| Resident Evil: Extinction (2007)
Hamster Rating: 2 pellets |
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STARRING: Milla Jovovich [Alice], Ali Larter [Clair], Oded Fehr
[Carlos], Iain Glen [Dr. Issacs]
I'll admit outright that I'm not really that familiar with the Resident Evil universe. I've never been much of a gamer
(Halo? Is that about angels or something?), and frankly, the first two Milla Jovovich bloodfests just looked too uninspired and stupid
to capture my interest. (And on that front, apparently, I was mostly right.) What always captures my interest, however, is zombies,
and what was immediately clear about Extinction was that it was going to have shedloads of zombies in it. So I figured,
"what the heck," wikied the first two movies just to get some background (and appropriately lowered expectations), and then took
myself to the theatre.
Billed as the final installment of the Resident Evil films, (riiiiiight) Extinction provides its franchise, and my
movie-going anecdote, with a fairly satisfactory conclusion. Director Russell Mulcahy and writer Paul W.S. Anderson know their
audience, and the fact that both previous Evils were commercially successful means that though Extinction doesn't
totally suck, it's got no reason to be anything more than solid, B-movie cheese (though, honestly, what zombie film isn't?). Basically,
it's 90 minutes of Milla Jovovich riding a motorcycle through the desolate American southwest in garters, killing zombies and avoiding
people, while the evil Umbrella Corporation wastes a ridiculous amount of resources just to satisfy their kink for watching dozens of
Milla clones hang naked inside giant bubbles and then get brutally killed. There's an obligatory plotline about a group of survivors
(read, zombie fodder) led by a woman named Clair (Ali Larter, or that crazy psycho chick from Heroes), whom Alice
(Jovovich) tries to save, and her former guy friend Carlos (played by the obviously-not-Mexican Oded Fehr) comes along for the ride,
too. The dialogue is as sparkling as you'd expect:
Monster: "I thought you were the future, but I was wrong. I am the future!"
Alice: "No, you're just another a**hole."
And the acting is by turns hammy (Iain Glen), wooden (Milla Jovovich) or (in Ashanti's case) nonexistent. But that's par for the
course for a movie like this, and the acting and plot are just filler for the fight scenes and horror movie homages, anyway.
Well, "homage" is probably being overly generous. In literature, we'd call it outright plaigarism. Extinction er,
"borrows" most heavily from George A. Romero's Day of the Dead, and there's also a shout-out to Hitchcock's The
Birds. (I'd list Mad Max amongst the film's influences, but frankly, what recent post-apocalyptic movie doesn't
rip off Mad Max?) This wholesale scene-stealing is neither delicate nor creative, but it is pretty fun to watch. Strangely, for a
supposed (snort, chuckle) trilogy-capper, Extinction feels rather anticlimactic. Alice doesn't defeat the Umbrella Corp. Once
And For All, the world is still swarming with zombies (though it's hinted that there may finally be a cure), and do the survivors find a
new haven up north? I guess we'll have to wait for Resident Evil: Let's Make More Money to find out.
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