I have been a Resident Evil fan since the first one came out and knocked my socks off. It was such an awesome and original mash-up of science fiction, zombie/splatter film, and vision of a dystopian future. Aside from Paul W.S. Anderson's stunning visual and action sequences, he wrote a solid script that was both cohesive and coherent. Not an easy thing to do when you come from a video game, but then, I've never played the game so maybe the script was just lying there waiting to be picked up.
The second one was even an improvement, with better monsters, higher stakes for Alice, crazier corporate cretins and the same stupendous action and technological creativity. I even enjoyed the third because it managed to capture a post-apocalyptic feel that was easy to sink your teeth into (no pun intended). However, the creators did start to lag a little in the monster department. Nothing new (except for some uber-gory dog zombies) and even the people zombies looked stock and uninspired. Still, the movie left off with some resolution and a feeling that, yeah, Alice is going to get her revenge.
And that's where it should have ended.
Have you ever seen a fourth film in any series that was good? Star Wars to The Phantom Menace? Ugh. Alien to Alien: Resurrection? Puh-lease (though I still contend that Aliens vs. Predators was an awesome movie). I don't know, maybe the Saw franchise hasn't lost any of its verve, but then, there weren't any standards in which to rise to begin with so it could hardly get worse.
Sad to say, Resident Evil has followed the failure trend and totally flopped in Afterlife. I won't give you any spoilers, but Anderson wiped out one of the main elements that made the series interesting to begin with, thus making it like any other showdown at the OK Corral set in an alternate future film. The plot lost all of its plausibility with this one missing element. There were no inspired monsters, the zombies were as dull as in Extinction, and the story just couldn't have been less original, exciting, or surprising. And the hackneyed cliffhanger ending only left me wanting to erase the last two hours of my life that were wasted on this film.
Maybe I'm being too hard on it. Let me know what you think.