Opening Day: 11 October 2007

Synopsis:

Resident Evil: Extinction is the final installment of the zombie hits, based on the wildly popular game, Resident Evil. The experimental T-Virus, concocted by the Umbrella Corporation, has been unleashed on the world, transforming the population into a scourge of shambling zombies with a taste for flesh. Carlos Olivera (Oded Fehr) and L.J. (Mike Epps), along with new survivors Claire (Ali Larter), K-Mart (Spencer Locke) and Nurse Betty (Ashanti), have gathered a group of survivors and taken to the road … traversing the empty desert highways in an armored convoy, towards Alaska, their last hope for refuge. Alice (Milla Jovovich) has been shadowing the convoy, standing by to protect them, hoping to somehow usher them to safety, and meantime, searching for the corporation that genetically altered her genes to shut them down forever.

Movie Review:

Comparing to the memorable first Resident Evil Movie (a personal favorite for the laser beam corridor sequence) and the utterly forgettable second Resident Evil Move (which I don’t recall a single thing about it), Resident Evil Extinction lies somewhere in between.

Resident Evil Extinction scores some points for bringing back the laser beam corridor sequence and the super hot looking Milla Jovovich as Alice. Nothing’s sexier than watching the beautiful Milla slashing the living undead with her two Parangs (Machete or Kukhri knives) and frankly speaking, I don’t see any point in following this franchise if she is not in it.

The new stuffs that Resident Evil Extinction tried to bring to the audience were a rather mixed bag. Perhaps these new “stuffs” was too similar to other “famous” movies elements that it became quite a distraction.

Take for example, the mutated murderous crows attack sequence was an impressive and adrenaline filled scene since the first introduction of those mutated hounds in the first Resident Evil. But just a mere mention of murderous crows would conjure images of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds.

Then there are main premise of this movie. The dusty road trip with few survivors amidst predators (undead or alive) should invoke memories of Mad Max’s daring escape from would be captors in the deserts. Even some of the surprising twist introduced in this movie will likely to make movie fans sit up and draw comparison to Alien 4 and Star Wars 2.

One might argue that there are no more new concepts to introduce in movies, especially for a Hollywood blockbuster but the inspiration here are drawing too close to many of the famous movies that came before. The manner which these elements are tied together wasn’t effective enough to hold this reviewer’s attention and his mind starts wandering off in naming the number of movies that this one lift inspiration from.

It could also be that the makers of Extinction are banking that their target audience (the younger demographics) had not came across the old classic movies mention above and probably can’t be bothered to think too much for a popcorn flick..

And when you have the word Extinction in your title with the synopsis mentioning that it’s the last installment for the franchise, one would expect that it would be grandeur in scale and breaking some of the rules set up in the first two movies to wrap the series up but this is not so. Extinction runs as tame as a routine tour trip to the desert with very few surprises and at the end of it, it felt like it wasn’t really a movie on it’s own but a setup for a grander movie to come.

Movie Rating:

(If Resident Evil: Extinction is a zombie, it must have mutated after biting of stale chunks of plot devices from Mad Max 2, Alien 4 and Star Wars 2)

Review by Richard Lim Jr