If you suffer from A.D.D. (Attention Deficit Disorder) then you might enjoy this lumbering sequel because debuting director Alexander Witt throws all sorts of hyperactive, quick cut action sequences into it (and movies doing action scenes where you can barely tell what's going on are starting to annoy me); but if you actually want some sort of cohesive plot, or at least one you can't spend the entire movie poking holes in, then you want to stay far away from this movie. Sure, the video games on which the two films in this set are based are poorly plotted but even their plots look stellar to this follow-up's and at least they have the advantage of being somewhat eerie.

This is a stupid movie, filled with stupid characters, and stupid moments. Milla Jovovich returns as Alice to take on the evil Umbrella Corporation again when Raccoon City ends-up being quarantined when the virus of the first flick is accidentally unleashed again and proceeds to turn the entire city into a haven for flesh-munching zombies. Things get even more silly when a genius scientist working for the baddies taps into the computers (and city wide video cameras) to recruit Alice and a handful of various stereotypical survivors (including the character of Jill Valentine from the games who decides to hunt down zombies in a mini shirt and tube top) to try and save his daughter. But Umbrella, being the big faceless and greedy company it is, won't stand for this and send out "Nemesis" (basically a mutated super solider) after them.

Reading above it may seem like this has a lot of story to it, but really all it turns out to be is a series of poorly done action sequences strung together that are pretty ridiculous and overdone (lots of explosions, gunfire, and the occasional zombie chomp); a script that doesn't seem to want to bother making any sense (and gets even worse in the drawn-out finale that just when you think it's over decides to keep going to set things up for a third movie), and all around bad acting.

There's a few okay effects and a very scant few alright scenes (the dive down the garbage chute isn't bad) but this is one horrible movie that plays on all clichés (it even has a African-American comic relief character - which seems to be getting more common in horror films) and is a painful ride. The first wasn't great either but at least it was somewhat entertaining.

And just why does everyone get attacked by the dead rising from their graves in one scene when the entire thing is supposed to be caused by a virus that's passed between living things? (Chris Hartley, 9/19/04)

Directed By: Alexander Witt.
Written By: Paul W.S. Anderson.

Starring: Milla Jovovich, Sienna Guillory, Oded Fehr, Thomas Kretschmann.