I’ve never played the game Resident Evil, ’cause I don’t really like shooting things. I like jumping over things, and going on the odd exploratory mission and I love fitting little colored blocks in alongside other little colored blocks, but First Person Shooters simply do not appeal. Even when the things I’m expected to shoot are ravening zombies.

But since there are ravening zombies, I have naturally seen all of the Resident Evil movies. In fact, I really like them. Watching Milla Jovovich perform impossible feats of martial arts derring do, surviving against the odds and shooting the crap out of things is always a good time (I have no problem watching other people use guns -- lots of guns -- and yes, I’m aware of the inherent hypocrisy) and there is plenty of that here in this, the fourth film in the franchise, Afterlife.

Following on from 2007’s Resident Evil: Extinction, we find Alice and her clone army of black-clad hotness infiltrating the conscienceless Umbrella Corporation’s underground facility and taking vengeance on them for the evils they have wrought. It was Umbrella, of course, who commissioned the bioweapon that resulted in the zombie plague and who infected Alice with a strain of the troublesome T-virus, making her superhuman. An epic battle and Alice is normal again… and seemingly the last survivor on the planet.

In the previous installment, we’d heard news of a refuge, Arcadia, somewhere in Alaska. Alice had sent her friends Claire (Ali Larter) and K-Mart (Spencer Locke) off to safety but when she goes to join them there, Arcadia proves to have been a false hope. Claire, now amnesiac (just as Alice herself was for most of the first film; surprising she doesn’t have more sympathy), is discovered and the two fly to Los Angeles in a crop duster that apparently runs on air, since little things like the need to refuel don’t really figure in anyone’s thinking. There, they find yet another small band of survivors, as is obligatory in these movies -- this group sensibly holed up in a prison. (Good thinking, survivors!) They also discover that Arcadia is real, and then the main action of the movie begins: zombie shooting! ‘Cause that’s what we’re here for, isn’t it?

And a good time is had by all.

Oh, there’s no denying that this movie has its moments of crazy, and certainly of the un-freaking-believable. There’s a super-zombie, the quivalent of a videogame’s Big Boss; there are fancy-schmancy gymnastics resulting in very little payoff; there are nonessentials who die off left and right while our main cast sustain nary a scratch; and there is a whole lotta slow-motion bullet time.

Prison Break’s Wentworth Miller plays soldier Chris, who is locked up in solitary confinement (oh, the irony!) and who turns out to be related to one of our merry band (oh, the plot devicing!). Miller, meanwhile, grows one of the strangest beards I have ever seen--seriously, it’s like smudges of mud across the lower half of his face. You could be forgiven for thinking the zombie Apocalypse interrupted his visit to the day spa and there was no time for him to have his deep pore cleansing clay mask removed properly.

Oh, and speaking of beauty care, it’s good to know that the collapse of civilization won’t mean a total lack of lip gloss. Alice is immaculately, noticeably made up in every scene and even Claire, having survived in the wilds of Alaska for over a year and with no memory still knows the value of proper hair maintenance and her way around an eyelash curler.

Probably the biggest hole in the plot (and yes, these are to be expected, but this one’s kind of a doozy) is this. Our problem: how to get eight people out of a building in a two-seater plane, considering Alice was very lucky to land it on the building the first time? (Yes, Alice landed a plane on a building. Go with it.) Hey, I know, Alice! Why don’t you go find a helicopter? We know you can fly one. Or I suppose you could release the guy you suspect of being a dangerous serial killer and trust his plan to drive across the zombies in a big-ass tank. It’s up to you.

The villain of this movie is the stonefaced Albert Wesker, whom we met in Resident Evil: Extinction (though fans of the game already knew well) and who is played with far less conviction this time out by the opaque Shawn Roberts. Roberts has a face of chiseled marble and plays the Bad Guy with all his might, but with no subtlety at all. Jason O’Mara, originating the role in the previous movie, was creepily, snidely implacable; Roberts is just Capital-E evil, which gives us no real interest in either his victory or defeat.

Jovovich, on the other hand, continues to give her Alice a desperately hard-edged adorability, Larter and Miller play off one another nicely and new guy Luther (Boris Kodjoe, set to star in J. J. Abrams’ new spy thriller Undercovers this month) is blazingly, unconscionably both hot and cool as a badass zombie-killing former basketball star. Everyone else is just kind of there.

I admit I’m kind of a wimp, but there were parts of this movie that I found genuinely, pulse-racingly scary. The score contributed, as a good score always will -- this one all foreboding bass thrum and abrupt silences -- but a lot of the anticipatory dread that this film managed to generate in me was merely the result of good pacing from a director who knows his stuff well.

Director Paul W. S. Anderson has written the scripts for all of the Resident Evil movies and he directed the first, but this is his return to the helm, having been supplanted by different auteurs on both Apocalypse and Extinction. Anderson’s filmic pedigree is not encouraging -- he directed 1995’s Mortal Kombat and wrote and directed both the first AVP and Death Race -- but there can be no denying that he is good at what he does. You want unrealistic fight scenes, nonsense plots, senseless explosions and heart-pounding action? Anderson’s your guy.

The public apparently agrees. This movie opened at the #1 spot at the US box office -- the first Resident Evil movie to do so, with 3D ticket prices no doubt a contributing factor -- and with the ending definitely leaving things open for a Resident Evil 5 (suggested title: Resident Evil: Fluffy Kittens and Jellybeans), it looks like Anderson, Jovovich and co. will get an opportunity to once again find a ragtag band of survivors, undergo a series of betrayals and kick some serious zombie -- and corporate zombie -- ass.

Hopefully, at some point between now and then, Wentworth Miller will get the chance to shave. 

  -- Rachel Hyland