Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.5
Audio		5.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.0

Resident Evil: Death Island 4K Blu-ray Movie Review

Everyone, in your best Sean Connery accent: "Welcome... to the Rock!"

Reviewed by Kenneth Brown August 5, 2023

Do you enjoy watching someone else play a videogame? One that looks reasonably entertaining, albeit rather generic, with too many unskippable cutscenes? Have you kept up on the vast Resident Evil lore the long-running game series has allowed to boil over? Do you dig greatest hit nostalgia trips that hop from one favorite character to the next? Have you pined for an animated movie that culminates in a twenty-minute, seven tier boss fight with nigh invincible heroes getting tossed about by a behemoth that would shatter every bone in their bodies were the battle remotely realistic? Do you... get the point I'm driving at? Resident Evil: Death Island is fine, but just fine. It doesn't reinvent the wheel, it doesn't deliver anything particularly new or exciting. I actually found myself bored, which is perhaps the greatest sin an action/horror outing can commit. Actually Death Island doesn't seem interested in doing much more than serving up a buffet of familiar but tasty treats to its famished fanbase. Is that a bad thing? Not if you're an RE apologist. (Nothing wrong with that. Love what you love.) And yet, that alone isn't enough, no matter how many zombies, lickers or monstrosities it releases from the Capcom stable.

Nestled between 'Resident Evil: Vendetta' and 'Resident Evil 7: Biohazard', director Eiichirô Hasumi and writer Makoto Fukami's 'Death Island' brings the 'Resident Evil' story to San Francisco, where Jill Valentine (voiced by Nicole Tompkins) is dealing with a new T-virus that's caused yet another zombie outbreak, Leon Kennedy (Matthew Mercer) is on the trail of a kidnapped DARPA scientist, and Claire Redfield (Stephanie Panisello) is investigating a monstrous fish that is killing whales in the bay. With the help of Chris Redfield (Kevin Dorman) and Rebecca Chambers (Erin Cahill), the firearm-wielding team discovers a trail of clues from their separate cases that converge at the same location, Alcatraz Island, where a new evil has taken over and awaits their arrival.

Moderately entertaining at times, Death Island suffers from melodramatic flourishes, so-so voice acting, a second act that drags, and the small-potatoes stakes of an average script. It all walks a line straight down the middle of meh, though by fan reaction you'd think otherwise. A quick perusal of threads and sites finds that it's being widely hailed as superior to other animated Resident Evil entries. And such praise from the fanbase is probably the most relevant take my review has to provide, as I'm admittedly new to the animated corner of the saga. I've at least played each of the videogames, from the first RE on the original PlayStation to the latest sequel on the PS5, but that's perhaps a more damning indictment of Death Island than it should be because the film feels, at best, like a string of cutscenes from a game I'm unable to play, and at worst, like a collection of quicktime events without the thrilling act of mashing corresponding buttons that pop up on screen (he says with the most affectionate of sarcasm).

The cutscene-esque nature of the production is also readily apparent in the animation and character movements. No matter how much fine texture graces our heroes' faces and nauseating slime soaks a reptilian creature's bulbous musculature, there aren't any indications of damage, fatigue or injury. No bruises. No sweat. No scrapes. And very, very little blood. And that's with Jill and her teammates being absolutely smashed and bashed all over a warehouse by giant tentacles flailing around a towering beastie. It wouldn't feel properly Resident Evil if it didn't emulate the videogames, I get that much. But the Fast and Furious levels of superheroics of our featured cast of characters doesn't match the fear and concern they exhibit in the first two acts. A zombie is somehow more dangerous than the final boss? Ok. More distressingly, the characters have a stilted, rendered gait to their steps that make them feel more videogamey than their videogame counterparts. A convincing shaky cam and quick cinematic shots certainly help mask the humans' action-figure rigidness, but look no further than screenshots to see how little articulation and believability is actually baked into the character models. Two decidedly cartoonish villains don't help, nor do they hold a candle to the more vicious and vindictive antagonists of the games.

So what's left to love? There's plenty of action and enough gunplay and firefights to keep things moving, dozens of weapons dispatch sometimes endless hordes of monsters, and the aforementioned videogaminess is kinda a blast at times, if you let go and let Capcom. There aren't any real scares but there's plenty of suspense, despite the fact that the best scene comes far too early when blind lickers search for Jill and Leon in a sewer tunnel. There's an extended battle between Leon and a femme fatale, even if it relies on an Ultimate Warrior rebound late in the brawl to determine the obvious winner, and a decently exciting final showdown with a sad-sap mutated Big Bad that spends the majority of the flick having flashbacks to his first traumatic encounter with the T-virus. Does all the pathos and gravitas pay off? No. Again, melodrama is king and monologuing is queen, infusing little weight into the conflict. Flip on your videogame brain, though, and it's a solid bit of harmless, fan-serving shoulder shruggery that gets the job done.

Resident Evil: Death Island 4K Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

To be blunt, the differences between the 4K encode and its 2k Blu-ray counterpart are negligible at best. The only real thing to be gained with this release is an attractive Steelbook. Not that that's nearly as much of a problem as it sounds. The 1080p presentation is excellent, so much so that the merely minor upgrade the 4K presentation provides doesn't come as a disappointment. Colors exhibit a touch more richness to my eye and there is a tick upwards in clarity. But you'd find it difficult to spot the differences between the transfers in motion. Both encodes are sharp and precise, with no major issues to report. The film's palette is largely muted and submerged in shadow but there is some vibrancy to be had and plenty of deep, inky black levels to get lost in. Delineation is appropriately revealing, edges are crisp and free of halos, textures are refined (though a bit flat and lacking in wide shots), and sporadic, faint banding is the only sin to which either presentation succumbs. The character models aren't all that spectacular (with clumpy hair and minimum points of articulation) but that's hardly the fault of the encode. There's also quite a bit of cinematic camera shake and motion blur, which leaves screenshots looking less impressive than the film does in motion. Overall, though, the experience is more than satisfying, emerging as the undisputed highlight of the release.

Resident Evil: Death Island 4K Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Despite a misprint on the back cover that suggests the 4K release is Dolby TrueHD 7.1 compatible, the disc only offers two English options. But what a pair they are. First is a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track identical to the one featured on the standard BD release. That might be good enough on its own, were it not for the second. The true star of the show is a ground-pounding, zombie-blasting Dolby Atmos mix sure to give you all the thrills and chills. Dialogue is clean, clear and spatially exact, and the environments roar to life thanks to slick directionality and convincing sonic details that creep in from all sides. (Or burst in, as the attempted scares dictate.) Chattier scenes are still flat by comparison -- there's not a whole lot to be accomplished when heroes are exposition dumping or villains are monologuing -- but give it two minutes and the next firefight or monster attack will make you forget there were ever any lulls. Like the 5.1 lossless mix, the Atmos soundfield is immersive, yet it does what every good Atmos track does: takes it all a step farther, going beyond a series of convincing pans and soundscape nuances to create a more absorbing experience, one that draws you into every prison cell, sewer tunnel and collapsing warehouse rendered on screen. Videogamey? Sure. It's certainly as over the top as the action it accompanies. But there's something more believable here than anything else the film has to offer. Moreover, a welcome boost in low-end weight and heft, as well as the silky smoothness with which effects glide across the soundfield, enhances every encounter. The subwoofer gets quite the workout, particularly in the final battle with Ugly Face McGee; a showdown that exhibits a bit more theater-quaking thooms with every enormous footfall and tentacle swipe than its 5.1 counterpart. All in all, there's enough firepower and explosive heft here to keep the experience lively and electrifying. It's easily as engaging as one of the PS5 series' audio experiences, which is one area that the gaminess of the production really pays off.

Resident Evil: Death Island 4K Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Steelbook collectors will be more than pleased with the cover of this exclusive, which is (to my eye) far better than the unappealing, cluttered coverart of the standard BD release. Special features include:

• Jill Valentine: The Return (HD, 13 minutes) - She's back, and with a surprisingly dedicated featurette. It would be nice if each hero received equal treatment but it's better than the usual treatment animated direct-to-BD movies receive.


• Genesis of Death Island (HD, 9 minutes) - The animated filmmakers behind Death Island line up to chat legacy characters, storylines, and battles to the death.


• Designing Death Island (HD, 7 minutes) - A featurette on the flick's animation.


• Motion Capture Set Tour (HD, 6 minutes) - A sister featurette about the motion capture techniques used to bring the characters to life.


• Voicing Death Island (HD, 6 minutes) - Another EPK treat focused on the voice acting.


• Birth of Death Island (HD, 6 minutes) - This redundant making-of could have been combined with the primary featurette on the production.


• Art Gallery (HD)


• Sony Previews (HD)

Resident Evil: Death Island 4K Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

While the 4K Steelbook release edges out its 2K Blu-ray counterpart, it's really only due to the slight upgrade of decidedly more attractive cover art. The video and audio presentations are largely indistinguishable from one another and, of course, the movie itself is as middle-of- the-road fine as they come. Resident Evil diehards will find plenty to enjoy while the rest of us will be left with little more than a desire to play a videogame rather than watch one.