Resident Evil: Degeneration (Blu-ray) Official AVSForum Review

( Max score: 100 )

84

Film Synopsis:

A zombie attack brings chaos to Harvardville Airport. Leon S. Kennedy and Claire Redfield who fought the sinister Umbrella Corporation during the Raccoon City tragedy 7 years ago, are back. In high-octane Resident Evil style, they're ready to battle a rogue warrior who is seeking revenge after his family was killed in Raccoon City. The deadly G-Virus is unleashed and a new mutated monster goes on the rampage. Will Claire and Leon be able to terminate the virus before history repeats itself?

My Take:

The Resident evil video game franchise from Capcom seems to be very popular and in fact has spawned a series of films that have done quite well in their own right. This is a feature length CG animated film that falls more in line with the current game universe than the previous three movies. Its story picks up seven years after the Raccoon City incident and centers around a group of characters who are caught in the middle of what appears to be another outbreak of the T-Virus that begins at a local airport. There is more to the story and the origin of the outbreak. Two of the games popular characters, Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield, are central figures in this installment. They are thrown together when Claire happens to be at the airport to meet someone when the outbreak occurs. Leon is sent to quell the situation and ascertain the outbreak's origin. He joins two SRT members and enters the airport in search of survivors and answers. While inside they stumble upon Claire, her friend's young niece, and Senator Ron Davis, all of whom were barricaded inside. They manage to escape and begin to regroup where they meet up with Frederic Downing a high ranking employee at WilPharma Pharmaceutical Corporation. It is learned that the outbreak may be the result of an extremist group lead by a man who it turns out is the brother of Angela Miller, one of the SRT officers. Claire accompanies Frederic Downing to their large facility in an attempt to locate a T-Virus vaccine. While there she learns of the existence of a molecular scale of the G-Virus. She phones Leon and Angela and advises them of the situation and that things aren't adding up at WilPharma. This discovery ignites a series of events that exposes the true nature of what occurred and who is behind it. The real question is will Claire, Leon and Angela live long enough to do something about it?

The story was underwhelming and in my opinion played out a bit too much like a video game to be turned into a feature length movie. At 96 minutes it was just too long.

Parental Guide:

The rating is for bloody violence.

Audio: 84

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Video: 84

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Resident Evil: Degeneration comes to Blu-ray Disc from Sony featuring 1080p AVC encoded video that has an average bitrate of 22 mbps and lossless Dolby TrueHD 5.1 channel audio that has an average bitrate of 2 mbps.

Looking at the animated style used in this film reminded me very much of Final Fantasy, the spirits within. Characters were drawn similarly and the application of color was much the same although I found colors here to be more pleasing in tonality. Images were well detailed with smooth but discernible texture and excellent depth. The small attention to detail such as the fluidity of hair blowing in the wind, or airborne ember particles floating around at the scene of a structure fire were reproduced with lucid realism. The color palette isn't diverse and sticks primarily to darker tones with neutral grays and blacks. When primary colors like red, blue or green are onscreen they pop quite nicely. Blacks are deep and well delineated. Contrast is boosted enough so that bright scenes and colors are punchy but not at the expense of robbing whites and grays of discernible detail. This presentation is free from compression related anomalies however I did notice the presence of aliasing/moiré. It's not obvious in every scene but if you look for it, it can be distracting. In chapter 15 during the battle at WilPharma Leon removes his jacket. It is pretty apparent on his shirt in that entire segment. Quite frankly I was surprised to find it in a presentation like this.

The Dolby TrueHD lossless soundtrack featured high level detail and crisp, well intonated dialogue that sounded excellent. I was impressed with the intricate detail that went into the sound effects featured in the film. The creaking of leather on gun belts, the sounds of the slide going forward and engaging on automatic pistols, or the crackling of burning timber were rendered with defining clarity and complexity. Dynamics were solid and low frequency impact offered appreciable tactility. There was plenty of action based elements which utilized the entire surround platform. The soundfield was actively engaging as it occasionally filled the room with a combination of both discrete and spatial sound effects. I thought it sounded great.

Bonus Features:

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• Interactive Bonusview PiP feature
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• Pop up trivia track
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• (HD) The generation of Degeneration
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• Character profiles
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• Voice bloopers
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• Faux Leon interview
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• (HD) Resident evil: Degeneration trailers
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• (HD Resident evil 5: special footage
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• (HD) BD Previews
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• BD-Live - Access

Final Thoughts:

Having never played the Resident evil video game I have no frame of reference regarding the aspects of this story or its characters in relation to it. As a fan of the film franchise I thought comparatively speaking that this was a below average horror/action based story. Fans may feel differently. Sony has released it on Blu-ray disc day and date with the DVD and it features good high definition video/audio quality and above average bonus features that include some that are exclusive to Blu-ray. If your curious give it a rent but I wouldn't recommend a blind buy.