As horrible as the previous film, Resident Evil:Apolcalypse was, I was still looking forward to the third (and “supposedly” final) installment to the horror series based off the popular video games which have all been successful at the box office. (Zombies, a former supermodel kicking ass, and the devastatingly hot Oded Fehr…you can’t go wrong, right?)
The synposis for the film is that the Umbrella Corp has been cloning Alice (Milla Jovovich) numerous times and killing the clones to obtain the blood for the cure to the T-Virus Outbreak which has now affected the entire world.
The real Alice (who has been on the run since escaping the Umbrella Corp in the last film) meets up with friends Carlos (Oded Fehr) and L.J. (Mike Epps) and a group of survivors who are under the command of Claire Redfield (Ali Larter) and they are all trying to find a way to get to Alaska, a place where presumably no infection and outbreak has occurred.
Now knowing all this information beforehand, I was expecting a movie that was a mix between Mad Max and Day of the Dead. However, what I got instead was only a movie twice as good as its predecessor….and unfortunately, that’s not saying much.
THE GOOD
Two words. Milla Jovovich. She is the best part of the previous films, and continues to shine in the third installment with her impressive fighting skills and her strong heroine presence. She kicks a lot of zombie ass in this film and it seems that the movie is only interesting when she’s onscreen. (Well..and Oded Fehr, but that’s purely for eye candy reasons for yours truly) Honestly, I think it’s going to be hard for the films to be distributed theatrically
if they continue the RE sequels without her character.
Besides Milla, the other notable stars of the movie were the flesh eating monsters themselves. The CGI effects and the look of the zombies were quite impressive. (They beared a similar look to George Romero’s zombies in Land of the Dead)
The director Russell Mulcahy (of “Highlander” fame) also did a serviceable job and shot two particularly well done action sequences involving a scene that pays homage to Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘The Birds’ with characters being attacked by zombie crows, and a sequence where the protagonists get attacked by a large group of smarter, stronger and evolved zombies.
Fans will also like the many scenes that pay tribute to both the previous films and the videogames.
THE BAD
The film introduces a large number of people the audience is supposed to care about, yet were all hardly developed to care if they lived or not. (Seriously, most of these characters get bumped off so quick, you don’t even have time to learn their names!) The only characters besides Alice you might find yourself caring about are the other two survivors from the previous film, Carlos and L.J, and even they are hardly onscreen as much as they should have been.
The film also drags a bit, and for those thinking they’re going to watch a film all about zombies, think again. The movie spends way too much time with the Umbrella Corporation and not enough time scaring their audience.
The movie is polluted with cheap jumper scares and has very few effective ones, making this film a very forgettable experience in my opinion.
OVERALL
If you’re a fan of the previous ‘Resident Evil’ films, then you will probably have a lot of fun with this one. However, if you’re like me and was not too impressed by the previous installments, then wait for DVD or avoid this film all together. Resident Evil:Extinction is a horror film that only disappointed me because it just didn’t live up to its full potential. There were many great ideas to work with, but the filmmakers and writer decided to take the half-assed route instead with the narrative and the thrills. Sure, there are a few notable scenes, but in the end, it just left an awful taste of undead flesh in my mouth. I give this film a rating of 6 out of 10.
