Netflix’s four-episode anime miniseries Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness arrived on July 8, 2021, with two of the franchise’s most durable characters in hand and a premise that sounds, on paper, like a correction. Leon S. Kennedy and Claire Redfield, the leads of Resident Evil 2, share a screen again for the first time in years. The setting is 2006, wedged between the events of Resident Evil 4 and Resident Evil 5. The hook is a hacking incident at the White House that turns into a viral attack. The show gets the pieces right and the arrangement wrong.
Trailer, via Netflix.
Leon S. Kennedy and Claire Redfield, Reunited
The setup gives both leads a job. Leon is ordered to investigate the hacking incident at the White House. He is still a government man, still carrying the Raccoon City years behind him. Then the White House is hit in a mysterious attack, and he meets zombies inside it.
Claire has her own thread. She works a TerraSave-led mission overseeing construction of a welfare facility in Penamstan, a fictional South Asian republic. While there, she investigates a strange drawing made by a child refugee. That drawing is the thread that pulls her back toward Leon and toward the conspiracy.
It is a clean split. Leon gets the corridors and the gunfire. Claire gets the paperwork and the politics. The show wants the two halves to rhyme, and for a while the structure holds.
Four Episodes, One Long Night at the White House
Infinite Darkness runs one season of four episodes, all released at once on July 8, 2021. That is a short commitment, and it should be a sharp one. Instead the show moves like something longer, padding its middle with briefings and corridor walks that do not build.
The zombies at the White House are the selling point, and they land early. Leon moving through a compromised executive mansion is the image the marketing promised, and the show knows it. What it does not do is escalate.
By the third episode the show is explaining itself more than it is showing anything. The conspiracy widens, the names pile up, and the momentum that the White House attack generated drains away.
The Cast Behind the Voices
Nick Apostolides voices Leon S. Kennedy. Stephanie Panisello voices Claire Redfield. Jona Xiao voices Shen May. Ray Chase voices Jason. Brad Venable voices Ryan. Doug Stone voices Secretary of Defense Wilson. Aleks Le voices Jun Shī.
It is a competent voice cast working with material that gives them little to bite. Leon is stoic by design, and Apostolides plays him that way. Claire is the more active investigator here, and Panisello gets the better scenes because Claire is the one asking questions.
The supporting parts are functional. Wilson is a defense secretary with an agenda. Shen May, Jason and Ryan fill out the operation around Leon. None of them get the room to become more than pieces on the board.
TMS Entertainment and Quebico’s CGI Problem
TMS Entertainment produced Infinite Darkness, and Quebico handled the animation. The show is a CGI original net animation, and that choice is the source of its biggest and most persistent problem.
CGI in anime is a tool, not a verdict. Here it is a tax. Characters move with a stiffness that undercuts scenes meant to be tense. Faces hold one expression through conversations that should turn on a look. The action, when it comes, is staged clearly enough, but it never feels dangerous.
The horror in Resident Evil has always lived in the body, in the wrongness of a thing that used to be a person. Infinite Darkness renders those bodies in a way that makes them look manufactured. The dread does not survive the render.
Penamstan, TerraSave, and a Drawing
The Penamstan thread is the show’s most interesting idea and its least developed one. Claire is not there to fight. She is there to oversee construction of a welfare facility, and she finds a drawing by a child refugee that does not add up.
That is a good engine for a mystery. A drawing is a small, human object. It implies a witness, a place, a thing that happened. The show treats it as a clue and then rushes past it.
Penamstan is fictional, which frees the writers to invent. They mostly do not. The republic exists to host a conspiracy and a flashback, not to become a place with people in it. Claire’s investigation should be the spine of the series. It reads like a subplot.
Where Infinite Darkness Sits in the Timeline
The show is set in 2006, between Resident Evil 4 and Resident Evil 5, and it follows the events of the 2008 film Resident Evil: Degeneration. That is a specific slot, and the show does not do much with it.
It shares a universe with the Capcom games, and it leans on that shared history rather than building its own. Leon and Claire are here because they are known. The conspiracy is here because conspiracies are what this franchise does.
Fans who track the timeline will find the placement tidy. Fans who wanted the show to use that placement for something will not. A gap between two games is a chance to say something the games could not. Infinite Darkness mostly fills the gap.
What the 5.0 Score Actually Reflects
The published critical score for Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness is 5.0 out of 10, with a 50% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. That number is fair, and it is fair for a specific reason.
The show is not a disaster. It is competent at every technical level and inert at the one that matters. It has the right two leads, the right setting, and a premise that should write itself. What it lacks is nerve, the willingness to let a scene breathe, to let a horror beat land, and to let Claire’s investigation matter as much as Leon’s gun.
A 50% score usually means a split. Here it means something closer to a shrug. Half the audience gets the reunion it wanted. The other half gets four episodes that never justify the reunion.
What Infinite Darkness Gets Wrong
Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness is a 5 of 10. It is watchable, short, and faithful to the franchise’s furniture. It is also the least frightening thing to carry the Resident Evil name in years, and that is the failure that counts.
The parts worth keeping are small. Claire’s TerraSave mission and the child’s drawing are the only threads that feel like they could grow into something. Leon’s White House night is a strong opening that the show never tops. The voice cast does what the script allows.
The part worth watching is the first episode. The rest is a long walk to a conclusion the show has already shown you.
KEY FACTS
– Title: Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness
– Network: Netflix
– Released: July 8, 2021
– Season: 1
– Episodes: 4
– Genres: Animation, Drama, Action & Adventure, Sci-Fi & Fantasy
– Producer: TMS Entertainment
– Animation: Quebico
– Setting: 2006, between Resident Evil 4 and Resident Evil 5
– Follows: Resident Evil: Degeneration (2008)
– Score: 5.0 of 10 (Rotten Tomatoes 50%)
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