Main cast: Milla Jovovich (Alice), Oded Fehr (Carlos Olivera), Ali Larter (Claire Redfield), Iain Glen (Dr Sam Isaacs), Ashanti (Betty), Christopher Egan (Mikey), Spencer Locke (K-Mart), Matthew Marsden (Slater), Linden Ashby (Chase), Jason O’Mara (Albert Wesker), Mike Epps (Lloyd Jefferson Wade), Madeline Carroll (The White Queen), Linden Ashby (Chase), and Joe Hursley (Otto)
Director: Russell Mulcahy
Resident Evil: Extinction isn’t as bad a movie as I initially feared, but still, while there may be some life to this franchise horse, this movie could have easily been any post-apocalyptic zombie movie out there.
Set long after the previous movie, we now see that the zombies have pretty much taken over, forcing humans to live either in scattered nomadic tribes struggling to scavenge and survive on the surface or, if they are more privileged folks, live in residences constructed under the ground or within secure perimeters surrounded by powerful electric fences.
Our good guys are a bunch of folks led by Claire Redfield (who has clearly grown up since her appearance in the video game Resident Evil 2, heh). They travel in trucks and buses as a tightly-guarded nomadic team, scavenging from abandoned towns and such for food and other necessities while arming themselves to the teeth with all the weapons they can find. As we shall see, however, they do end up falling down one by one so easily, sigh, which makes me wonder how they lasted that long in the first place. Oh, well, this is one movie that is best watched when one doesn’t try to think too hard.
Alice, our heroine, has meanwhile taken to traveling on her own, because it is so much cooler for kick-ass heroines to do that. Who needs sissy tag-along losers, after all? However, in this movie she bumps into Claire’s team where she is reunited with old friends Carlos and LJ (who had joined up with Claire). Alice believes that Alaska is that one safe place where they can live a peaceful existence without any zombies to bother them, so getting to Alaska become the Holy Grail quest for our good guys. Meanwhile, the Umbrella Corporation loonybin Dr Sam Isaacs eventually becomes aware of Alice’s location and sends his henchmen to get her back. What will happen now?
Oh, and don’t ask me what happened to Jill Valentine. She’d become zombie chow is my guess, but as far as this movie is concerned, she may as well not have not existed.
As I’ve said, this movie isn’t as bad as I initially feared. The acting and special effects are competent and the script, while a hokey one that is best approached without thinking too much about the plot holes, is just as competent. In other words, this one is an adequate movie to spend an afternoon with. However, there is a rushed and truncated feel to the movie nonetheless – the whole story seems to move at a rushed pace, with secondary characters introduced and quickly killed off in a manner that isn’t even scary or entertaining. It is as if the people involved in the movie wanted this thing to be done with and wrapped up as soon as possible, ending the movie on a clean slate so that they only need to hire Milla Jovovich for another sequel if the need arises.
Resident Evil: Extinction is a big and dumb movie that is watchable if there is nothing better to do, but it could have been so much better.
