Resident Evil: Damnation
Top agent Leon S. Kennedy is brought out of leave to be sent on a mission in a small Eastern-European country that’s plagued by a civil war that’s been going on for years already. The poor population that came to rise against their corrupt government was losing the war but recently reports popped up that Bio-Organic Weapons (BOW’s) have been thrown into the battle which hopefully turn the tide for the rebels. It’s Leon’s mission to uncover the truth behind these reports but once on the scene he quickly gets ordered by his superiors to leave the country again.
Leon wouldn’t be Leon if he didn’t decide to neglect this order and as such he goes out to investigate. He gets noticed by the rebels and when they capture him it quickly becomes clear things aren’t as straightforward as you might think.
In the meantime, the government army keeps fighting the “terrorists” and the mysterious Ada Wong arrives on the scene when she goes visiting president Belikova, supposedly to help her fight the BOW’s. Wong is quickly uncovered by Belikova and the president soon shows she’s not a kitten to take on without gloves…
Resident Evil: Damnation is a completely CG animation movie that looks like one of the famous videogames. The animations are fluid and the movements of the characters very lifelike, except for a few combat scenes where you do notice some CG issues. All in all things do look good and from time to time you get surprised by the fact you’re actually not watching real actors.
That level of reality, however, doesn’t go for the movie as a whole. We’re dropped in the middle of the setting with way too little background information regarding the characters, and if you don’t know or have played the videogames you’ll have a really difficult time following what’s going on. The videogame origins of Damnation are also very noticeable. The story is very thin, the characters superficial and the “philosophical” nature of some of the dialogues really makes no sense what so ever. Add to that the progression of the movie which is like you’re playing a game (we go through dark corridors with little to no light, first get to take on simple enemies, to ultimately fight almost undefeatable “boss monsters”) and the end result is a CG movie that’s truly made for the fans of the games and won’t be able to appeal to anyone else.
The image and sound quality of Damnation on Blu-ray are very good. We didn’t spot any issues regarding the transfer, and the only problem as said earlier is that the CG doesn’t look life-like in certain fight scenes. The sound also delivers decent quality with good placing and also the subwoofer does its job when necessary. Qua extras we get a feature regarding the “Plaga”, some background on Damnation, bloopers and a photo gallery.
5.0
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