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Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City
Movie

Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City

2021 • Action, Horror, Sci-Fi

Woke Score
6.8
out of 10

Plot

Once the booming home of pharmaceutical giant Umbrella Corporation, Raccoon City is now a dying Midwestern town. The company's exodus left the city a wasteland with great evil brewing below the surface. When that evil is unleashed, the townspeople are forever changed and a small group of survivors must work together to uncover the truth behind Umbrella and make it through the night.

Overall Series Review

Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City reimagines the core characters and plot of the first two video games. The narrative is driven by the conspiracy of the Umbrella Corporation, a giant pharmaceutical company, poisoning and experimenting on the inhabitants of the titular 'dying Midwestern town.' The movie introduces a consciously diverse main cast, including major characters who are explicitly 'race-swapped' from their original source material. A key male protagonist, Leon S. Kennedy, is fundamentally rewritten from his competent game persona into an incompetent rookie, while the female leads, Claire Redfield and Jill Valentine, remain central to the action and survival efforts. The film's primary conflict is one of corporate malfeasance and the subsequent chaos, framing the destruction of a small American community as the result of institutional corruption. The themes of sexuality, gender theory, and organized religion are largely absent or peripheral to the survival horror plot.

Categorical Breakdown

Identity Politics8/10

Two main characters, Jill Valentine and Leon S. Kennedy, receive 'race-swapped' casting contrary to their established appearances in the video games. Leon, a white male protagonist in the source material, is heavily modified into an incompetent, bumbling rookie, undermining his established character and competence. The casting changes and character rewrites prioritize a modern sense of diverse representation over adherence to character merit and appearance from the source material.

Oikophobia6/10

The central conflict involves the Umbrella Corporation, a corrupt American pharmaceutical giant, poisoning and destroying Raccoon City, which is explicitly described as a dying Midwestern town. The film frames the town's collapse and its people's suffering as the direct result of an all-powerful, Western corporate entity. The narrative portrays the American 'home' as fundamentally tainted by this institutional corruption.

Feminism7/10

The main male protagonist, Leon Kennedy, is made distinctly incompetent and a failure in his police work. The plot is primarily propelled by the actions and competence of the female leads, Claire Redfield and Jill Valentine. This shift in the competence hierarchy emasculates a core male character while elevating the female characters, aligning with the 'Girl Boss' dynamic.

LGBTQ+2/10

The core plot focuses entirely on a corporate bio-hazard and survival horror. There are no explicit themes, narrative points, or subplots centering on alternative sexualities, gender ideology, or the deconstruction of the nuclear family. The presentation adheres to a normative structure without lecturing on sexual identity.

Anti-Theism2/10

The source of evil and the core conflict is purely a corrupt scientific and pharmaceutical mega-corporation, Umbrella, and its T-virus. The film does not feature a storyline or characters that portray traditional religion or Christianity as the root of evil, nor does it promote moral relativism.