‘Resident Evil: Afterlife’ tops rental charts

LOS ANGELES: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment's "Resident Evil: Afterlife" secured the top spot on the VideoScan First Alert sales chart for the week ended January 2.

The fourth live-action film based on the "Resident Evil" video game franchise managed to hold off a post-Christmas surge from Warner Home Video's "Inception," which finished at No. 2 with 97.2% as many copies sold as "Afterlife."

The titles also took the top two spots on the Blu-ray sales chart for the week, but with "Inception" edging out "Afterlife" for its second consecutive week on top. "Inception" generated 46% of its sales in the high-def format, compared with 44% for "Afterlife."

"Afterlife" debuted only at No. 3 on Home Media Magazine's rental chart for the week, although Sony Pictures did take the top four rental spots.

The top two titles carried over from the previous week, with "Salt" at No. 1 and "Easy A" at No. 2. The No. 4 rental was Sony Pictures' "The Other Guys."

Sony Pictures' year-end dominance of the rental chart is due to it being one of the only studios with new releases that aren't delayed by 28 days to Redbox.

Universal's "Despicable Me," which was the top-selling title the previous two weeks, slipped to No. 3 on the First Alert chart its third week in stores. Fox's "The A-Team" landed at No. 4, and Warner's "The Town" came in at No. 5. Top rental "Salt" poured onto the sales chart at No. 6 in its second week.

The only other new release to land on the Top 20 was Universal's "The American," which debuted at No. 15.

Resident Evil: Afterlife

Resident Evil: Afterlife is the fourth Hollywood installment based on the hit zombie video game, but even though it picks up where 2007's Extinction left off, with dozens of Milla Jovovich clones promising to seek revenge on the nefarious virus-developing Umbrella Corporation, its filmmakers have basically just pushed the reset button. Again. Grotesque zombies feast. Jovovich's hero, Alice, and a small band of the uninfected slay with overwhelming firepower and Matrix-inspired acrobatics, and director Paul W.S. Anderson (Alien vs. Predator) wraps the numbing, exhausting violence with stylistic effects that became cliché, if not parody, years ago. Only 3-D makes this installment any different than its predecessors. Resident Evil is a true zombie franchise — and I'm not referring to its actual walking undead. Afterlife is slow-moving but relentless, and judging from a post-credits teaser that promises yet another sequel, it has an unquenchable appetite for your brain cells.