The Resident Evil CG Films: Degeneration, Damnation, Vendetta and Death Island

Capcom has made four feature-length CG films: Degeneration (2008), Damnation (2012), Vendetta (2017) and Death Island (2023). They aren't the live-action films. These are made with Capcom, star the game characters, and sit inside the game story, each one filling a gap between two numbered games. This page covers what happens in each, with spoilers, and where it fits in the Resident Evil timeline. (Resident Evil: Degeneration; Resident Evil: Damnation; Resident Evil: Vendetta; Resident Evil: Death Island)

Before you watch#

All four films are set after the fall of Raccoon City in 1998, in the years when Umbrella Corporation had collapsed and its viruses were on the black market. That's the thread that ties them together: Umbrella is gone, but the weapons it made keep turning up in other hands. Leon S. Kennedy, the rookie cop from Resident Evil 2, is now a government agent and appears in every film. (Resident Evil 2; Resident Evil: Degeneration)

Resident Evil: Degeneration (2008)#

Where it fits: November 2005, a year after Resident Evil 4 and before Resident Evil 5. (Resident Evil: Degeneration)

Claire Redfield, now working for the aid group TerraSave, is waiting at Harvardville Airport when an infected passenger brings down a plane in the terminal and the T-virus spreads through the building. Leon arrives with a police special response team, among them officer Angela Miller, and the two old friends from Raccoon City get the survivors out. (Resident Evil: Degeneration)

The trail leads to WilPharma, a drug company working on a T-virus vaccine, and to Angela's brother, Curtis Miller, whose family died in Raccoon City. Curtis gets hold of the G-virus, injects himself and mutates into a monster much like William Birkin did, tearing through WilPharma's research facility. As the lab collapses, Leon shoots him and he falls to his death. (Resident Evil: Degeneration; Resident Evil 2)

The man behind it all was Frederic Downing, WilPharma's head researcher and a former Umbrella scientist who had stolen the T-virus and G-virus. He had manipulated Curtis, was behind the bombings and the bioterror incidents, and was selling the viruses to buyers who'd seen what they could do on the news. He's caught and arrested. The closing scenes show the pharmaceutical company Tricell offering to buy the now-bankrupt WilPharma; Tricell goes on to play a large part in Resident Evil 5. (Resident Evil: Degeneration; Resident Evil 5)

Resident Evil: Damnation (2012)#

Where it fits: 2011, two years after Resident Evil 5 and before Resident Evil 6. (Resident Evil: Damnation)

The Eastern Slav Republic is at war with itself, and there are rumours that bioweapons are being used. Leon goes in alone to check, and keeps going after his government orders him out. His contact is already dead, killed by a Licker. (Resident Evil: Damnation)

Rebels capture him. Their leader, Alexander "Buddy" Kozachenko, was a teacher whose school, fiancée and students were wiped out by government bombing. Leon finds that the rebels have taken Las Plagas, the parasite he fought in Spain in Resident Evil 4. A dominant strain of the Plaga lets its host command Lickers, and the rebels have been using them as a weapon against the army. The parasites are killing them too: one of the older rebels has to be put down when his Plaga takes over, and Leon is forced to kill JD, the rebel he'd come to like, after he's infected. (Resident Evil: Damnation; Resident Evil 4)

Ada Wong is in the capital posing as a BSAA agent advising President Svetlana Belikova. What she really wants is a sample of the dominant Plaga, and she gets it. Belikova answers Buddy's Lickers with two Tyrants, and Leon and Buddy take them down with the help of a tank. (Resident Evil: Damnation)

At the end, a joint Russian and American force moves in and Belikova is pushed out of office. Buddy asks Leon to kill him rather than live with the Plaga. Leon refuses. Leon shoots him in the spine instead, which cuts the Plaga's control. A scene in the credits shows Buddy alive in a wheelchair, heading back to teach at a school. (Resident Evil: Damnation)

Resident Evil: Vendetta (2017)#

Where it fits: 2014, after Resident Evil 6 and before Resident Evil 7. (Resident Evil: Vendetta)

Chris Redfield, now with the BSAA, leads a raid on a mansion in Mexico to rescue an undercover agent and arrest arms dealer Glenn Arias. The raid is a massacre. Chris is the only one of his team to come out, and Arias escapes with his two closest associates, Diego and Maria Gomez. (Resident Evil: Vendetta)

Arias was once with the CIA. A US drone strike hit his wedding and killed his bride and guests, and he's been planning his revenge ever since. His weapon is the A-virus, a new strain built in three parts: a base virus, a trigger, and a vaccine he controls. Professor Rebecca Chambers, the former S.T.A.R.S. medic now working as a researcher, is studying it when Maria attacks her lab and releases it. Rebecca survives by making a vaccine on the spot. (Resident Evil: Vendetta)

Chris and Rebecca find Leon in Colorado, drinking and worn down by guilt after an outbreak in which he had to kill the infected SWAT team sent to back him up. He agrees to help. Arias captures Rebecca and injects her with a strain the vaccine can't stop, while his people prepare to release the virus as gas across New York City. Leon and Chris stop the gas tankers, then storm Arias's base. Chris throws Arias through a glass terrace to his death, and Diego fuses with Arias's body into a giant creature that Leon and Chris kill together. (Resident Evil: Vendetta)

They find the antidote Arias had kept, cure Rebecca and spread it through New York. Maria Gomez survives, learns her father Diego is dead, and gets away. She comes back in Death Island. (Resident Evil: Vendetta)

Resident Evil: Death Island (2023)#

Where it fits: 2015, a year after Vendetta and two years before Resident Evil 7. A prologue goes back to Raccoon City in 1998. (Resident Evil: Death Island)

The prologue follows a private military unit hired by Umbrella during the Raccoon City outbreak. One soldier, Dylan Blake, is ordered to kill his infected comrades, and has to shoot his friend JJ. (Resident Evil: Death Island; Resident Evil 3: Nemesis)

Seventeen years later Leon is in San Francisco chasing Dr. Antonio Taylor, a researcher accused of selling secrets, and runs into Maria Gomez again. At the same time Rebecca warns Chris about a string of deaths from an advanced T-virus strain. Chris wants to keep his partner Jill Valentine off the case because of what Albert Wesker did to her mind in Resident Evil 5, and she refuses to sit it out. Claire, still with TerraSave, is looking into infected sea life off the coast. (Resident Evil: Death Island; Resident Evil 5)

Every victim had visited Alcatraz. The investigators go to the island as tourists and find plans for mosquito-like drones built to infect people. Dylan Blake is running the operation with Maria, who wants revenge for her father, and he uses the drones on the team, sparing Jill so she can watch her friends die the way he watched his. Rebecca makes a vaccine and cures them. Dylan merges with a bioweapon, and once Claire and Rebecca turn his own drones against him, the whole team finishes him with explosives. The film ends with all five waiting for BSAA rescue. (Resident Evil: Death Island)

In what order to watch#

Story order and release order are the same, so there's only one way to do it. (Resident Evil: Degeneration; Resident Evil: Damnation; Resident Evil: Vendetta; Resident Evil: Death Island; Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness)

1. Degeneration (set 2005)
2. Infinite Darkness (set 2006, the Netflix CG series, covered in our Netflix series guide)
3. Damnation (set 2011)
4. Vendetta (set 2014)
5. Death Island (set 2015)

Where they fit#

Taken together, the CG films cover the decade between Resident Evil 4 and Resident Evil 7, the stretch when the heroes were fighting Umbrella's leftovers around the world. Death Island is the last stop before the series moved on to Ethan Winters and the Baker house in 2017. For the games around them, see the games in order. For every film, CG and live action, including Zach Cregger's 2026 Resident Evil, see the Resident Evil movies in order. (Resident Evil: Death Island; Resident Evil 7: Biohazard)