Leon Fortnite Kennedy.

Resident Evil: Death Island is the best Resident Evil animated movie so far, and that’s not saying much given the prior movies in this series. The fifth installment in what may or may not be canon to the games, Resident: Evil Death Island was directed by Eiichirō Hasumi who you may know as the director behind Infinite Darkness. The screenplay is by Makoto Fukami, who wrote the godawful Resident Evil: Vendetta.

The plot to Resident Evil: Death Island is simple. The bad guy wants to destroy life on Earth because he felt a sad at one point and it’s up to the good guys to punch him in the face and blow up his island fortress and stop the zombie virus before it turns the world into zombies. Just imagine a toddler wrote the plot and also the character dialogue and a lot of this starts to fit into place and you don’t worry about it so much.

The film brings back Nicole Tompkins who played Jill Valentine in the Resident Evil 3 remake, Kevin Dorman who played Chris Redfield in prior movies, as well as Matthew Mercer (Leon Kennedy), Stephanie Panisello (Claire Redfield), Erin Cahill (Rebecca Chambers), and Salli Saffioti (Ingrid Cunningham). The collision of different era character designs is really strange and I wish they’d stop changing character faces every few movies.

The villain of the film is Kevin Bacon impersonator Dylan Blake who is played by Daman Mills who looks nothing like Kevin Bacon in real life. Cristina Vee plays Maria Gomez, whose job is to have a great rack and be the sexy villain lady. She wears high heels, can turn anything into a whip and fights using a combat style I believe is called “cock and ball torture.” The film really got weird when Leon called her mommy by accident.

Seriously Dylan Blake is Kevin Bacon.

The plot for the film is utterly stupid, the character dialogue is horrible and cringey, and the motion capture character movements feel stiff and weird. But it’s not as bad as the prior films, because it doesn’t have really stupid scenes like Leon on a motorcycle getting chased by dogs while wantonly blowing up cars and killing random civilians for no reason, or the close range shootout with automatic weapons in Vendetta where nobody gets a single hit. The lack of bafflingly stupid scenes really sets Death Island apart.

It’s basically the cinematic equivalent of “today’s a successful day, I didn’t shit my pants.” And yes the movie does culminate in a big boss battle where the characters inexplicably pull rocket launchers out of their collective asses. Leon ghostrides the whip on a vehicle made of explosions and Rebecca Chambers is also here. On the other hand, the movie does have aquatic lickers, and that’s gotta be worth saving this film from a full F.

Should you watch Death Island? Hell no. But if you had a gun to your head and the person said “pick Vendetta or Death Island or I’ll blow your brains out,” I’d probably take the bullet.

Rating: D-