'Resident Evil: Retribution' (2012) REview: A Loud, Stylish Blast of Brain-Rotting Fun
By Dan Bremner - September 14, 2026
The fifth and penultimate film in the theatrical Resident Evil franchise. After the absolute disaster that was Afterlife, the only way was up, and for once that turned out to be true. Resident Evil: Retribution feels like a night-and-day difference from the previous outing. It’s still far from good, as it's predictably dumb, silly and frequently ridiculous, but it actually remembers to have fun across its fast-paced, video-game-structured runtime. I don’t know what happened in the short gap between films, but the CGI actually looks finished this time, Anderson remembered to put some colour back into the frame, and the most obnoxious 3D gimmicks have been dialled down. I’ve always had a minor soft spot for this one, and that still holds.
It’s an absurd step up from Afterlife in almost every department. Even with the quick turnaround it feels sharper, more polished, and significantly less of a chore to sit through. Once again the film pulls in game characters (Ada Wong, Leon Kennedy, a returning Jill Valentine) but still doesn’t feel much like Resident Evil. Instead it plays like a linear shoot-em-up as the characters move from one self-contained “level” to the next. As you'd expect by this point, the cosplay style acting of the game characters (Who only look like the characters, but don't act like them) are ropey at best with Li Bingbing and Johann Urb as Wong and Kennedy are especially bad, really failing to bring to love their lovers/enemies dynamic that should be filled with outrageously horny flirting, instead it just feels awkward and like watching some school panto.
The action is the main reason it works as well as it does. There are several stylish, high-energy sequences with inventive, crunchy choreography. Alice’s hallway fight against several zombies is a standout, and a lot of the combat has a satisfying physical impact that Afterlife completely lacked. The reverse slow-motion opening that sets up Alice’s capture remains one of the franchise’s best visual flourishes with balletic, kinetic and immediately more interesting than anything in the previous film. The Moscow sequence, complete with military zombies on motorcycles and tanks, is another highlight and gives the film a brief sense of scale. May god grant us the day where all these films receive IMAX re-releases, because I am a sick, sick man and would watch each one.
There’s also one surprisingly effective horror sequence that feels like a deliberate riff on Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead. Alice is dumped into a pristine suburban home with no memory and has to survive the sudden outbreak as the neighbourhood goes to hell around her. It’s the closest the film gets to actual tension and atmosphere, and for a few minutes it almost feels like a different, better film before it remembers it’s supposed to be a loud video-game rollercoaster again.
I can't overstate what an improvement this is visually. The simulated environments give the film a constantly shifting look rather than the flat, muddy aesthetic of Afterlife, and some of the effects work is genuinely eye-catching for this series (It's very much from when all the Sony films started to have that very “Glossy” CGI). Milla Jovovich remains committed and physically impressive, this entry even strips back some of Alice’s more ridiculous powers, which allows a slightly more human side to come through, especially in her protectiveness toward the young deaf girl Becky.
The problems are still as obvious as you can guess at this point. Most of the acting is wooden and the characters remain paper-thin, they exist to move the action forward and provide fan service rather than anything resembling development. Even if Michelle Rodriguez returns and hams it up in dual roles is a highlight. The plot is essentially filler, a series of set pieces designed to keep Alice busy until The Final Chapter. The film is structured exactly like a mid-2000s linear shoot-em-up. Alice loads into a new environment, clears the room, fights a mini-boss, then gets loaded into the next themed level. Suburban streets, New York block, Tokyo, Moscow. it’s less a film than a very expensive level select screen. I kept expecting a progress bar to appear in the corner of the frame.
Resident Evil: Retribution is a big, dumb and loud penultimate chapter in the series, and a vast improvement on its predecessor. Plot-wise it may just be filler leading into the final film, but it is packed with stylishly over-the-top action, varied visuals and Jovovich actually putting in some effort again. High-art? Again, absolutely not. Brain-rotting fun? Hell yes.
Come back for more Resident Evil content as we count down to Zach Cregger's 'Resident Evil' - Releasing in cinemas on September 19, 2026.
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Dan Bremner
Writer
Dan is a writer from Guildford with a love for all things genre, schlocky, and thoroughly '80s, and a part-time philanthropist.
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