Resident Evil: Apocalypse

The walking dead take another pasting in this shoot-’em-up sequel. The inexplicably successful first film had the zombies infected by a virus spill and penned up in an underground bunker; here, the authorities make the mistake of opening up the secret lab and letting mayhem shuffle forth. Luckily, there’s only one road in or out to the city above, so it’s easy to contain the outbreak, leaving genetically modified security agent Milla Jovovich, mini-skirted police officer Sienna Guillory and African-American comic relief Mike Epps to battle their way through the carnage and rescue an abandoned schoolgirl before the last support helicopter takes off. The setup’s an efficient enough construct for delivering sub-Lara Croftian power-babe action, but the execution by former second-unit helmer Witt, a man who never saw a glass-walled building he didn’t want to explode in slow-motion, is uneventful, casualty count notwithstanding. The heart plummets at the prospects for a follow-up.