Sometimes, "better" doesn’t mean "smarter." Sometimes, it means "tighter, meaner, and more fun." By that metric, Resident Evil: Afterlife is the best of the franchise.

Roberts perfectly channels the Wesker of Resident Evil 5 . Dressed in a sleek black trench coat, rocking permanent sunglasses indoors, and speaking with a cold, robotic cadence, he commands the screen. The final battle aboard the Arcadia ship directly replicates Wesker's superhuman, teleport-like dodging abilities from the games, giving fans a pure hit of accurate visual fan-service. 4. Stripping Away the Overpowered Lore

When Resident Evil: Afterlife hit theaters in 2010, it was met with a collective shrug from critics and cheers from its core fanbase. As the fourth installment in the Paul W.S. Anderson series, it arrived with a massive budget (the largest for a Canadian film at the time) and the new "magic" of 3D. But did it deliver a "better" experience? Looking back over a decade later, Afterlife is not the franchise's low point, but rather its stylistic and narrative turning point. Here’s why this often-maligned sequel is actually better than you remember.

The eventual defeat of the Axeman—opening a dam to flood the room and then electrocuting the water—is a video game puzzle solution rendered on screen. It is ludicrous, yes. But it is also inventive. In 2010, this felt fresh. Today, against the gray sludge of CGI armies, it feels like a craftsman’s work.

: Seeing Chris Redfield (played by Wentworth Miller) and Claire Redfield (Ali Larter) team up on the Arcadia provided the fan service the series had been missing.

Afterlife solved this by completely shifting the visual palette. Anderson traded the gritty, sun-bleached sands of the third film for sleek, clinical whites, deep blues, and rain-slicked blacks. The film re-introduced a sense of high-tech isolation, blending corporate dystopia with large-scale action. Native 3D as an Art Form

In 2010, Hollywood was obsessed with 3D technology following the success of Avatar . While most directors cheaply converted their movies in post-production, Paul W.S. Anderson shot Afterlife natively in 3D using the Fusion Camera System.

Yet, looking back at the franchise’s trajectory, (2010) stands out as a critical turning point. Released at the absolute peak of the early 2010s digital 3D boom, the fourth installment is often ranked lower than the gritty 2002 original or the post-apocalyptic road-trip aesthetic of 2007’s Extinction . However, Afterlife is secretly the most cohesive, visually striking, and technically accomplished entry in the entire series. It is time to reevaluate why Resident Evil: Afterlife is actually much better than its reputation suggests. 1. A Masterclass in Native 3D Filmmaking

Furthermore, Shawn Roberts gives us the definitive version of Albert Wesker. He portrays the Umbrella Chairman with a cold, robotic, matrix-esque arrogance, chewing the scenery in the best way possible. He is the campy, hyper-stylized villain the franchise desperately needed. A Masterclass in Action Set-Pieces

An action movie is only as good as its rhythm, and Afterlife boasts the best soundtrack of the series, composed by tomandandy.