BIOHAZARD: DEGENERATION

DESCRIPTION

CAST

OVA ActionBiohazard 4: Incubate
MOVIE ActionBiohazard: Damnation

REVIEWS

• 

  Kuropiko

  65/100
  BIOHAZARD Stumbles Its Way Into Becoming a Multi-Media Franchise

  BIOHAZARD Degeneration is a video game cutscene.

  Honest to God, that's all I thought looking at the film. Visually it has not aged gracefully at all. Some of the main characters like Rani look like they just walked out of Toy Story (and I mean Toy Story 1, not 2), Claire has this constant thing where her lips are slightly parted in a way that makes me think she's desperate for Leon to make love to her, Leon has grown even more BiSho since 4, Senator Ron Davis looks like a gremlin, it's a very weird looking film to say the least, and it's a shame that this is the most interesting part of the film.

  

  This film just isn't all that engaging. I really like watching just Leon and Claire, and their sparse interactions are some of my favourite parts of the film, but surrounding those interactions are some fairly dull characters all around. There's evil government man who you think is behind everything but he isn't (and only serves to make Claire look like a horny idiot), glasses anime man who actually does the meme where he pushes his glasses up in every scene he's in, boring soldier character that gets bitten and it's sad, other boring soldier character who takes up way too much screentime, and so on. Thankfully the scenes where it's just these characters are minimal and usually they have Leon or Claire hanging around to balance things out, but that doesn't change just how un-engaging they are for me. Senator Ron Davis feels like a joke character, a comical asshole who ends up just being that, a comical ass hole. He knocks a kid down into a hoard of zombies and later talks about how he hates kids when he sees her crying a few moments later, but his greatest come-uppance is a slap in the face. He's built up as this bad guy, a guy that was on the committee to nuke Raccoon City, a guy who is involved with the real main antagonist, but at the end, Claire unloads a bunch of accusations on him, he calls her crazy, and then Leon says the equivalent of "Claire, what are you talking about?" and they go to catch the real bad guy.

  I do actually like Senator Ron Davis viewed purely as a joke character though. he is the star of the show in the opening third of the movie. Speaking honestly, the opening third in the airport is probably the most interesting part of the movie. Claire is probably one of the most endearing characters in the Biohazard universe and it shows here, her choosing to be with TerraSava rather than a Biohazard task force like the BSAA is perfectly in line with how she was characterized in 2 and CODE:Veronica, entries where she was more focused on protecting whoever she could rather than tracking down who was responsible for all this, and back to the point, the opening third is wholly Claire's, and if the movie was just more stuff like that, I'd probably like it a whole lot more.

  

  Sadly, the airport is only part of the film, and this is part of a major issue the film has. It just feels too damn long. Characters are driving across the country after this third and it's to the detriment of the pacing. Claire goes with glasses man to evil BigPharma place while Leon stands in front of a burning house for what feels like an eternity. I'm being serious here, they cut back to Leon standing in the same spot like four times in the movie while Claire is drinking tea and talking about viruses, and the pace of the move comes to a stop, and by the time stuff starts happening again, you just want it to be over.

  It's a real shame that the film crashes and burns with a whimper, because some of the ideas it's throwing around at the end are interesting. Terrorists getting Umbrella's viruses, exposing the American Government's involvement with BOWs and Umbrella, other companies picking up where Umbrella left off, this is all interesting stuff for the franchise, but this movie uses those ideas purely as set-dressing and set-up. The American connection to Umbrella won't be seen again till Biohazard 6, terrorists using the viruses wouldn't be until Revelations and Damnation (wait for that review), and other companies taking over Umbrella's research is purely just foreshadowing to 5. Maybe if this film spent less time jumping around and more time focusing on the ideas it was throwing out I'd actually think it was great. Maybe Infinite Darkness will be able to cash in on these ideas. Probably not, but one can hope.

  

  All in all, BIOHAZARD Degeneration is a middling entry to a series I hold in mostly high regard. I recommend the airport section of the film wholeheartedly, but if you aren't already a big fan of the series, avoid the rest. You will not have a good time.

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