Main cast: Milla Jovovich (Alice), Ali Larter (Claire Redfield), Shawn Roberts (Albert Wesker), Ruby Rose (Abigail), Eoin Macken (Doc), William Levy (Christian), Iain Glen (Dr Alexander Isaacs), Lee Joon-gi (Lee), Rola (Cobalt), Fraser James (Razor), and Ever Gabo Anderson (Red Queen)
Director: Paul WS Anderson
Well, this is it. Resident Evil: The Final Chapter is – allegedly – the final movie in the series, so it’s finally time to say goodbye to Alice. Or is it? Frankly, after watching this movie, I think it’s time to just end the whole thing. The lower budget given to this one really shows, because the whole thing requires minimal numbers of set, the special effects look so cheap that they seem to have been done by some inexperienced intern, and the bulk of the cast show up in only a few short scenes at most, so much so that I won’t be shocked to learn that they were paid by the hour.
Oh yes, the plot. Maybe it’s because there will be no more movie after this, but the plot is basically, “Ah, screw this! Let’s just wing it for the next one hour and forty minutes!” So, Alice just comes out from beneath a rubble in a demolished White House. Oops, were you expecting a large-scale war movie? That will be expensive to make, so we will just glaze everything over and say, well, Albert Wesker led them all into a trap and… only Alice is left alive? Don’t ask me what happened to Jill, Leon, and whoever – they are never mentioned again, not even as a token easter egg. So, Alice is told by the Red Queen, conveniently enough, that Dr Isaacs is still alive – Alice just killed his clone – and there is, in fact, a great plot device of an antivirus located deep in the Raccoon City Umbrella HQ. If Alice can retrieve that antivirus thing and release it into the air, everything infected with the T-virus – including herself – will die. This means an end to the zombie apocalypse, ooh.
But it will be a race against time. There are about 4,000 humans left in the world, and apparently all of them are in the US, snort. Isaacs’s plot is finally revealed: he and various “Chosen Ones”, who could pay or are friends with him, have chosen to go into cryogenic hibernation after he releases the T-virus. His plan is to cleanse the world of the humanity that is destroying the world, so that when the zombies are done, he will release the antivirus thing, get rid of the zombies, and he can then lead a new order of humans in a brand new world.
Now, you may be thinking, “Well, that’s nice. Maybe Alice should just bunker down in a comfortable place and wait until the whole zombie apocalypse is over, and then she can get her guns and bazookas for a bloody mow down.” But no, you see, there are still 4,000 people or so around, and Alice must save these people! Right now, Umbrella’s army is leading zombie armies to wipe out the last of the human settlements, one of which is in Raccoon City, and her old friend Claire is one of these survivors. Before she can get into the Umbrella HQ, Alice wants to help Claire and her new friends on a final showdown first. But hurry – Alice has only 48 hours before… uh, I don’t know. I suppose the zombie attack on the humans are timed so precisely that everything human dies at the last second of the countdown.
Oh, and yes, Claire seems to have forgotten that she had a brother, as nowhere here does she mention the MIA Chris at all.
Okay, the plot is super stupid, but then again, this movie is built like a video game, just like its last few predecessors. There is no plot coherence, just choppy scenes zipping past at lightning speed while I squint to figure out what exactly is happening in all that dark lighting. Still, I give the movie some credit in attempting to tie up several loose ends from previous movies in a way that sort of makes sense (for what it is, anyway), even if it also at the same time retcons several key details and events from previous movies. And since I watch this movie only to get my brain fried by mindlessly fun action scenes, this one sort of delivers what I am looking for. Sort of, that is, because the lower budget means that the action scenes, like everything else about the movie, feel like rejected scenes from those previous movies. But there is also a stronger emphasis on physical brutality as opposed to The Matrix-style flashy acrobatics, so these scenes are still pretty enjoyable to me.
But come on, why make Albert Wesker such a wuss in this one? He was previously a mutant too, right? With fast speed and monster maw and all? Here, he’s basically a lackey that sneers and pouts in a few scenes and then, oops, dead. Poor Wesker was the big bad in several movies, and this is what he ends up as? How undignified.
Anyway, fans of the series – if there are still any left after the last few entries – won’t be happy with how so many characters’ fates are left dangling, or how the whole movie feels like something done in a rush just to wrap things up and call it a day. I can’t say I find this movie good by any means, but it’s not bad in a memorable way. It’s just bad and blah, and I have a hard time mustering any strong feelings for it. But I do like it a bit more than Underworld: Blood Wars, if that means anything.
