Thank You For Being A Friend plays as a montage of all the hugs Chris Redfield gets throughout the movie at the end of Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City. Or it should, instead of a scene I predicted happening as a joke to my friends as we were watching it. A certain someone got his sunglasses.
Leon is a chump. Just have to get that out now.
In a surprise to most people Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City is now up on VOD, it came out in November. Ghostbusters: Afterlife isn't out till February. Sony saw the writing on the wall and new what they had here, a zombie turd.
From dialogue that is the word F*&k and Jesus Christ every few minutes. To a pantheon of unworthy actors chosen to play iconic characters from the series and CGI from the 90's you have this poorly titled seventh Resident Evil reboot. Long shots of long halls and churning-butter exposition dumps make for a thrill-less, Lite version of the film series. It should be called Resident Evil: Lite, that's a much better title.
There's multiple stories to follow that all poorly connect in the end. Follow Claire Redfield, whose some kind of hobo transient lock-picker extraordinaire trying to connect with her bro, Chris. Leon, the rookie, who the director just hates for some reason on his first day. Chris and the Stars, special police unit going into Scooby-Doo mansion. Dr. Birken, mad scientist, needs to get his life's work. The Chief, whose that actor you know from a bunch of stuff, collecting another paycheck. (His name is Donal Logue and he was in a great 3rd season episode of What We Do In The Shadows as himself, but a vampire)
Oh, and the Chief isn't black, like a stereotypical cop movie trope. You might notice a lot of the iconic characters aren't white anymore and are another race. There's no problem there, except they don't have their iconic hair styles from the game. Make them look somewhat like their characters or act like them.
Once gain, Leon straight up sucks. And it's painful.
I'm not sure if scenes were cut as there's left over evidence of a Welcome Party for Leon, a banner with his name up in the station. Maybe, he's getting over a hangover from it, but it's never really explained why Leon is so out of it. It seem like scenes were missing. Another example is Dr. Birken gets angry at Chris out of nowhere. Chris has done nothing to him and Dr. B just unloads a bunch of negative vibes. Or, perhaps the director, whose also the writer is just bad at his job.
Not missing were the hugs. Chris gets hugged a lot in this movie. Which is kind of weird for a zombie horror movie. And I don't mean hugs from zombies trying to eat him. Or ladies wanting to sex him. I don't expect to think about hugs so much from one of these films.
Another odd choice is the film literally got blueprints from Capcom for RPD Headquarters and the Mansion from the games and they look great. Sadly, they're wasted here.
The less I write about the CGI the better, but you can see cost-cutting. In a film from 2021, there's zero excuse why it looks so bad or it didn't go practical or I can't think of an excuse it just make no sense.
This reboot was unneeded as there's a live action show on the way coming to Netflix too. Capcom and Sony don't have anyone in charge it seems to shepherd these projects and it shows. Don't make a sequel. Just keep remaking your games.
