Review #138: Resident Evil: Extinction (2007)

Cast/Notable Credits:
Russell Mulcahy (Director): Highlander 1 (1986) & 2 (1991), The Scorpion King 2 (2008)

Milla Jovovich (Alice): Resident Evil

Oded Fehr (Carlos): RE 2

Mike Epps (L.J.): RE 2

Ali Larter (Claire): Final Destination

Iain Glen (Dr. Issacs): RE 2

Ashanti (Betty): Musician & John Tucker Must Die (2006)

Spencer Locke (K-Mart): Monster House (2006)

Christopher Egan (Mikey): Eragon (2006), Kings T.V. series

Matthew Marsden (Slater): Black Hawk Down (2001), Anacondas 2 (2004), Tamara (2005), D.O.A. (2006), Rambo (2008), Transformers 2 (2009)

Linden Ashby (Chase): Prom Night

Resident Evil Link

Resident Evil 2 Link

Trailer:


Plot:

Around six years after the events of the second movie, the infamous T-virus has taken over the world leaving few survivors. The virus triggered the chain of events that has turned humans into zombies and has also turned the Earth into a waste land. The oceans dried up, and the lands turned to deserts...basically Nevada. Wait a second, the majority of the film takes place there. Good job on the location team!

A small convoy of trucks and people traveling across the western part of the U.S. are looking for survivors of the T-virus aftermath. There are about thirty of them taking refuge in trucks, school buses and other smaller recreational vehicles. The group is led by Claire Redfield, and Resident Evil 2 survivors Carlos and L.J.

Claire’s rag-tag fleet of vehicles listens for radio broadcasts of survivors and then checks them out. Along the way they loot small towns in Utah for supplies, fuel and survivors. The hope for survival is bleak as they find the towns already run dried for what they need.

Meanwhile, Alice (Milla Jovovich) is doing her own ransacking of towns…and also looking for survivors. Alice departed from Carlos and L.J. shortly after being rescued at the end of RE 2. She made a choice to “go off the grid” and stay hidden from the Umbrella Corporation and their satellites. Alice eventually reunites with Carlos and L.J. as she meets up with Claire’s convoy.

Amongst the survivors, there is a rumor that Alaska has not been breached with the global infection, and the group decides to head to Alaska. The only problem is that they don’t have enough fuel or supplies to get there. The convoy has hit all the small towns and sucked them dry of supplies. The next hope is to hit a big city up for supplies. And that big city would be Vegas.

Speaking of the evil Umbrella Corporation, top executives and scientists hold up in underground compounds similar to the one in the first movie. They continue to conduct experiments on the T-virus in efforts to “domesticate” the zombies. Dr. Issacs leads the American facility and is after more than domesticating the zombies. Issacs is experimenting with the T-virus and clones of Alice in another cause.

With the help of the corporation’s space satellites, Dr. Issacs finds Alice and sets up an operation to capture her and bring her back to the underground facility for more testing. The Umbrella Corporation sets up a trap for Alice and friends in Vegas.

Villain:

It wouldn’t be a Resident Evil movie without zombies now would it? Of course not. Zombies are once again the center stage for the movie. These zombies are a blend of slow moving and fast moving zombies. Pretty much average zombies then…right?

On one hand we have the average zombie in the film and on the other we have the genetically enhanced super zombie created by the Umbrella Corporation. The plain ole' zombie wasn't featured as much as the movie...series...should have. Extinction focuses on the more aggressive super zombie in the film.

Also a Resident Evil movie wouldn’t be complete without some freak of nature T-virus mutant thing. Dr. Issacs gets bitten by one of his test zombies in the movie and hurries back to the installation and repeatedly injected the anti-virus into him. The only problem is that he tinkered with the T-virus and his experiments so much, that the anti-virus had no effect on him.

Dr. Issacs injected so much, that it had a different result…mutation. The new Dr. Issacs turns into some type of uber zombie killing machine that shoots out tentacles and can’t be killed.

Cast:

Milla returns to reprise her role as Alice. From my point of view this was Milla's second best acting effort in the trilogy. It's not saying a WHOLE lot, but I believe it was a tad bit better than her performance in the first movie.

Alice is the focal point of the franchise. Her character goes hand in hand with the movies. In the first movie, we get introduced to the character. In the second movie, we learn that she has evolved and mutated with the T-virus, turning her into some type of super chick. The third installment continues on the growth of the Alice character and she becomes some what...beyond human.

Alice still has the kick *ss moves that she possessed in the first two films, but in Extinction she gains another quality to her whoop butt personality. Two words...psychic powers. Yep. Alice is now a blend of zombie *ss kicker and Jedi Knight. Or another comparison can be that she is the Tina chick from Friday the 13 Part 7 with the addition of Kung Fu skills. I'll let you ponder that thought.

Moving on...

Ali Larter takes the role of Claire, leader of the convoy. Larter is a beautiful, stunning, blonde woman, but I have yet to be impressed by any of her roles. There was nothing compelling that put her performance on the map for me.

This seems to be a reoccurring thing in all of her movies. She was the lead female in Final Destination, and I thought that she didn’t do anything special there. Her role on the T.V. series Heroes has been getting better. Her character in the first two seasons sucked, but they gave her a new look and she’s getting better as a mischievous, double crossing playa. Unfortunately, I saw none of that in this movie.

Our bad *ss ex-military friend Carlos and the pimp L.J. returned for another dose of zombie fun. Missing from the equation from last movie was Jill Valentine and the little girl. What happened to them? I missed Ms. V. Oh well.

SFX/Gore:

Extinction has state of the art special effects that look slick on the screen. In my opinion the best looking effect is how the movie transformed Vegas into a sand overridden city. I thought that was a nice touch to the film. The make-up on the zombies look great and the deaths are pretty good. None of the deaths were anything memorable, but I did like the shades Extinction brought in from the first movie, like the laser grid chamber. It’s always good to bring that killing machine back into the equation.

TNA:

Extinction raised the bar a little bit with eye candy in the film. Outside of Milla and Ali fogging up the screen with their hotness, the film brought in a couple more female bodies to play insignificant roles. Ali Larter Pictured Below.

Extinction continued a popular trend of bringing in some hot R&B musician to fill the roles of a soon to be dead chick…and that chick would be Ashanti. Ashanti plays Nurse Betty, if you haven’t guessed, the nurse of the convoy. Rounding out the new addition of eye candy actresses is teenie bopper, Spencer Locke. Her name in the film is K-Mart. Apparently, Larter’s character found her in a K-Mart, and the name stuck. Don’t ask me. I’m just happy they found another way to give us something pleasurable on the eyes.

T.Gun Factor:

Extinction is the third and probably final installment on the Resident Evil video game based franchise. Extinction wasn’t as bad as others make it out to be…maybe because Paul W. Anderson didn’t direct this one. Extinction had its good and bad moments in the film, but overall it was at least an enjoyable popcorn movie to watch.

One thing that I didn’t like about the film was the “domesticating zombies” thing. Really? Can you rip off George Romero anymore? Was it coincidence that Romero’s third movie, Day of the Dead, went over the “domesticating zombies” idea, and now the third installment of Resident Evil goes down the same path? Hmm.

Another problem that I had with the film was the Alice Clones. I understand the Umbrella Corporation cloning her for research purposes, but why pursue Alice if you have unlimited clones of her? And why don’t they unleash the clones on the thousands of zombies? Instead of hiding in some underground bunker, they should have just unleashed the Grand Army of Alice Clones on the poor zombies. That probably would have been cooler.

Since I’m on the topic of Alice and the Umbrella Corporation…what the hell was the shutting down of Alice all about? So let me get this straight…Alice has gone “off the grid” for years, and then the Corporation finds her and is able to upload video feed from her eyes and are able to track her. Then during the “capture battle” they’re able to flip a switch and turn Alice off. Then Alice…the super being she is…fights off the shut down and psychically sends some signal to an orbiting satellite to disable it and come back on line. WTF?

I would say that Extinction was a little bit better of a film than the second installment, but not as good as the first movie. It's still an enjoyable popcorn movie to watch once.

Misc. Movie Trivia:
-Film opened on September 21, 2007 and made $49.9 million at the Box Office ($23.6 opening weekend)
-First installment of franchise not released on VHS format
-Crow scene plays homage to Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds