Resident Evil: Death Island Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.5

Resident Evil: Death Island Blu-ray Movie Review

Jill Valentine and company slug it out with Capcom's ugliest...

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 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Sony's 1080p/AVC-encoded 2K Blu-ray video transfer is sharp and precise, with no major issues to report. It's so striking, in fact, that the 4K upgrade isn't the eye-popping winner you might expect. Colors are 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 negative mark to be had. 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 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

A punchy, powerful lossless 5.1 surround track only strengthens Sony's Blu-ray release. There's little discernible difference between the Blu-ray and 4K releases audio mixes but that's hardly a downside. Dialogue is clean and grounded in an immersive soundfield, rear speaker effects lend depth and believability to an active, engaging series of environments and catastrophes, and there are plenty of low-end booms, thooms and gravely, screen-shaking roars to heighten the action. The subwoofer gets quite a workout, particularly in the final battle; one of the few encounters that exhibit notable weightiness. There are a few too many flat, conversational scenes that lack the same oomph (oh the monologuing) but you can't fault the mix for failing to enrich scenes that are already two-dimensional. Thankfully there's enough firepower and explosive heft to the proceedings to keep the experience lively and electrifying. It's about as engaging as one of the videogame series' audio powerhouses, which is one area that the videogaminess of the production really pays off.

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

• 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 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Resident Evil superfans will certainly get their money's worth with Sony's Blu-ray release, although the movie itself is a bit too humdrum for newcomers or, I suspect, most casual fans. There's plenty of action, of course, which lends itself to an excellent AV presentation. Special features are decent but thin, even if there's more here than the typical animated movie earns. All in all, it's solid fun I suppose. The more you love the videogame series, the more you'll find to love here. Just don't expect to be blown away.