Resident Evil: Extinction

One of the most popular horror franchises in the world continued today, as Alice (Milla Jovovich) embarked on her final journey to take out the Umbrella Corp. There wasn’t much to expect being that not only was it the third film in a franchise, but it’s also more of an action movie than a horror film. Fans of the RESIDENT EVIL franchise will be more than happy with EXTINCTION, while the general public will be bored to tears wondering not only what’s going on, but also why should they care?

Even with the strong performances by sexy star Milla Jovovich and the now popular Ali Larter (Claire Redfield), EXTINCTION felt like nothing more than a bunch of sequences thrown together into one jumbled mess only to be summed up extremely quickly in the third act. An early sequence in the film sees Alice responding to a distress call only to be jumped by a pack of crazy thugs who have zombie dogs as pets. The scene might be “cool” but has zero relevance to the plot other than to introduce Alice in a high-octane ass kicking way. Then we spend about 20-minutes or so following Claire’s “convoy,” which is the dreadfully boring portion of the film. Things don’t quite kick-start until the infamous zombie crow attack where Alice comes and saves the day… but not before Claire loses a bunch of her people. In a few moments some of the leads become infected and what should follow is a heavy portion of suspense, while unfortunately there’s none. When Alice finally makes her way to one of the Umbrella Corp bases in Nevada things start to finally unfold, only way too late. Everything becomes rushed and the finale seems to come before you can even digest it.

Another odd thing about EXTINCTION was that it looked like it wanted to be this big epic finale to the trilogy with explosions, Las Vegas, giant monsters, zombie dogs and zombie crows – only for some really odd reason it felt like it was made for pennies. The entire film felt small, cheap and rushed, which is odd considering how long ago the film wrapped production. Maybe because desert looks the same no matter how far you travel it created the effect that the entire film took place at the same location?

And oddly enough Patrick Tatopoulos’ FX work was a mixed bag. Usually his crew is pretty talented but there were moments when you could see the rubber extensions on Tyrant’s (Brian Steele) squid-like arm and the zombies looked kind of rubbery in the daylight, which was a mistake in it’s own right. How is their right mind shoots and entire horror film in the sun? It removes any level of tension caused by the unknown. EXTINCTION isn’t really a horror film, so to really slam the film for that reason would be unfair.

One thing that is cool about EXTINCTION is that the zombies are finally rotting and decaying and there are some really cool deaths. Milla Jovovich is amazing and has some mind-blowing action sequences where she slices and dices zombies like there’s no tomorrow. In addition, other than the rubbery arm fiasco, Tyrant is badass and puts up a fun fight with Alice to conclude the trilogy.

In short, anyone who is a fan of this franchise will really enjoy EXTINCTION. Other than the slow beginning the film really is tight and moves quickly. But the problem is that anyone who is not familiar with the game or films will definitely hate/be bored with this final entry, as it takes way too long to bring explanation to the viewers. And the film truly has nothing new or original about it as it just feels like a bunch of scenes from other movies jammed into one. But if you’re just looking for some mindless fun, explosions and zombie ass-kickin action, you’ll get it all here. Grab some popcorn, candy, your significant other and enjoy.


Official Score