Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness is an anime TV series from Netflix, but the story is too slim for the format. The original Resident Evil video game arrived in 1996 and proved to be a landmark in the survival horror genre. It soon became a major gaming franchise, and it wasn't long until spinoffs arrived in the forms of novels, comics and a live-action movie. At this point, it's hard to think of a medium Resident Evil hasn't appeared in.
While fan response to the Milla Jovovich-led Resident Evil movies has been decidedly mixed, they're also the most successful video game to movie franchise to date. There's also a trilogy of Resident Evil 2 survivors Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield in an airport filled with zombies. The next entry Damnation came in 2012, and sent Leon and spy Ada Wong off to an Eastern Europe warzone to face off with controlled bioweapons, while the most recent entry Vendetta contained the triple threat of Leon, Chris Redfield and Rebecca Chambers.
While this anime movie trilogy holds a certain guilty pleasure charm, the critical reviews for these Resident Evil entries aren't much better than their live-action counterparts. 2021 is quite a busy year for the franchise, as it not only celebrates its 25th anniversary, but this year also marks the release of new game Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness. This pairs Leon and Claire yet again, but while the story might be told over four episodes, it really should have been a movie.
Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness' opening episode features an attack on the White House by zombies, which Leon helps repel. Claire is off on her own subplot, as she investigates the U.S. government links to a zombie attack years before. Infinite Darkness is fairly easy to binge as each episode, minus credits, comes in under 25 minutes. The issue there is that it plays like a fast-paced action movie, rather than a TV series, and would have been better served in that format. The show doesn't take the time to flesh out its characters, from Leon and Claire to troubled newcomers like war hero Jason or tech expert Shen May.
The arcs of both these new characters play a huge part in Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness' storyline, which plays into a major reveal in episode 2. An entire episode could have been devoted to Jason's backstory and his motives or the White House siege itself, but the show is paced as a film so it never takes that time. Likewise, Claire's relationship with a traumatized child refugee - whose harrowing drawing of a zombie attack kicks off her quest - is never really paid off, as the character is soon dropped from the story.
It feels like the series was originally planned and scripted as a solo movie before being sliced into four episodes. Had Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness being told over eight episodes inside of four, maybe it could have made good use of its format. In its current form, however, it feels like a movie pretending to be a TV show.