Anime / Resident Evil: Death Island

Chris: No one is blaming Jill for that.
Rebecca: No one... except Jill.

Resident Evil: Death Island is a 2023 CGI film and the fourth CG film in the Resident Evil continuity, and the sequel to Resident Evil: Vendetta. Once again, it should not be confused with the live-action films.

Taking place some time after Resident Evil 5 ^note Specifically 2015, a year after Vendetta, Jill Valentine is wracked with guilt over her actions in 5, and is hoping to atone for them, throwing herself into her BSAA work despite no one blaming her, including her old partner, Chris Redfield. After a T-virus zombie outbreak in San Francisco is traced back to Alcatraz by Rebecca Chambers, Jill, Chris and his sister Claire lead a TerraSave group to figure out what is going on. Meanwhile, D.S.O. agent Leon S. Kennedy is sent on the hunt for Dr. Antonio Taylor, which also brings him to Alcatraz. When another outbreak kicks off on the former prison island, all five will have to work together to survive and bring the culprit to justice.

It was released in Japanese theaters on July 7th, 2023, with a Direct to Video release on the US on July 25.

Death Island has a tie-in manga known as BIOHAZARD: DEATH ISLAND.

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Resident Evil: Death Island provides examples of the following tropes:

• Adaptational Badass:
  • Raccoon-era zombies are never shown to be capable of jumping through obstacles in the games (indeed, they can't even get past torso-high barricade without overturning it), yet one manages to do so and sets the plot in motion by leaping at the villain's best friend through a half-wall.
  • The manga adaptation takes the already superhuman feats of the heroes to an even higher Shōnen-esque degree. Claire in particular is given more scenes of being ridiculously strong like her brother including joining him in an unarmed Combination Attack against a zombie.
• Adaptational Wimp:
  • The new Licker model is much more fragile than its older models as a single headshot from a handgun is enough to kill it when in previous appearances it can take several shots from even a shotgun to kill one.
  • Conversely to Adaptational Badass above, Racoon-era zombies are shown easily killed by 9mm shots to the chest, which is established again and again to be nigh-useless against zombies in the original games.
• All-Loving Hero: Claire, despite Dr. Taylor spiting her for working for Terra Save she still applies pressure to his bullet wound and tries desperately to save his life even though she’s infected herself and knows she’ll zombiefy shortly. Taylor himself makes note of it and Claire states she wouldn’t just let him die.
• Alas, Poor Villain: Leon has no problem fighting Maria and mocking her father Diego as the Asshole Victim that he was, but after he fatally wounds her, his Bond One-Liner is solemn and noticeably tinged with pity rather than a glib joke:
  "...Now you can be with your dad again."
  • In the manga adaptation, Leon even hugs María and rests her head on his shoulder as she dies.
• The Alcatraz: The official synopsis shows that the actual island is the setting of the movie, being the stage of a new outbreak that draws the attention of the BSAA, TerraSave, and Leon.
• Always Save the Girl: Leon once again, though Jill can obviously more than look after herself, he still protects her fiercely from the Lickers and pulls her out of danger. Not to mention both before and after he’s infected he makes the effort to reach Claire when she’s trapped in a cell.
• The Anti-Nihilist: The heroes, namely Chris, Leon and Claire have an uplifting display this in the Darkest Hour when all three of them are infected with the t-Virus and are seemingly helpless to prevent Dylan killing millions of people. Despite the fact they will turn into zombies at any moment, Claire still tends to Dr. Taylor’s bullet wound while Chris and Leon remain chipper. The dying Taylor in exasperation asks them why they’re so damn calm and Chris and Leon in response claim Dylan’s views on the world are wrong and they believe in Jill who’s still free.
  Chris: The world is fucked up, no denying it... destroying it is easy. The hard part is doing the right thing regardless.
• The Atoner:
  • Jill is this after Resident Evil 5, even though no one is blaming her, what with her being brainwashed by Wesker.
  • Dylan Blake is a dark version of this, seeking to use his virus to wipe out the corporate and political figures he blames for forcing him to brutally kill his infected best friend during the Raccoon incident, and going One-Winged Angel as a way to make amends to his late buddy.
• Avengers Assemble: For the first time in the franchise's 25 years, the movie assembles long-time protagonists, Chris, Jill, Rebecca, Leon and Claire, against a significant threat. The closest fans ever got to see this many protagonists together (sans 6 where the protagonists of different campaigns only met briefly) was in Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City having Chris, Jill, Leon, Claire, and Sherry. We even get a shot of the five standing side-by-side, ready to take on the mutated Dylan Blake.
• Ax-Crazy: Dylan Blake takes Dissonant Serenity to some truly disturbing levels, first seen chronologically when he calmly delivers a Mercy Kill to his friend JJ during the Raccoon City incident by bludgeoning his face into paste after realizing he's out of bullets.
• Back-to-Back Badasses: Jill and Leon end up doing this. Later, everyone are this to each other. Notable instance is with Chris and Leon using a two-person rocket launcher.
• The Big Guy: Chris, even though he’s technically The Leader easily fills this position within the narrative, with Jill being the main protagonist.
• Big Damn Heroes: Rebecca ends up serving as this twice in the movie. First, she arrives just in time to save Chris, Claire and Leon from the infection. Then during the Final Battle she comes up with the ingenious idea to use Dylan's drones against them, right before he turned Chris, Leon and Jill into pancakes when they ran out of ways to harm Dylan.
• BFG:
  • Jill uses a plasma rifle against Mutated Dylan during the final battle. The weapon is powerful but has a short range and requires some time to charge. Jill manages to fire one shot at Dylan but the creature survives and comes after Jill before she can fire another round.
  • Leon and Chris later use a rather large rocket launcher that has to be assembled and then carried by both men to fire.
• Bittersweet Ending: The tourist group that went to Alcatraz are killed by Dylan's drones that carried the T-Virus, but Chris, Leon, Jill, Rebecca and Claire are able to defeat Maria and Dylan, preventing a much worse bioterrorist threat from starting worldwide. Leon did quip that more bad guys are going to come out of the woodwork with worse bioweapons.
• Bottomless Magazines: Both played straight and averted. Played straight during Leon and Jill's section of the movie, where they shoot an endless stream of handgun bullets at a swarm of Lickers (even more egregious because Leon hands Jill a Colt Commander 1911-ish handgun, which holds SEVEN bullets in the clip and no extra magazines). Averted at the end of the movie, ironically enough while they're in an Armory and thus have access to a ton of weapons. Mutated Dylan is so tanky that if not for Rebecca's intervention, they would actually ran out of almost all their available weapons.
• Break Them by Talking: Dylan tries to pull this on all the protagonists (except Rebecca), using various failures from each of their past games/movies in order to get through why they're all evil in his eyes; bringing up Chris and his inability to keep his teammates alive, Leon being a dog of the government, Claire and Terra Save's fall from grace, and Jill, being brainwashed and forced to try and kill her friends. It doesn't really work.
• The Bus Came Back:
  • The film marks Jill’s canonical return to the franchise after 11 years of being absent, barring Resident Evil 3 (Remake) a remake of a game set in 1998.
  • After years of having ancillary characters both good and bad disappear entirely from the series, the final trailer confirmed the return of Maria Gomez, the only surviving villain from Vendetta.
• Call-Back:
  • While outlining his plan to the incapacitated heroes, Blake reveals that he obtained his specialized variant of the T-Virus by buying it from Glenn Arias, the arms-dealing Big Bad from Resident Evil: Vendetta.
  • Before leaving to enact her plan to help save the day, Rebecca turns to Leon and says "Don't Die!", just like she did in the original 1996 game.
  • Chris name drops Piers Nivans to Jill and how he thought of having Piers to replace him as commander before Piers' death.
  • Taylor mentions the Harvardville Airport Incident and believe the rumors that TerraSave was responsible for the attack.
• Casual Danger Dialogue: Leon's Deadpan Snarker tendencies are back in force.
  Jill: [as both flee from a horde of aquatic Lickers] How many many of these are there?!
  Leon: I ain't stopping to count!
• Car Fu: Leon weaponizes a fuel truck by driving it at a Mutated Dylan and abandoning it after tossing a grenade into it.
• Continuity Nod:
  • The OP sequence shows government-issued ID cards used by the protagonists. For Jill and Rebecca, their RPD STARS ID card. For Chris, his BSAA ID card. For Leon, his DSO ID card. For Claire, it showed her Penamstan observer card.
  • Leon once again gets into a fight with a Resident Evil protagonist that ended in a stalemate once they recognize each other.
  • Taylor assumed that Terrasave members were also involved in the bombing attack on Harvardville airport.
• Costume Inertia: An egregious example is given through how Jill Valentine is depicted in this movie; Jill is portrayed as if she was taken straight out of Resident Evil 3 (Remake), which took place in 1998 in-universe, while Death Island is set in 2015, a good 17 years later. Press release information did try to explain why Jill looks so young: being infected with the T-Virus and being experimented upon by Wesker has halted her aging process, (they don't explain what happened to Jill's albinism, however) and no effort is made to explain why Jill is wearing her REmake 3 outfit still, especially since the only reason Jill was wearing casual clothing in her stay in Raccoon City back then was due not being in active duty as a RPD S.T.A.R.S. officer. With games such as Resident Evil: Revelations showing what Jill's wear as a B.S.A.A. agent actually looks like, there should be a reference to what Jill should theoretically be wearing in Death Island, so Jill Valentine sticks out like a sore thumb compared to Leon, Chris, Claire and even Rebecca who all have designs from their later years, long after 1998. At the end of the day, the only time Jill wearing her 1998 casual outfit almost makes sense in the movie is when her, Chris and Claire go undercover as tourists to an Alcatraz' tour, but certainly not early on in active B.S.A.A. duty.
• A Day in the Limelight: While this movie has multiple main characters, it primarily focuses on Jill Valentine, arguably the protagonist of the movie, who’s been chronologically out of action since Resident Evil 5, showcasing her return into action.
• Designated Girl Fight: Averted. Maria holds Leon responsible for her father's death and targets him specifically multiple times, eventually forcing him into a Duel to the Death. She doesn't even bother casting a glance in Jill's direction in one scene while painfully disarming and subduing her.
• Deuteragonist: Leon's the secondary protagonist this time around, as his mission to rescue Antonio Taylor aligns with Jill, Chris, and Claire's investigation to Alcatraz. He even has a Back-to-Back Badasses moments with Jill, and gets a personal fight scene with Maria.
• Dull Surprise: For some reason a lot of the dialogue is delivered this way, with a prime example being Jill and Rebecca's conversation below (though, considering their line of work and experience, they may have simply just developed a sense of world-weariness about the whole thing).
  Jill: I hope you brought backup!
  Rebecca: [as if she burned her dinner] They're dead. [cheerfully] I brought the vaccine, though.
• Feed It a Bomb: Mutated Dylan is finally defeated after Jill straps a bag of grenade into its mouth.
  • The SWAT captain defeats a giant mutated shark the same way, although his is a Taking You with Me situation.
• Foil: Dylan ends up being one for Jill. Both characters are ones who had to fight against their friends against their own will, and feel immense guilt in the process. Jill was brainwashed by Wesker into being his lackey, and made to try and kill Chris and Sheva while Dylan was part of the team Umbrella sent in to Raccoon City and had to kill his infected best friend in a horrific way. Both are changed from the experience, with Jill becoming a bit colder and more reckless during missions, while Dylan became the Big Bad of this movie. Jill seems to notice this and calls him out on it at the end of the movie not that he would be able to comprehend it being mutated at that point.
• Guys Smash, Girls Shoot: Downplayed but Chris and Leon have more moments of bringing foes down physically while Jill, Claire and Rebecca rely more consistently on More Dakka. Averted in the manga adaptation where Jill and Claire have plenty of She-Fu like Maria.
• Heel–Face Revolving Door: Dr. Antonio Taylor, who starts off as a heel, then escapes Dylan and is unknowingly rescued by the heroes, who he proceeds to insult. He then apologizes to Claire for being rude after she saves his life... then he switches back to demanding Jill shoot her after she is infected and they're locked in a cell together. Finally, he gets a Heel–Face Door-Slam after Dylan shoots him and he suddenly apologizes sincerely to Claire for being rude, says he wishes he'd met her earlier, gives her the Chekhov's Gun she needs to stop Dylan and promptly dies.
• Hoist by Their Own Petard: After she and Claire gain control of Dylan's bio-drones, Rebecca gets the idea to not simply destroy them, but instead send them after Dylan himself to overload him with the advanced T-virus, slowing down his monstrous form and leaving him more open to attack.
• Hypocrite: Dylan is a massive one. He claims to be a Well-Intentioned Extremist and calls out the heroes and the government for propagating bioterrorism — which caused the deaths of his teammates in Raccoon City, all blind to the fact he worked for Umbrella who caused the RC outbreak among many others in the first place. Dylan also claims Chris, Leon, Jill and Claire are as equally responsible for the deaths of innocent lives as the government they serve and his scheme will actually safeguard the innocent. In actual fact he’s the mass murderer who turned numerous civilians into zombies and unlike the heroes Dylan has never saved a single life. Jill calls him out on his bullshit before exploding him.
• Idiot Ball: Jill grabs it when after chasing Dylan to the water tank/reservoir, she holds him at gunpoint and it looks like she's about to finally shoot him and end everything. Instead she allows him to monologue instead, which he finishes off by injecting himself with the virus. Again, if Jill had just shot him, his plans would have been ended there and they could have all gone home.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: How Maria dies, courtesy of Leon kicking her into a piece of metal.
• Internal Homage: During the Final Battle, Jill using the Plasma Rifle against Mutated Dylan is about as much of a Call-Back to Resident Evil 3 (Remake) and her usage of a Railgun against Final Nemesis as it could be. It even ends up needing a second shot. Unlike before though, she's not able to get one.
• It's All My Fault: Chris and Rebecca both note that nobody blames Jill for her actions under Wesker's control except for Jill herself.
• The Juggernaut: Dylan's mutated form is likely the most durable B.O.W. the protagonists ever fought, shrugging off multiple rocket launchers and even a plasma rifle blast and it still keeps moving. It takes using his own drones to overload him with the T-Virus to weaken him and even then, he still keeps moving.
• Let's You and Him Fight: It is VERY brief, but we do get to see a Hand to Hand fight between Jill and Leon before they realize who the other is and Jill shows she is every bit Leon's equal in that regard (which is impressive given his track record).
• Karmic Transformation: In a twist, it's Dylan who feels this way about mutating himself into a B.O.W., due to his Survivor's Guilt over having to put down his infected best friend during the Raccoon City incident.
• Misplaced Retribution: Dylan Blake blames the world politicians for forcing him to kill his infected best friend back in Raccoon City, when the orders came from Umbrella themselves.
  • Even more so, while Umbrella is definitely responsible for the virus and the entire situation in the first place, the orders Dylan receives from the radio are unquestionably the RIGHT thing to do in that moment; there is no hope at all for his infected teammates, and they are only moments away from becoming a very real danger to him and his best friend. It's their own hesitation to finish off their infected teammates that leads to JJ being bitten too. So not only is he blaming the wrong people, but he is also resentful of having to carry out an order that was clearly necessary and in his best interest in that moment.
  • On a minor note, Maria, who blames solely Leon for her father's death, seemingly forgetting that it was Chris who actually did the job.
• More Dakka: Normally a Resident Evil firefight involves several small arms weapons, setting up for a Rocket Launcher (or other type of super weapon) to finish off the ultimate bioweapon of the story. In this case, the final fight is happening in an Armory, which means all 5 protagonists have access to a metric crap ton of weaponry and ordinance, including multiple Rocket Launchers and a Plasma Rifle, harkening back to the Remake Trilogy and how all of them beat their respective opponents. Good thing too as the Mutated Dylan is quite easily the tankiest Final Boss we've seen yet, shrugging off almost every bit of that weaponry.
• Noodle Incident:
  • Despite this being the first time Leon and Jill have ever interacted onscreen, the exchange between the two when they recognize each other indicates that not only have they met before, but they're evidently familiar enough to have built up a friendly rapport. The same with Jill and Rebecca with Claire.
  • It seems the rift between Leon and Claire as a result of the events of Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness has been resolved. Then again, it has been 10 years since that event.
• Not Afraid to Die: Chris speaks on the evils of this to Jill, who has become reckless since her return to the field. While the ability to act in the face of death is useful, the risk of becoming numb to the job and those fears could be what gets everyone killed.
• Oh, Crap!: When Leon and Jill are in the sewers and a zombie is taken by a long tongue, Leon can only let out a meek uh oh realizing that once again he's gonna have to deal with Lickers.
• Older Than They Look:
  • Jill reuses her design from 3 (Remake), giving her an appearance in her early twenties despite Jill being around 41. This was somewhat justified by pre-release info saying her aging slowed after 5 due to the viruses she was exposed to and Wesker's experiments, however it does not explain why she is still wearing the same outfit or why she has no signs of any scarring on her chest from the device.
  • Less justified with Claire and Rebecca who didn’t have their ages halted but still both look like they’re in their early 20s despite actually being 35 and 33 respectively.
• Plot Armor:
  • Leon and the Redfield siblings were infected with a mutated T-Virus strain and manage to hold on for some time until Rebecca gives them a vaccine whereas other victims transform rather fast without even showing any symptoms before hand. The only explanation was that a vaccine for T-Virus has been around since at least the Harvardville incident and the protagonists must have received one, allowing them to resist the effects of the new strain.
  • When Rebecca and a team of SWAT operatives are attacked by a Megalodon B.O.W., Rebecca is the only one who survive the attack.
• The Protagonist: Fittingly for a mainstay character who’s been out of action ever since Resident Evil 5 and is making her return into action, Jill Valentine is the character who gets the most focus and screen time out of any character in the movie.
• Running Gag: A franchise spanning one, but yet AGAIN any vehicle Leon decides to use doesn't make it to the end of the sequence without being destroyed.
• Russian Roulette: Dylan does this with Dr. Taylor and himself, doing the latter twice, with none of them firing the one bullet. He declares it as fate not wanting them to die yet.
• Seen It All: The protagonists of this movie are arguably the five most legendary protagonists in the franchise, all of them having multiple starring roles in games and/or movies at this juncture. So when we reach the end of the movie and Dylan almost predictably becomes a giant bioweapon the reaction of all of them is simply to ready their weapons without much of an overt reaction.
• Sensible Heroes, Skimpy Villains: While Jill shows some mild cleavage, she, Claire, and Rebecca are not sexualized in design and wear conservative and practical clothing. Maria, a Dark Action Girl and the right hand of Dylan, wears a skin tight catsuit with built in high heels and her breasts being far more exposed.
• Sibling Team: Chris and Claire Redfield reunite again for the first time since Resident Evil – Code: Veronica and take down a horde of zombies to protect Dr. Taylor.
• Sole Survivor: Rebecca's SWAT team escorts her to Alcatraz, and Dylan's aquatic B.O.W kills all of her escort team, leaving her a survivor until she meets up with Jill.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Dylan, the Big Bad of the film, uses an offshoot of the T-Virus for his plan. While the virus is still effective, especially with the upgrades, it's still only a tangent of the original. It has been over a decade since the Raccoon City Incident at the time of this movie which means Rebecca in less than a day already has prototype vaccines whipped up for the heroes since they have long since had T-Virus vaccines.
• Took a Level in Badass: After being a Damsel in Distress in the previous movie, Rebecca gets to take part in the action in this one, bringing the vaccine to the others personally and helping them to take out the Big Bad.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Jill has become more brusque and direct toward Chris, owing to her experiences in Resident Evil 5 which does cause some friction with Chris. She doesn't mellow out over the course of the film as much as vent her frustrations at the enemy which grants her some peace by the end.
• Villain Ball: The sheer amount of time Dylan has the heroes at his mercy could take up a short film on its own. At nearly every point in the film Dylan could have feasibly won by simply not doing what he happened to be doing at the time. He's able to infect Chris, Claire and Leon but suddenly decides to just let Jill off the hook and monologue, which allows Rebecca enough time to make it to the island and give them the antidote. He literally had all four heroes at gunpoint and as three of them were incapacitated he could easily have killed them all, but chooses instead to walk away and leave them. He also shoots Dr. Taylor, giving him reason to make a Heel–Face Turn and give Claire the password for the drones, which ultimately dooms Dylan's plan - it's especially egregious because he had literally just been attempting to convince Jill to shoot Claire before she turns and kills him herself, saying his blood would be on her hands if she didn't. Even without all of that, if he simply hadn't involved the heroes at all he would have won due to how the infection of his virus works.
• Villain Has a Point: While Dylan is ultimately insane and psychotic and no less of a monster than Wesker, it’s hard to deny that some of his points weren’t valid. His criticisms of Leon being a government lapdog who covers up corruption is perfectly true given the ending of Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness and him calling Chris out for getting his platoon killed repeatedly is fair given the events of Resident Evil 6. Dylan is also correct to a degree that Chris, Leon, Claire and Jill are unintentionally helping the cycle of bioterrorism by protecting a flawed and corrupt system that will continue to pump out bio weapons and get innocents lives killed. Though Dylan is still wrong since he is the one continuing on bioterrorism on a global scale, even if he believes he’s doing the right thing.
• Wham Shot: Quite literally. The moment when the reasoning behind Dylan Blake's odd habit of thumping his cane rhythmically is revealed - it's a throwback to when he was forced to beat his teammate to death with a blunt object.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Chris verbally admonishes Jill near the beginning of the movie for recklessly going in alone on a mission before backup arrives, which nearly gets her killed. While Jill has been around the block and back at this point, she only recently got reinstated to the field after the events of Resident Evil 5 and thus isn't at her best. He even attempts to take her out of the field, only to get immediately rebuffed by Jill.
• You Killed My Father: A villainous example as Maria Gomez returns from Resident Evil: Vendetta to avenge her father's death at the hands of Chris and Leon. The two are... less than empathetic, to put it mildly.
• Zombie Apocalypse: Subverted. The strain of T-Virus Blake uses is only transmissible through direct injection and doesn't spread through zombie bites, as he plans to use it as a precision weapon for large-scale assassination rather than to wipe out entire population centers.

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