infected. Once there, they meet Luther West (Boris Kodjoe), Wendell (Fulvio Cecere), Crystal Waters (Kacey Barnfield), Bennett (Kim Coates), Kim Yong (Norman Yeung), and Angel Ortiz (Sergio Peris-Mencheta), who explain to Alice that Arcadia isn't a fixed place, but a cargo tanker traveling along the coast - which then can see moored in the distance. When the survivors are attacked by a group of infected that have dug into the prison, Alice convinces them to free the prison's last inmate, Chris (Wentworth Miller), who earlier claimed he has an escape route. Planning to use the prison's armored car in the plan, Chris also also reveals he is in fact Claire's long-lost brother, but, due to her earlier injury, Claire does not remember him. But with the infected constantly battering the prison gate with the arrival of a giant axe-wielding monster, The Executioner (Ray Olubowale), the remaining race against time to flee the prison to reach Arcadia - where an enemy from Alice's past is waiting for her with one final shocking revelation!

[after Alice finds Claire again]
Alice: Umbrella?
Claire Redfield: Of course. I remember them coming for us.
Alice: This whole thing, Arcadia, was a lie.
Claire Redfield: No, it's worse than that. It's a trap.

Top:   This time, Alice (Milla Jovovich) must find a way to escape a prison surrounded by zombies;

Above:   Alice is rejoined with Claire Redfield (Ali Larter)

In May 2005, producers mentioned the possibility of following Extinction with a sequel entitled Afterlife, to be shot and set in Tokyo, Japan and Alaska, despite Extinction being billed on the official website and elsewhere as the final installment of the Resident Evil film series. In December 2008, it was announced that series writer, Paul W.S. Anderson, was working on the screenplay (his fourth in the series) and would also return as director, having helmed the first Resident Evil in 2002. Milla Jovovich would also return as Alice (her first Resident Evil movie since having her first child with her husband - and Afterlife director - Paul W.S. Anderson), along with Ali Larter (who missed seven episodes of her TV series Heroes in order to appear in the film) and Spencer Locke from Extinction, playing Claire Redfield and K-mart respectively. Joining the cast as Claire's brother Chris Redfield was Wentworth Miller, who jokingly admits he was nervous about his character being too similar to his Prison Break character Michael Scoffield; whereas in both cases, he is in a prison and his first lines are "I know a way out of here".

After seeing early footage of James Cameron's Avatar (2009), Anderson was convinced to film Afterlife in 3-D, with he and his crew spending two weeks in pre-production learning how to properly use the 3-D camera system. Not only did shooting in 3-D require the addition of another 20% to the budget (an estimated $10 million), the added size and weight of the 3-D cameras meant the filmmakers were unable to use a Steadicam rig, so, instead, the camera operator had to film the moving and tracking shots on a Segway. For slow motion scenes, like with bullets and drops of water, twin Phantom high-speed cameras were used which filmed 200 frames per second. The 3D cameras were unable to pick up anything shiny, such as stainless steel, due to a flare, with set decorator Cal Loucks stating that items that looked metal (in the movie) were actually painted silver with special paint to remove its reflective quality! Despite concerns using the technology, Afterlife would become the first live-action movie based on a video game to be in 3-D.

[Alice, Claire and Chris confront Wesker at gunpoint]
Albert Wesker: Well isn't this one big family reunion? Chris and Claire Redfield, you've really become quite an inconvenience for me.
Alice: I told you I'd be bringing a few friends.
Albert Wesker: [removes sunglasses] You should have brought more.

Top:   Claire's long-lost brother Chris (Wentworth Miller) helps Claire get revenge on Umbrella Corp.;

Above:   Umbrella chairman Albert Wesker (Shawn Roberts) has also enhanced himself with the T-virus! 

With principal photography taking place over a period of 55 days, Afterlife would be the first Resident Evil to actually shoot in locations depicted in the movie - Alaska and Tokyo; where the first scene depicting the beginning of the T-virus outbreak in Japan (the scene taking place years before the main plot of Afterlife) in Tokyo's iconic Shibuya Crossing. Scenes portraying an Alaskan aircraft boneyard were actually filmed at Oshawa Airport, with the Alaskan beach scene filmed at Sandbanks Provincial Park (both in Ontario, Canada), although a second unit was sent to Alaska to capture establishing shots of the scenery. Most of the remaining exterior scenes were filmed on location in Toronto, with Robarts Library being used to portray exterior shots of a Los Angeles prison due to its resemblance to a prison, and other scenes were shot at University of Toronto Scarborough. Interior sets were constructed at Cinespace Film Studios in Toronto, where, for the underwater scenes, cargo shipping containers were cut and welded to make a giant tank on stage. Early in production, Toronto police received hundreds of calls from concerned neighbors after a scene involving a burning plane crashed, and Milla Jovovich accidentally destroyed a $100,000 camera during a gun fight scene!

The production team planned to use extras to portray 300 zombies at once, but time restraints prevented the plan from going forward, and instead, 150 zombies were eventually used with Mr. X Inc's visual effects supervisor, Dennis Berardi, added more in post-production. A similar effect was used for the Alice clones by using motion control photography for multiple passes of Jovovich, acting in different positions, and combining them in CGI (for the wide shots they used digital photo doubles). A burned cityscape with ash and smoke in the sky was created to depict a post-apocalyptic Los Angeles, in which most of the film is set. Producer Jeremy Bolt described this approach as, "In a world that has gone to hell in a handbasket, there's no control and no fire service, so clearly, what's going to happen to LA is it's going to get burned." Anderson wanted to make the Doberman dogs in this film look "absolutely terrible", and used a combination of real-life make-up prosthetics and visual effects to make the dog's jaw flare open, with tentacles coming out of their mouths similar to the dogs from the fourth and fifth video games.

TRIVIA:   This is the only film in the series without the trademark close-up shot to Alice's eye, and without any scene with Alice waking up from slumber.

Top:    Returning as director on the series, Paul W.S. Anderson;

Above:   The cast on location

Resident Evil: Afterlife was not screened in advance for critics, and when it was released, Afterlife (perhaps predictably given the reception of the previous installments) met with mostly negative reviews. Jeannette Catsoulis of The New York Times wrote, "Cannibalizing John Carpenter's Thing and much of the sci-fi-horror canon, Afterlife is more moribund than its thronging undead", with  David Edwards of the Daily Mirror comparing it to Resident Evil: Extinction, stating that the "results are even less impressive, which is saying quite something" and "only fans of the series will care with the film looking suspiciously like a series of barely connected action scenes and unimpressive 3D welded to a who-the-hell-cares? plot". Michael Ordoña of the Los Angeles Times however gave it a positive review, noting the slower cut of the film and saying "the action is easier to read than in most films of the genre, and therefore more enjoyable. Anderson makes particular use of sets and locations to wring out more bang for the stereoscopic buck".

Despite the negative reception, Afterlife earned a whooping $296,221,667 worldwide gross, easily becoming the most financially successful film in the entire franchise! Producers were keen to repeat the formula with next follow-up Resident Evil: Retribution. Intended to be filmed back-to-back with a sixth installment, both in 3-D, director Paul W. S. Anderson later decided to just focus on one movie at a time. Retribution was also a huge success at the box office, grossing over $240 million when released in 2012. Then for a while the series, at the height of it's popularity, appeared to stall. In February 2014, Collider reported that, according to Paul W.S. Anderson, there were no immediate plans in motion for a sixth installment in the popular franchise, but that both Anderson and Screen Gems were eager to add at least one more entry to the series. He said they would "like to do another Resident Evil movie, but the wheels aren’t quite in motion yet." In June 2014, Anderson announced the film's working title to be Resident Evil: The Final Chapter and confirmed that it was intended to be the final film in the series. He also revealed that half the script had been completed, but, as yet, there were no shooting or release schedules. Filming was set to begin in South Africa in August 2014 but was delayed for a year because of Jovovich's pregnancy. Confirmed to returning to the franchise with star Milla Jovovich were; Ali Larter (Claire Redfield), Li Bingbing (Ada Wong), Iain Glen (Dr. Alexander Isaacs), and Shawn Roberts as Albert Wesker. Principal photography on the film began on September 18, 2015 in Cape Town / Hartbeespoort Dam, South Africa, with The Final Chapter expected to be released in the US on 27 January, 2017.

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE:    23%

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