Ok, I should probably declare why I’m writing a review of Resident Evil: Extinction, a film that came out a year ago and has a rating of 41 on Metacritic. Aside from the fact that it is apparently the high point in the trilogy — the first film only rates 33 and Resident Evil: Apocalypse 35 — it stars Milla Jovovich and zombies, and I’m a fan of the Resident Evil games. These are the only redeeming aspects of the film, so if it hasn’t grabbed your interest by now, then you shouldn’t waste your time.

That one paragraph hardly qualifies as a review though and I haven’t reviewed many zombie films lately,¹ so here we go.

Some time has passed since the second film, for those who saw it, and the world has been taken over by zombies. The Umbrella Corporation still survives, safe in its underground fortresses. There are a few survivors who keep on the move so the zombies don’t catch them.

This is where the film shows its first plot hole. The entrance to the Umbrella Corporation’s inderground base is protected by a single barbwire fence. It’s hard to believe that the entire world could have been overrun by zombies if that’s all it takes to stop them.

But by far the biggest problem is that nothing happens in the film. The evil scientist spends a third of the screen time researching a cure in his lab, only to turn into a Nemesis in time for a very anti-climatic final fight with Milla. The survivors spend the rest of the time loitering in the desert. They survive one fight with some crows and most of them die after meeting some zombies. And that’s it. That’s all that happens. It’s the most boring zombie film I’ve seen.

For example, there’s the mandatory guy who gets bitten but doesn’t tell anyone. There’s no reason to care about his character and his girlfriend dies before he gets a chance to turn into a zombie, so there’s no tension there. He doesn’t do anything else during the film, aside surreptiously glance at his chest wound  every five minutes until he turns into a zombie.

So basically it’s an hour and a half of sub-par post-apocalyptic hanging about in the desert.

1. Or at all. ↩

377

This entry was posted by the illustrious Andy Cocker on Friday, August 29th, 2008. It concerns such pressing issues as film, resident evil. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.