Review: ‘Homestead’ (2024), starring Dawn Olivieri, Kearran Giovanni, Bailey Chase and Neal McDonough

December 21, 2024

by Carla Hay

Bailey Chase and Neal McDonough in “Homestead” (Photo courtesy of Angel Studios)

“Homestead” (2024)

Directed by Ben Smallbone

Some language in Tagalog with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in California and Utah, the dramatic film “Homestead” (based on the 2018 novel “Black Autumn: A Post Apocalyptic Saga”) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few black people, Asians and Latin people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: After a nuclear bomb is detonated off the coast of California, a wealthy doomsday prepper with a survivalist fortress in Utah’s Rocky Mountains fights off military soldiers, government officials and refugees who want to gain access to the fortress.

Culture Audience: “Homestead” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and faith-based entertainment, no matter how poorly made this entertainment is.

Kearran Giovanni and Dawn Olivieri in “Homestead” (Photo courtesy of Angel Studios)

The only thing worse than “Homestead” is knowing that this terribly made apocalyptic movie with faith-based preaching is really just a pilot episode for an online series that will continue the atrociousness. This rotten drama is filled with more plot holes than any destruction caused by the nuclear bomb that sets off this catastrophic story. In addition to the flimsy and disjointed plot, much of the acting in the film is either stiff are horribly melodramatic.

Directed by Ben Smallbone and written by Jason Ross, “Homestead” is based on the 2018 novel “Black Autumn: A Post Apocalyptic Saga,” which was written by Jeff Kirkham and Ross. “Black Autumn” turned into a series of books, which will no doubt be the basis of the “Homestead” series that will be available on platforms that carry series from Angel Studios. The end of “Homestead” shows a montage of “sneak preview” scenes from the series.

“Homestead” starts off with a nonsensical scene showing who had the bomb and how the bomb was denotated. The movie goes downhill from there. Somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, near the California coast, two Filipino brothers named Ajay (played by Iñigo Pascual) and Miguel (played by Mark LaBella) are in a small, ramshackle fishing boat when they are told to halt what they’re doing by people in a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter that’s hovering above them.

The brothers speak in Tagalog. Miguel, the older brother, tells Ajay to set off the nuclear bomb that’s in their boat. Why? Don’t expect an answer to that question. And don’t expect the movie to explain how Miguel and Ajay came into possession of this nuclear bomb on their raggedy boat.

The only clues are that Miguel and Ajay were headed to Queensgate before they got caught and they took some kind of “oath” to complete this mission. Instead of surrendering, Ajay sets off the bomb on the boat. (The suicide bomber deaths of Miguel and Ajay are not shown in the movie but are presumed.) The bomb is small and looks as dirty and rickety as the boat.

“Homestead” next switches to scenes that takes place in California. A woman, who is later identified as Jenna Ross (played Dawn Olivieri), can be heard saying in a voiceover: “Everyone wondered how the world broke. Deep down before the collapse, we were already falling. Technology had become our god. And we worshipped at the altar of convenience and ease. Everyone wondered how the world ended. But this is the story of how it began. Again.”

“Homestead” is really a sloppily constructed parable that’s supposed to draw parallels to Noah’s Ark and the modern-day survivalist homestead that is the story’s namesake. It takes an awfully long time (and several mindless scenes of gun shootings) before the movie makes these comparisons. Until then, “Homestead” is just a series of disjointed scenes that jump from one badly written scenario to the next. The nuclear bomb affects the Los Angeles area the most, but the movie inexplicably also makes references to an apocalypse happening in many other parts of Earth.

The first family who’s shown being affected by the nuclear bomb lives in Calabasas, California. When the bomb goes off, the air suddenly turns light orange. It’s mentioned several times that people aren’t supposed to breathe the poisonous air, but in the panic of people finding refuge, people breath the air anyway. But then, later that same day, the sky turns clear, and the movie never mentions any side effects of breathing the poisonous air, as if the sky never turned orange from this nuclear explosion.

“Homestead” does a terrible and incoherent job of introducing the families who are the focus of the story: The Ross family, the Ericksson family and the McNulty family. All of the women in the families are “saintly mothers,” while all the men in the families are flawed but “brave protectors.” The McNulty family, who’s shown in the first 20 minutes of movie, isn’t even one of the two main families who are at the center of the story. All of the families have at least one member who acts unrealistically during this crisis.

The McNulty family from Calabasas is the first family shown in the movie. Malcolm McNulty (played by Matt Koenig), who works in an unnamed business, is in his high-rise office building when the bomb goes off. Malcolm frantically calls his homemaker wife Evie McNulty (played by Susan Misner) and tells her to take their three underage kids and “go to the homestead,” where he plans to meet up with them as soon as he can.

The couple’s three children are Molly McNulty (played by Grace Powell), who’s about 14 or 15; Theo McNulty (played by Caden Dragomer), who’s about 11 or 12; and Emma McNulty (played by Sophia Kopera), who’s about 7 or 8 years old. There are some scenes where Emma and the kids are at a supermarket, where people are panic-buying and getting into fights in a parking lot. Emma ends up stealing a man’s car at a gas station when her car doesn’t work anymore. Malcolm is separated from his family for most of the movie.

The Ross family is the owner of the survivalist homestead in the Rocky Mountains of Utah, the state where most of “Homestead” was filmed on location. The McNulty family is related to the Ross family because Evie McNulty is the sister of Jenna Ross, the Ross family matriarch. Jenna is married to wealthy tycoon Ian Ross (played by Neal McDonough), a prickly ex-military guy who’s a doomsday prepper. Ian and Jenna have a 17-year-old daughter named Claire (played by Olivia Sanabia), who has been homeschooled her entire life. There’s a scene early in the movie where Claire worries that no one will ask her to go to an upcoming prom because she’s a homeschooled kid.

Claire has a good relationship with her mother Jenna, but she doesn’t really get along well with her strict and domineering father Ian. In the event of an apocalypse, Ian has already planned who will and who will not get access to his survivalist homestead, which is a sprawling and remote compound with its own farmland in this mountainous area. Ian’s selectiveness in who will have access to the homestead becomes a source of conflict between Jenna and Ian. Jenna thinks Ian should be more welcoming and inclusive to friends and strangers who are desperately in need during this apocalypse.

The Eriksson family is part of the story because patriarch Jeff Ericksson (played Bailey Chase) is a former Green Beret, who is contacted by Ian in this crisis to become the homestead’s head of security. Conversations in the movie indicate that Jeff and Ian used to be buddies in the military. Jeff’s wife Tara Ericksson (played by Kearran Giovanni) is a veteran of the U.S. Army.

Jeff and Tara have a blended family where the spouses are raising Tara’s two biological sons from a previous relationship: 17-year-old Abe Ericksson (played by Tyler Lofton) and Leif Eriksson (played by Isaiah Dolan), who’s about 11 or 12, have both been adopted by Jeff. Tara and Jeff also have an adopted teenage daughter named Georgie Ericksson (played by Georgiana White), who apparently has psychic abilities. There are hokey scenes in the movie showing that Georgie predicted this apocalypse by drawing illustrations of it.

Jeff, Tara, and their children go to live in the homestead compound. Jeff has also brought along seven ex-military men to be the compound’s security employees. Predictably, there’s at least one trigger-happy hothead in the group. His name is Bing (played by Manny McCord), and you can easily predict his fate in this story. Also predictably, alpha males Ian and Jeff clash over certain issues regarding the compound, which has about 40 families livng there when Jeff and his family arrive.

“Homestead” is sloppy with details over who exactly planned this nuclear bomb attack. Jeff does some vague shouting early in the story: “The Russians took the power grid out!” But that’s the very limited extent to which any entity or group is identified as responsible for planning this terrorist attack.

“Homestead” is a clumsy mix of aggressive gun shootouts, sanctimonious religious preaching and angry anti-bureaucrat messaging. One of the chief villains to Ian is Blake Masterson (played by Currie Graham), the zoning enforcement chief from Oakwood, the fictional community where the compound is located. In the midst of this apocalypse, where people are trying to survive on limited resources, Blake storms over to the compond and threatens Ian with fines because Blake has gotten complaints that Ian has too many people on Ian’s property. Yes, the movie really is that stupid.

The food shortage problem for the compound is awkwardly addressed in a way that seems inspired by the Christian story of Jesus feeding 5,000 people with only five loaves of bread and two fish. The movie also drops in a random tidbit about Claire: She’s skilled at making peach wine, which she proudly shows to Abe, who has an instant crush on her.

Speaking of Claire and Abe, “Homestead” has a corny subplot about a blossoming romance between these two teenagers. Because “Homestead” is a movie with a conservative Christian perspective, the romance between Claire and Abe is very chaste, with only wholesome kisses. And the romance literally blossoms, since Claire and Abe have secretive “dates” in a greenhouse. Claire and Abe’s “romance” is taboo because their fathers are having conflicts with each other.

The movie’s uneven acting—none of which can be considered “good”—is only made worse by the onslaught of bad ideas on display. “Homestead” can’t seem to make up its mind if it wants to be a movie that preaches peace and harmony, or if it wants to be a doomsday “survival of the fittest” battle movie. This erratic tone in “Homestead” makes it a wretched slog, as the movie repeatedly pounds out messages that the end is only the beginning. When the end of the movie finally arrives, viewers will definitely know whether or not “Homestead” is worth revisiting.

Angel Studios released “Homestead” in U.S. cinemas on December 20, 2024.

Review: ‘The Shift’ (2023), starring Kristoffer Polaha, Neal McDonough, Elizabeth Tabish, Rose Reid, John Billingsley, Paras Patel, Jordan Alexandra and Sean Astin

December 7, 2023

by Carla Hay

Neal McDonough and Kristoffer Polaha in “The Shift” (Photo courtesy of Angel Studios)

“The Shift” (2023)

Directed by Brock Heasley

Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed U.S. city, the dramatic film “The Shift” (loosely based on the Book of Job) features a cast of predominantly white characters (with some African Americans and Asians) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: A man gets “shifted” to a multiverse, where he desperately tries to find a way back to his wife. 

Culture Audience: “The Shift” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in movies that blend religion and science fiction, but “The Shift” has too much of a muddled plot to be enjoyable for viewers who want a coherent story.

Elizabeth Tabish in “The Shift” (Photo courtesy of Angel Studios)

“The Shift” wants desperately to be a clever mix of sci-fi and faith-based teachings, but the end results are jumbled and messy. This disappointing drama taking place in a multiverse has too many poorly written scenes and characters without much depth. The stiff and awkward acting performances in the movie do nothing to help improve the quality of this dull and incoherent film.

Written and directed by Brock Heasley, “The Shift” is loosely based on the Book of Job, from the Hebrew Bible. In the Book of Job, the story’s namesake Job is a wealthy man with a loving family. Satan tells God that Job will lose his faith in God if Job loses everything that’s meaningful in Job’s life. God allows Satan to test this theory, so Satan takes away Job’s money and family.

In “The Shift” (which takes place in an unnamed part of the United States), the Job figure is Kevin Garner (played by Kristoffer Polaha), who is seemingly affluent and happily married to his wife Molly Garner (played by Elizabeth Tabish). One morning, Kevin and Molly have an argument about bills that Kevin said he was going to pay, but Kevin lied and didn’t pay the bills. Kevin is upset when he gets in his car and has a car accident.

A dazed and confused Kevin wakes up on a deserted street and sees a man who calls himself The Benefactor (played by Neal McDonough, in yet another role as a cold and calculating villain), who tells Kevin that there was no car accident. The Benefactor doesn’t bother to explain to Kevin why Kevin has injuries on his face from the accident. It’s one of many confounding inconsistencies in this movie.

Kevin grabs The Benefactor by the lapels and demands, “Where did everybody go?” The Benefactor replies, “They didn’t go anywhere. You did. Are you sure you are where you think you are? Let’s get some dinner.” Kevin willingly follows The Benefactor.

Kevin and The Benefactor go to a diner, where this mysterious stranger seems to be a frequent customer, because the waitress (played by Ginger Cressman) already knows what he likes to order: steak and eggs with a tall glass of milk. Customers in the diner seem to know who The Benefactor is too, because they cower in fear when he’s in the room and are afraid to look at him.

During this uncomfortable conversation in the diner, The Benefactor tells Kevin that he has “shifted” Kevin to another dimension and says he has the ability to do this anyone. The Benefactor also says that several dimensions exist in this multiverse. Kevin doesn’t believe The Benefactor and tells him to prove it.

The Benefactor points out a terrified-looking woman in the diner. He says her name is Tina (played by Rose Reid), and he says he’s going to shift Tina to another dimension where Tina doesn’t exist. And sure enough, The Benefactor does that, much to Kevin’s shock.

Now that Kevin knows that he’s in another dimension where he can’t get back to Molly, he is given an offer by The Benefactor, who knows that Kevin and Molly had an argument that morning: “I can give you a Molly who’ll be exactly who you want,” The Benefactor tells Kevin. In exchange, The Benefactor says that all Kevin has to do is work with The Benefactor as one of The Benefactor’s shifters.

Kevin refuses this offer and starts praying out loud. The Benefactor becomes enraged and then literally vanishes. Even if viewers of The Shift don’t know anything about the Book of Job, it’s easy to see how the rest of this “good versus evil” story is going to go.

For most of “The Shift,” Kevin is a poor and homeless person who desperately tries to find his way back to Molly. Kevin is in an alternate world where The Benefactor’s disappearance from the diner has made the TV news. Kevin has become famous and is now known in the news as The Kevin Who Refused.

This notoriety has made Kevin somewhat of a fugitive. He finds himself scrounging around for food on the streets. And somehow, he ends up working at a rubble-filled construction site, where he meets a man named Gabriel (played by Sean Astin), who gives helpful advice to Kevin. Some mysterious soldier types call lancers, who have metal uniforms, helmets covering their faces and carrying guns. The lancers occasionally show up to try to capture Kevin, but he manages to escape.

There’s a dark and dingy movie theater that has been converted to a place where people can pay to see what’s going on in other dimensions. In “The Shift,” this multiverse dimension-watching is set up to look like a candle-lit room, where someone can wear a virtual reality headset while looking at a giant projection screen. Even though “The Shift” is a low-budget film, there is still absolutely no imagination in this movie’s production design.

It isn’t long before Kevin finds out about this theater and goes there to get clues on where Molly might be. The owner of this theater is named Russo (played by John Billingsley), who gets increasingly annoyed every time Kevin shows up. Kevin also meets a married couple named Rajit Nadir (played by Paras Patel) and Priya Nadir (played by Jordan Alexandra), who generously invite Kevin to stay with them in their family home.

“The Shift” continuously bungles the story by introducing new characters and then not giving them much to do or much purpose. The movie seems intent on having a lot of religious symbolism without meaningful explanation, and so this symbolism ends becoming a lot of clutter to the plot. It’s like giving someone a puzzle to solve with clues that are ultimately useless.

It should come as no surprise (because it’s already shown in the trailers for “The Shift”) that Kevin sees Molly living a very different life in another dimension. Because Kevin has been “shifted,” he no longer exists in the dimension where he used to live. The movie becomes a chaotic mush of Kevin trying to figure out how to get the dimension where Molly is. Viewers of “The Shift” will feel like they’re stuck in a dimension where this terrible and boring movie exists, and they can’t get their time back after watching “The Shift.”

Angel Studios released “The Shift” in U.S. cinemas on December 1, 2023.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fozskMtdwI8

Review: ‘Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City,’ starring Kaya Scodelario, Hannah John-Kamen, Robbie Amell, Tom Hopper, Avan Jogia, Donal Logue and Neal McDonough

November 22, 2021

by Carla Hay

Avan Jogia and Kaya Scodelario in “Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City” (Photo by Shane Mahood/Screen Gems)

“Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City”

Directed by Johannes Roberts

Culture Representation: Taking place in 1998 in the fictional Midwestern town of Raccoon City, the horror flick “Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few multiracial people) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: A woman in her 20s returns to her childhood hometown of Raccoon City to visit her cop brother, only to discover that Raccoon City will soon be overtaken by zombies and is the target of a more sinister plan. 

Culture Audience: “Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City” will appeal primarily to fans of the “Resident Evil” franchise and anyone who doesn’t mind watching a predictable and silly horror flick.

Robbie Amell, Chad Rook, Hannah John-Kamen and Tom Hopper in “Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City” (Photo by Shane Mahood/Screen Gems)

When will the makers of bad zombie films learn that gory doesn’t always equal scary? “Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City” has plenty of gore but absolutely nothing terrifying or imaginative. It’s just a ridiculous rehash of all the things of people hate the most about terrible horror movies: Shallow characters who make dumb decisions; unrealistic action scenes; and muddled storytelling that fails to be engaging.

By now, the “Resident Evil” movie series (which is based on the “Resident Evil” video games) has such a tarnished reputation for being low-quality junk that audiences should expect that any movie with the words “resident evil” in the title will be nothing but schlock. But schlock can be entertaining if it’s done the right way. Unfortunately, “Resident Evil: Raccoon City” is more of the same disappointing garbage.

Paul W.S. Anderson, the writer/director of most of the “Resident Evil” movies, is not the writer/director of “Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City,” but he is an executive producer. Instead, Johannes Roberts wrote and directed “Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City,” a prequel that starts off with the most tiresome cliché of tiresome clichés in a horror movie: The “fake-out freak-out” scene where something frightening is supposed to be happening. But surprise! It was only someone’s nightmare. This is how the movie’s two sibling main characters are introduced.

Claire Redfield (played by Kaya Scodelario) and her older brother Chris Redfield (played by Robbie Amell) are first seen as children in the Raccoon City Orphanage, where they have been living since their parents died in a car accident. Claire is about 8 years old, while Chris is about 10. Raccoon City is in an unnamed U.S. state in the Midwest. (“Resident Evil: Raccoon City” was actually filmed in Canada, in the Ontario cities of Sudbury and Hamilton.)

While at the orphanage, which looks more like hospital in a war zone, it’s nighttime, and Claire is woken up by someone who seems to have touched her. Viewers will see a gnarly and dirty hand with long fingernails outstretched as if it’s going to hurt Claire, but the hand suddenly pulls back.

Claire tells Chris what she thinks she saw. “She’s here again!” Claire says in an alarmed voice. Chris tells Claire that whatever Claire saw, it was probably her imagination. However, Claire is convinced that something strange is in the orphanage. She takes a look around the orphanage to investigate.

And sure enough, crouched in the corner of a room in a makeshift tent is a mutant-looking woman, with matted hair and distorted physical features. It’s the same woman who tried to wake up Claire. This severely disfigured woman, who doesn’t look entirely human, is wearing a wristband with the name Lisa Trevor (played by Marina Mazepa). Claire now knows this woman’s name.

Instead of screaming or running away, like most people would do, Claire calmly asks, “Where do you live?” The woman writes down on a piece of paper: “Below.” Suddenly, the orphanage’s resident doctor appears and startles Claire by asking her: “What are you doing, little girl?” It’s then that Claire screams out loud, and the scene cuts to the adult Claire waking up because this entire childhood scene was supposed to be a nightmare.

It’s now 1998, and Claire is now in her late 20s. Her nightmare happened while she was napping in the passenger seat of a truck. She’s a hitchhiker on her way to visit Chris. And the sleazy truck driver (played by Pat Thornton) who’s giving her this ride is trying to put some moves on her, but she’s clearly not interested. Don’t expect this movie to reveal what Claire is doing with her life, but she obviously doesn’t have the money to rent a car, take a taxi or hire a car service.

It’s pouring rain at night, as it often does in horror movies when people are driving on a deserted road and this next thing happens: Someone suddenly appears out of nowhere in front of the automobile, like a ghostly figure. In this movie, the wannabe road-kill stranger is a woman, and the truck driver ends up hitting her because he couldn’t swerve away fast enough.

When the trucker and Claire get out of the truck, the bloodied woman hisses like the zombie that she is, and she runs away into a nearby wooded area. Meanwhile, the trucker has a dog that gets out of the truck too. The dog licks some of the zombie’s blood off of the street, so you know what’s going to happen to the dog later in the movie.

Somehow, Claire makes it to Chris’ home. Instead of seeing if he’s home, she just breaks into the house like a thief. It turns out that she hasn’t seen or spoken to Chris for five years, and her visit is unannounced, but it’s still no reason to break into his house. It’s just an example of how stupid this movie is. Chris is home and is shocked to see Claire, who tells him sarcastically that he’s not a very good cop if he doesn’t have good security for his home.

Claire notices a framed photo in Chris’ house that seems to disturb her. He’s in the photo with the same scientist/doctor who frightened Claire in her nightmare. This scientist really exists and he’s a menacing person from Claire’s past. His name is William Birkin (played by Neal McDonough), who is the movie’s obvious villain. (He’s got plenty of sneers, smirks and crazy-eyed stares to make it obvious.)

Claire’s immediate reaction is repulsion when she finds out that William has become a father figure/mentor to Chris. A flashback in the movie later shows why she thinks William is evil. Chris, on the other hand, completely trusts William. Chris tells Claire that William helped Chris out a lot in life, and William is the closest thing that Chris has to family. Of course, since the movie telegraphs so early that William is an evil scientist, there’s no suspense at all when his “secret” is revealed.

It’s explained in some captions on screen that Raccoon City used to be a thriving community. The city’s biggest employer was a pharmaceutical company called Umbrella Corporation, which had its headquarters in Raccoon City. However, a scandal nearly destroyed the company. And now, Raccoon City is a shadow of its former self. The only people who have remained in Raccoon City are some employees of Umbrella and “people who are too poor to leave.”

It’s revealed a little later in the movie that Claire ran away from Raccoon City when she was a teenager. Chris somewhat resents her for it because he feels that she abandoned him, and she’s the only biological family that he has. Why is Claire back in Raccoon City if she dislikes it so much? She’s had a “premonition” that something bad is going to happen there, and she wants to convince Chris to move out as soon as possible.

She shows Chris a videotape that she has of a former Umbrella employee named Ben Bertolucci (played by Josh Cruddas), who claims to be a whistleblower exposing some of the company’s secrets. One of the biggest secrets is that Umbrella “poisoned the water” in the area. And there was a “really bad leak” that could do Chernobyl-like damage to the area. Ben says he has information that this explosion will completely destroy Raccoon City by 6 a.m. on the day after Claire has arrived to urge Chris to evacuate.

Most of the action in the movie starts after 11 p.m. on the night before this supposed explosion, and then the climactic part of the movie is close to the 6 a.m. deadline. And where exactly is Ben now? That’s shown in the movie, but in a very haphazard way.

At first, Chris doesn’t think there’s any merit to Ben’s claims. But then, people in Raccoon City start turning into zombies. It becomes a race against time to not only survive the zombies but also try to find a way out of Raccoon City before it supposedly explodes.

This relatively low-budget movie has a relatively small cast of characters. The only people who are seen actively trying to leave Raccoon City are Claire, Chris and Chris’ co-workers in Raccoon City’s small police force. These other cops are:

  • Chief Brian Irons (played by Donal Logue), who’s a loud-mouthed bully.
  • Leon S. Kennedy (played by Avan Jogia), a mild-mannered rookie cop who is the target of Chief Irons’ worst taunting.
  • Jill Valentine (played by Hannah John-Kamen), a sassy extrovert who seems to be attracted to Leon, even though she’s dating another co-worker.
  • Albert Wesker (played by Tom Hopper), who is Jill’s boyfriend and someone who thinks he’s the bravest one on the police force.
  • Richard Aiken (played by Chad Rook), a generic and forgettable cop.

Leaving the city isn’t as easy as it sounds. Government officials have sealed off the roads leading out of the city and have stationed armed security at the borders to prevent anyone from leaving. One of the characters in the movie finds out the hard way about these barriers. The cops try to exit Raccoon City by getting a helicopter from a guy named Brad Vickers (played by Nathan Dales), but that plan doesn’t go smoothly.

And because this movie takes place in 1998, smartphones don’t exist. Needless to say, the landline phones aren’t working during this crisis. There’s brief mention of Internet service, but this is in the days of dial-up Internet service, which needed landlines. In 1998, an example of cutting-edge mobile technology was a PalmPilot, which someone is seen using in the film, even though it doesn’t help that person get out of this emergency situation.

One of the many reasons why this movie looks so phony is that all the young cops in the movie look exactly like who they are: physically attractive Hollywood actors. There are no “average” lookers in this bunch of young, subordinate cops. The only middle-paged person on the police force is Chief Irons, who turns out to be a coward of the worst kind. You don’t have to be a cop to know that there’s no city police force in the world where everyone except the leader is a good-looking person under the age of 40.

Maybe the filmmakers of “Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City” think that having “eye candy” cops would distract viewers from the movie’s dumb plot. One of the more ludicrous scenes in the movie takes place at an eatery called Emmy’s Diner. Leon notices that his waitress Jenny (played by Louise Young) has a right eye that’s bleeding.

When he shows concern and asks Jenny if she’s had a doctor examine her eye, she says no. Jenny adds that her eye has been bleeding this way for the past two weeks, but “it’s no big deal.” Of course, we all know what’s going to happen to that waitress in this zombie movie.

Everything is so monotonously formulaic in “Resident Evil: Welcome to the Raccoon City.” After a while, you can almost do a countdown to the clichés that will come next. There are too many scenes where someone shows up at just the right moment to “come from behind” to shoot someone. One particular character in this movie is saddled with this over-used cliché.

And for a movie about zombies, the cops are woefully incompetent in killing them. They often don’t shoot the zombies in the head. And if they do, they don’t check to see if the zombie is really dead. It’s all just a way to pad and stretch out the story with weak attempts at jump scares involving zombies that looked like they’ve been killed but aren’t really dead after all.

None of the acting in this movie is very impressive. Jogia portrays Leon as having a mostly nonchalant attitude during this whole crisis, with only a few scenes where he looks realistically frightened. McDonough goes in a completely opposite direction because his wild-eyed performance is very over-the-top. The filmmakers intend to make Leon an underdog whom audiences are supposed to root for to succeed. However, the movie tells almost nothing about Leon except that his father is a high-ranking police officer in another city, and Leon was transferred to Raccoon City as punishment for accidentally shooting his cop partner in the rear end.

The movie’s visual effects are adequate, but there’s nothing innovative at all. Lisa is supposed to look like a “two-headed monster” with a mask made out of flesh. It literally looks like the movie’s makeup department just glued a mask to the actress’ face to make it look like she has two heads sticking out of her neck. Everything in “Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City” has been done already in better horror flicks about zombies or mutants.

Claire is the story’s central protagonist, but viewers will learn nothing about who she was as an adult before she arrived in Raccoon City. For a better thriller movie starring Scodelario, see 2019’s “Crawl,” where she plays a college student trapped in a house with alligators during a hurricane. “Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City” has a mid-credits scene with the appearance of mysterious spy character Ada Wong (played by Lily Gao), but this cameo does nothing to redeem the rest of this junkpile movie.

Screen Gems will release “Resident Evil: Welcome to Racoon City” in U.S. cinemas on November 24, 2021.

Review: ‘Sonic the Hedgehog,’ starring James Marsden and Jim Carrey

February 15, 2020

by Carla Hay

Tika Sumpter, James Marsden and Sonic in "Sonic the Hedgehog"
Tika Sumpter, James Marsden and Sonic in “Sonic the Hedgehog” (Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures and Sega of America)

“Sonic the Hedgehog”

Directed by Jeff Fowler

Culture Representation: Set primarily in Montana and in San Francisco, the predominantly white cast of human characters in “Sonic the Hedgehog” (based on the Sega video game) mostly represent people who work in law enforcement or work for the government.

Culture Clash: An alien blue male hedgehog named Sonic that can travel at the freakishly fast pace of the speed of light tries to evade capture by the U.S. government, which wants to do experiments on him to find out why he has this special power.

Culture Audience: “Sonic the Hedgehog” will appeal primarily to fans of the video-game franchise and people who like children-oriented entertainment that has a formulaic and predictable story.

Jim Carrey in "Sonic the Hedgehog" (Photo by Doane Gregory)
Jim Carrey in “Sonic the Hedgehog” (Photo by Doane Gregory)

“Sonic the Hedgehog” is exactly the mediocre movie for kids that you would expect it to be. Based on the Sega video-game franchise whose popularity peaked in the 1990s, this is the first movie about Sonic the Hedgehog, a wisecracking blue hedgehog that comes from another planet and has the power to travel at the speed of light. In the movie (which combines live-action with animation), Sonic is an animated character voiced by Ben Schwartz, the comedian/actor who’s best known for playing Jean-Ralphio Saperstein on the NBC 2009-2015 sitcom “Parks and Recreation.”

Movies that are based on video games tend to be average-to-bad. Your brain will thank you if you never see “Super Mario Bros.,” “Assassin’s Creed,” “Warcraft” or most of the “Resident Evil” movies. And with the bar set very, very low for quality, “Sonic the Hedgehog” does little to raise that bar and instead rushes right under that bar with a flimsy story that’s predictable from beginning to end.

“Sonic the Hedgehog” is the first feature film for director Jeff Fowler, whose only previous movie-directing experience is a short film. The “Sonic the Hedgehog” screenplay was written by Patrick Casey and Josh Miller, whose previous writing experience has been in mostly TV and short films. That lack of feature-film experience shows, because the entire movie looks like it could’ve been a half-hour cartoon episode, but it’s instead stretched into a feature-length film with a thin plot and the budget of a major movie studio.

The beginning of the movie shows Sonic’s childhood in another dimension, where he was raised by a female guardian owl called Longclaw (voiced by Donna Jay Fulks). An apocalyptic disaster strikes their world, and Longclaw saves Sonic by opening up a portal to Earth. Longclaw gives Sonic a bag of magical gold rings, and tells Sonic that he has to live on Earth from now on, and the only way to stay safe is to stay hidden.

The gold rings will open an emergency portal to a deserted planet that has nothing but a terrain of planted mushrooms. Longclaw tells Sonic that he should go to this planet only as a last resort if things on Earth get too dangerous. For now, Earth is a better alternative, since at least Sonic won’t be alone on Earth.

Sonic ends up secretly living in a cave in the fictional small town of Green Hills, Montana. His presence is undetected except for an eccentric old man named Crazy Carl (played by Frank C. Turner), who’s seen Sonic and has been telling the townspeople that there’s a “blue devil” that lives in the town. He’s even drawn a picture of the “blue devil” and it looks a lot like Sonic. Naturally, the townspeople think Crazy Carl has fabricated the whole story, and they don’t take him seriously.

Meanwhile, Sonic (who tends to only come out at night) has been secretly spying on a married couple in town—police officer Tom Wachowski (played by James Marsden) and his veterinarian wife Maddie Wachowski (played by Tika Sumpter)—who have no kids and live a comfortable and happy life with their Golden Retriever dog. Sonic yearns to be a part of their family, but he can’t risk exposing himself because he knows that he will be captured and put into some kind of custody.

Tom is feeling restless and bored in Green Hills—his job consists primarily of monitoring a deserted road to try and catch speeding drivers—so he’s applied for and gotten a job at the San Francisco Police Department. An exciting day for him as a Green Hills Police Officer is when he sees a turtle on the road. One of Tom’s co-workers is a dim-witted cop named Wade (played by Adam Pally), whose only purpose in this movie is to both annoy Tom and alleviate some of Tom’s boredom.

One day, as Tom is watching the speed monitor in his police car, he notices a blue blur go by in a lightning flash, and the speed monitor has lit up to show that something passed by that was traveling at hundreds of miles per hour. However, Tom can’t see anything that he could investigate, so he assumes it was a malfunction of the speed monitor.

Sonic has the personality and energy of a mischievous teenager, so it isn’t long before the inevitable happens: Sonic makes his presence known. One night, while speeding, he causes an electrical light storm that results in a massive power outage in several states. The power is eventually restored, but the U.S. government gets involved to investigate what caused the blackout.

Meanwhile, Sonic realizes the disaster he has caused and fears that the authorities will catch him, so he leaves his home cave and is hiding in a shed in Tom’s backyard. Sonic has taken the bag of rings and opened the portal to try and hide out on the mushroom planet, when Tom sees Sonic and shoots him with a tranquilizer gun. In a panic, Sonic drops the bag of rings in the portal, but one ring is left behind.

Tom is also frightened by this strange creature, so he takes Sonic into his house, the tranquilizer wears off, and he’s shocked to see that it’s a talking hedgehog. Sonic tells Tom that he caused the power outage and begs Tom not turn him over to the authorities. Tom’s wife Maddie isn’t at home because she’s gone ahead to San Francisco to look for their new home and is temporarily staying with her sister Rachel (played by Natasha Rothwell), who’s a single mother to an elementary-school-aged daughter.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government has reluctantly enlisted the help of a genius scientist named Dr. Robotnik (played by Jim Carrey), who’s apparently the only person they know who they think can solve the mystery of the power outage. Dr. Robotnik has a history of being a mentally unstable egomaniac, so some of the government officials don’t like the idea that Robotnik has been brought on board to help them.

But they’re overruled, and Robotnik proceeds to take over the investigation, with a loyal and long-suffering henchman named Agent Stone (played by Lee Majdoub) as Robotnik’s right-hand man. Robotnik clashes with U.S. Army Major Bennington (played by Neal McDonough), who also wants to be the hero who gets credit for this mission. But, of course, Robotnik isn’t really a hero, since he has an ulterior motive to find the source of the problem, use it to gain more power, and then take over the world.

Through some of his high-tech inventions, Robotnik is able to track the energy source of the power outage to Tom’s home, where Robotnik immediately goes to investigate further. Tom reluctantly lets Robotnik into his home while Sonic tries to hide. Of course, Robotnik sees Sonic, and then tries and fails to capture him. Tom and Sonic escape, and they become fugitives of the law, with not only Robotnik after them but also various branches of the U.S. military. Robotnik also uses an army of flying drones to help track down the fugitives.

The rest of the movie is basically one long chase, as Tom and Sonic take a road trip to San Francisco, where Sonic figures that he can use the Transamerica Pyramid as a signal to open the portal again and retrieve his bag of magical rings. Even with this cartoonish and silly plot, the visual effects in “Sonic the Hedgehog” don’t make up for it, because the visuals aren’t very impressive, by today’s movie standards. This is the type of movie that would look dazzling back in the 1990s, but not now. And it’s not the kind of movie that someone needs to see in a movie theater.

As the chief villain, Carrey is clearly having a lot of fun in his campy Dr. Robotnik role, but the rest of the human characters are so basic and by-the-numbers that there really isn’t much to the movie except to see the inevitable showdown between Dr. Robotnik and the duo of Sonic and Tom. Children younger than the age of 10 will probably enjoy “Sonic the Hedgehog” the most, but everyone else will have to sit through the same recycled tropes that have been seen many times before in TV cartoons over the years.

Paramount Pictures released “Sonic the Hedgehog” in U.S. cinemas on February 14, 2020.

 

Copyright 2017-2025 Culture Mix
CULTURE MIX