3 out of 5

Each film in the Resident Evil franchise has been slightly different from its predecessor.  The first film, the weakest entry, was a somewhat mundane combination of the Resident Evil storyline from the original videogames with new characters for the movie. The second film, Apocalypse, stuck closest to the games storyline and was also completely bat-guano insane.  The movie had motorcycles killing monsters in slow motion and a zombie-mutant-Terminator with a bazooka! That’s just inspired lunacy.  Now we have Resident Evil: Extinction that turns out to be the best installment of the film franchise, and also the one that is the most divorced from the games.

Extinction is actually well executed, pardon the pun, by director Russell Mulcahy (Highlander), who adds a piece of visual pizzazz to the action sequences that’s been missing from preceding films. When it comes to originality, the movies even outdo the games in that category.  The games had a tendency to repeat themselves (Resident Evil 2 and 3 were basically the same game with different character models), but the films have tried for something different each time.  When we have to suffer through something like Rush Hour 3 doing the same-damn-thing-once-again, its nice to see a sequel do things a tad askew from before.

In Extinction, zombies have overrun the Earth and only a scattering few human survivors remain.  On the road again is Alice (Mila Jolovich), ridding a motorcycle that’s much too clean for her to be living in a zombie-infested apocalyptic wasteland.  Secretly following her is the villainous Dr. Isaacs (Ian Glen) from the sinister Umbrella Corporation that wants to capture Alice because she’s actually a mutant/clone psychically powered person.  In the middle of the desert (convenient, huh?), Alice runs into a convoy of surviving humans led by Claire Redfield (Ali Larter), Carlos Olivera (Oded Fehr), L.J. (Mike Epps) and a bus driver named Otto (Joe Hursley).  Together they decide take that convoy and roll out to saftey, but first they have a go through a lot of zombies, super-zombies, zombie-crows, and the aforementioned sinister Umbrella Corporation to get there. 

Jolovich has always seemed like a better actress than the role really deserves.   If there’s one thing she’s good at its commitment to a scene.  The woman just sells whatever she happens to be doing at the time. True, most the time she seems to be just smashing in zombie skulls, but that takes skill.  She’s also pretty good at reaction shots – check out the scene when she finds familiar looking remains of Umbrella’s vicious experiments.  It takes some acting chops to pull off the pathos that she’s showing. 

Her character of Alice has changed over the course of the movies – by the time Apocalypse ended, she had been newly imbued with telekinetic powers.  Super-powered Alice comes off somewhat haphazardly in Extinction.  It’s never really a huge aspect of her character aside from driving the plotline.  As a series of games and movies, Resident Evil has always combined horror and sci-fi somewhat awkwardly, and Alice’s superpowers seem like an afterthought in Extinction. It doesn’t quite click or make much sense.  At least it looks cool. 

The supporting cast is standard stock zombie filler: Carlos is a straightforward hero who has an awesome final scene.   Larter has to suffer through clichéd lines like  “people have a habit of dying around me,” and plays Claire as exactly like the tough girl she does on “Heroes”.  L.J. gets saddled with the clichéd zombie movie plotline of, “Golly, I’m infected but I can’t tell anybody about it.” If you’ve ever seen any zombie movie ever, you’ll know exactly how that role ends.  Probably the best work is by the baddies: Dr. Issacs is enjoyably amoral and slimy, fan-favourite videogame character Albert Wesker (Jason O’Mara) pops up in a cameo role, and we even get to see a big boss videogame character unexpectedly rear its ugly face at the end. 

But what really makes the film better than its predecessors is the direction by Mulcahy. The action sequences pop more with some inventive action, the zombie-crow attack is pretty cool, and the zombies seem genuinely scary in this one unlike the previous ones where they were just fodder.  He knows how to work the frame, throwing in little cool details in the corner. There’s an awesome action beat where L.J. sees a zombie infront of him, shoots it – BUT IT’S A MIRROR IMAGE AND ITS RIGHT BEHIND HIM!!! AAAHHHHH!!!

Mulcahy also pulls off something that none of the other Resident Evil movies have done before by building tension before the big, final confrontation.  If anyone has ever played Resident Evil, they know the scariest part is the quiet before a big boss fight that you know is coming.   When Alice in Extinction has to descend into the bowels of Umbrella’s secret laboratory to confront the deadly monster that lurks inside, that moment is pure Resident Evil. 

There are a few drawbacks here: the movie overdoses on really-quiet-then-really-loud scare scenes, Umbrella tries to domesticate the zombies and its fairly obvious how well that will turn out, the dialogue is pretty cornball, and the film mostly drags whenever non-zombie action is going on.  The ad campaign for Extinction is based around the hook of “Zombies In Post-Apocalyptic Vegas”, but feels like a bit of a cheat because there’s only one scene set in Sin City.  

Resident Evil: Extinction is billed as the final installment of the film franchise, but judging by the sequel-bait ending, it probably isn’t going to be.  However, this is an unexpectedly fresh movie for the 3^rd installment of the franchise.  Resident Evil may not be the most faithful adaptations of the game series, but at least they keep you interested.