For all their faults, the old “Resident Evil” films with Milla Jovovich maybe were not quite as bad as a lot of people made them out to be. “Welcome To Raccoon City” is a reboot of the franchise and supposedly, it follows the videogames more closely. Unfortunately, its ability to stick closer to its source material does not help it be any more engaging. This is sadly yet another victim of the videogame movie curse.

Set in 1998, we follow Claire Redfield (Kaya Scodelario “The Maze Runner”) as she and other survivors are desperately battling against hordes of zombies and other monsters. The survivors must uncover the truth behind what is happening and how the evil Umbrella Corporation is behind it all.

The characters in this movie are so uninteresting. I just didn’t care about anybody here or anything that they were doing. Nobody is memorable and as soon as they are off the screen, I forgot that they even existed. At least with the old movies, I remember Jovovich’s Alice. The zombies and monsters do not look very impressive. Some of the special effects are rather bad. I think all the older films look better than this so that’s pretty embarrassing considering this new movie comes almost two decades after the first Jovovich movie.

“Welcome To Raccoon City” may be enjoyable for devout fans of the game franchise. However, as someone that has not really engaged with the games all that much, this is just a really lousy zombie flick. While the Jovovich films did undeniably get really bad by the end of their run, this attempt to inject something new into the franchise just does nothing for me. This is just further proof that studios still have not worked out a reliable way of turning popular videogames into enjoyable films.