Resident Evil: Retribution is a film that treats its audience like a captive audience. It is a maze of glass corridors, neon corridors and cloned zombies, and it never once stops to let you breathe. The movie is the fifth installment in the Resident Evil franchise, and it is the most purely abstract one yet. It is a video game rendered in 3D, with all the grace that implies.
Paul W.S. Anderson directs, and he has made a career out of adapting video games into action films. His Resident Evil series has grown steadily more absurd with each entry, but Retribution pushes past absurdity into a realm where the rules no longer matter. The plot, such as it is, concerns Alice (Milla Jovovich) and her allies trying to escape a massive, shifting computer simulation created by the Umbrella Corporation. The corporation has captured Alice and is using her to build a digital map of the world. The film’s central idea is that everything you see is a construct, and the truth is somewhere else entirely.
That sounds clever on paper. In practice, it means the movie spends most of its runtime in a series of set pieces that are indistinguishable from one another. A corridor full of zombies. A corridor full of zombies. A corridor full of zombies who can walk through glass. The film never explains why the glass matters, or what the simulation is supposed to accomplish, or why Alice is the key to unlocking it. It just keeps moving forward, trusting that the spectacle will hold attention.
Trailer, via Sony Pictures Entertainment.
Alice’s Solo Journey
Alice is the only constant in this film. Milla Jovovich has played her across the entire series, and she remains the franchise’s anchor. She is strong, capable and occasionally funny, delivering lines about clones and simulations with a deadpan that borders on wit. Her character is the closest thing Retribution has to a protagonist, and even she gets lost in the labyrinth.
The supporting cast is thinner. Shinya Tsukamoto plays a scientist named Fabian, and he is mostly there to explain things Alice already knows. Oded Fehr returns as Leon, though his role is reduced to a few scenes of martial arts. Ruby Rose joins as a new character named Nadia, a young soldier whose purpose is unclear until the very end. None of them get the chance to develop beyond their function in the moment.
The Maze Structure
The visual design of Retribution is its most distinctive feature. The film is shot almost entirely in practical sets, built on soundstages with glass walls, mirrors and shifting rooms. This creates a claustrophobic, disorienting effect that is genuinely unsettling for stretches. The sets are impressive, and they give the film a distinct identity that separates it from its predecessors.
But the design is also a crutch. Because the sets are so elaborate, the film rarely uses wide shots or establishing scenes. The audience is dropped into the middle of a corridor and told to follow along. This works for a while, but it becomes exhausting when the film repeats the same trick half a dozen times in a row. The lack of context means that every encounter feels like the last one, and the payoff is never earned.
The film’s action sequences are kinetic, but they are also hollow. There are shootouts, fistfights and zombie attacks, but none of them feel consequential. The film’s climax involves a giant creature that looks like a shark crossed with a snake, and it is as ridiculous as it sounds. The creature is memorable, but only because the film has spent so long building up to something that ultimately does nothing.
The Clones and the Umbrella Corporation
The film’s central mystery is the nature of the simulation itself. Alice learns that the corporation has been cloning her, and that her memories are being harvested to create a perfect digital replica of the world. This is a premise that could support a tense, cerebral thriller. Instead, the film treats it as a plot device to justify its shifting sets. The clones are introduced, explained briefly, and then forgotten.
The corporation itself is barely present as a threat. The film shows its agents as faceless soldiers, but it never explores their motives or their hierarchy. The villain of the piece is a man named Alexander Wesker, played by Iain Glen. He is the film’s best performance, delivering a smarmy, theatrical menace that cuts through the chaos. But even he is a sideshow compared to the main event, which is Alice’s struggle to find her way out.
The film’s ending is a cliffhanger, but it is a weak one. It promises a sequel, but it does not leave the audience wanting more. The questions it raises about the simulation are never answered, and the answers that are given are vague enough to be ignored. The film ends with a shot of Alice walking down a corridor, and that is meant to be profound. It is not.
A Look at the Numbers
- Title: Resident Evil: Retribution
- Director: Paul W.S. Anderson
- Lead actress: Milla Jovovich
- Release year: 2012
- Runtime: 104 minutes
- Score: 3.9/10
Comparing the Entries
| Film | Director | Focus | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| Resident Evil: Retribution | Paul W.S. Anderson | Virtual reality maze | 3.9/10 |
| Resident Evil: Apocalypse | Russell Mulcahy | Zombie outbreak | 6.1/10 |
| Resident Evil: Extinction | Robert Rodriguez | Post-apocalyptic survival | 5.9/10 |
| Resident Evil: Degeneration | Eric Bress & Adi Shankar | Animated prequel | 5.0/10 |
| Resident Evil: Afterlife | Paul W.S. Anderson | 3D action | 4.9/10 |
What Works
There are moments in Retribution that work. The set design is genuinely impressive, and the action sequences are often thrilling in a purely visceral sense. The film’s commitment to its own logic is admirable, even if that logic is nonsense. And Jovovich continues to be a force of nature, carrying scenes that would collapse without her.
The film’s best sequence is a chase through a flooded city, where Alice runs through streets filled with water and zombies. The setting is simple, but the execution is confident. The film knows exactly what it is doing in that scene, and it delivers.
What Doesn’t Work
The problems are legion. The film is overlong for what it offers, and its pacing suffers accordingly. The dialogue is often laughable, with characters spouting exposition in a way that feels scripted and artificial. The zombies, while numerous, are rarely scary. They are more like obstacles than threats.
The film also fails to earn its emotional beats. Alice is supposed to be searching for her humanity, but the film never gives her a moment to reflect. She is constantly running, fighting and shooting, and the audience is never allowed to feel what she might be feeling. The climax is a betrayal of everything the film has set up, and it leaves the viewer feeling cheated rather than satisfied.
The film’s reliance on practical effects is a double-edged sword. The sets are beautiful, but they are also expensive to build and maintain. The film’s budget is not disclosed, but it is clear that the production spent heavily on the sets themselves. This is a film that is more interested in its look than its content.
Final Verdict
Resident Evil: Retribution is a failure of ambition. It tries to be a cerebral, genre-bending thriller, but it lacks the discipline to pull it off. It settles for being a noisy, visually striking mess, and that is a disappointment. The film is not terrible, but it is not worth seeing. It is a product of a franchise that has lost its way, and it reflects that confusion in every frame.
The film’s legacy is that it pushed the Resident Evil series further into abstraction. The later entries in the series would continue to explore virtual realities and alternate dimensions, but they would do so with more coherence and less repetition. Retribution is a stepping stone, but it is a flawed one.
The film is a reminder that spectacle is not enough. A movie needs ideas, and it needs to execute those ideas with precision. Retribution has neither. It is a hollow shell of a movie, dressed up in shiny corridors and glass walls. It is a film that looks like it costs a fortune and feels like it was made in a day.
The film’s final shot of Alice walking down a corridor is meant to be ambiguous. It is not. It is a cop-out, a refusal to answer the questions it has raised. The film is a maze without a center, and it expects the audience to find their way out anyway.
The score is 3.9/10.
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