Constantin Film Prod/Kobal/ShutterstockWhat is the best Resident Evil movie? It’s the type of critical question that is difficult — and arguably pointless — to answer. None of the seven live-action films based on Capcom’s zombie horror video games are considered especially compelling. Despite their overall financial success, the critical response has remained negative, with the exquisitely convoluted zombie sci-fi saga weighed down by complaints about the wooden performances and goofy, weightless spectacle..The first six films starring Milla Jovovich form a single continuity, and were spearheaded by English genre director Paul W.S. Anderson (who wrote all six films but only directed four). But the films weren’t faithful to Capcom’s stories, and the consistent popularity of the games has prompted several reboots in the past five years alone — Welcome to Raccoon City, Netflix’s Resident Evil, and Zach Cregger’s yet-to-be-seen 2026 version — alongside a series of animated, game-canon films produced by Capcom.But even if every non-Jovovich-starring Resident Evil film has tried to establish itself as more like the games than Anderson’s loose, independent canon, the English director has a much stronger and artful grip on CG-enhanced choreography than many of his contemporaries. And 15 years ago, Resident Evil: Afterlife marked a triumphant return to the series with a brisk, grungy celebration of how garish the series could get.A brief summary of the exquisitely convoluted overarching plot: after the T-virus has ravaged the planet, Alice (Jovovich) and an army of clones siege the Tokyo headquarters of the Umbrella Corporation, but the enhanced villain Wesker (Shawn Roberts) robs Alice of her superpowers and murders her clones. She eventually finds safety in a high-rise Los Angeles prison with a handful of other survivors, including an imprisoned Chris Redfield (Wentworth Miller). After escaping the prison, Alice and her allies confront Wesker on the cargo ship Arcadia, which results in a cliffhanger ending as Umbrella airships close in on our band of survivors.There’s an unpolished edge to Anderson’s VFX-work — by this point, the series had established itself as profitable but trivial entertainment, and as the first Resident Evil entry to be shot in 3D, Afterlife embraces its distorted and unrealistic digital texture after three predecessors that mixed their CG with more practical effects. Why not? If none of the films had been well-received, then the option to reinvent the series remained consistently appealing.As flawed and clumsy as many of Anderson’s images are, he unlocks here a whole new digital playground — there’s an elasticity to the camerawork and action that feels exhilarating in its ridiculousness, and Anderson’s camera dials in on Jovovich with more sincerity than the borderline nonsensical zombie plot can handle. (This is the first Resident Evil movie since Anderson and Jovovich married in 2009.)What sets apart Afterlife is that this is the first installment to be confident and audacious about Resident Evil’s unique action. In firefights and hand-to-hand combat, Anderson indulges in cartoonish gymnastics in heavily tampered-with frames, catapulting his heroes across a swarm of undead invaders and designing exaggerated close-up carnage. Despite featuring Chris and Claire Redfield, Wesker and a brief repeat appearance from Jill Valentine (plus some story elements lifted from the just-released Resident Evil 5 game), Afterlife undoubtedly frustrates Capcom fans looking to see the biopunk world rendered faithfully on-screen — but as an emulation of the loose physics and sharply rendered and animated viscera of a violent video game, Afterlife excels. The grungy aesthetic and unsurpassable odds have a feel-bad appeal that transforms into unhinged joy when the action erupts; it’s a tonal clash that’s indicative of a series trying to ambitiously expand itself.One of the many nasty monsters in Resident Evil: Afterlife. | Constantin Film Prod/Kobal/ShutterstockLasting just over 90 minutes, Afterlife also has a refreshing respect for an audience’s time. We open with a strangely appealing siege, build through a number of second act zombie skirmishes to a giant showdown in the prison, and culminate with a boss battle on Arcadia that delivers a barrage of exciting, ludicrous moments at such a clip that it’s difficult to feel caught up with Anderson’s vision. Skin is flayed, infected claws burst from mouths, multiple shots are cribbed directly from The Matrix, and characters are kicked across hangers into the open, expectant arms of medical canisters. The rapid changes in camera angles and slick, quick blocking hammers home the feeling that you are inside a vast, hazily defined geographic space, intensifying the danger and making Alice’s abilities and eventual victory feel, by comparison, immense and powerful.Anderson would continue his digital experimental approach to video game action in Afterlife’s sequels Retribution and The Final Chapter with similar but not equal success. There’s something baffling but precise about Afterlife that can only be understood as a process of discovery, where a filmmaker returned after eight years to the Resident Evil director’s chair and realized that the boundaries of this property were not as fixed and tired as you might fear.