Movie Review - Resident Evil: Extinction

The first Resident Evil movie was a hit when it first came out in 2002...Its sequel, Resident Evil: Apocalypse was even more impressive, introducing new characters (Babelicious Sienna Guillory as Jill and the awesome Nemesis)with tons of action.

Hot babe Ali Larter lends a hand

But will Extinction retain the reputation of its predecessors?


Story

The deadly zombie T-virus has not been contained despite the efforts of Umbrella Corporation. Now it has spread across the world and almost everyone is an undead, while even oceans are drying up and tress are withering, turning earth into a hideous desert.



Alice (Milla Jovovich - UltraViolet), a bio-weapon project developed by Umbrella Corporation, still alive after the events five years ago, travels alone (not wanting to harm anyone who always get hurt when with her) to try and put a stop to the mayhem.

But she soon come across Claire Redfield’s (Ali Larter - Heroes) convoy who together with Carlos Oliveira, Alice’s friend from Apocalypse (Oded Fehr – The Mummy), just want to stay alive and find other survivors.

Alice with the help of her friends, finally reaches one of the headquarters of Umbrella but finds out from Dr. Isaacs (Iain Glen) that she is actually the cure to all of this….

Characters / Acting

Ali Larter fills up the space of Sienna Guillory from Apocalypse as a new babe character from the game series, Claire Redfield. She portrayed her character well, showing true emotions as a leader over her friends’ loss. But it was a shame, she was only involved in one action scene which actually showed she deserved more fighting action than that.

Oded Fehr similarly acted well, but with more action scenes credited to him, which was what the movie seem to lack of as a whole. His heroics near the end of the show was a touching moment as well.

Milla Jovovich as the film’s pivotal character, once again kicks more zombie asses with her flying stunts and now wielding two new deadly sickles for maximum damage.

Her fighting scenes have been the main highlight since the trilogy started, so it might have been refreshing if there were more scenes of Claire combining with her when dealing with the zombies. The ever-loveable zombie dogs were also not given enough limelight (Literally) as the scenes were too poorly lit and more slow action could have been used.

Summary:

Paul W.S. Anderson has been writing the script for all three films and also directed the first film. Perhaps this has led to lack of innovation, leading to repeated backgrounds (Mansion, Laser beam room) and little story development.

There was abit more character development in Extinction. But it made the movie feel like 28 days later or Dawn of the dead, showing people hiding and trying to survive. The trilogy was more known for its action scenes but there was too much deliberation and emotions in Extinction, which was probably not what the audience come to expect from this particular film.

More unique creatures/monsters could have been introduced (Cerberus or Hunters). Instead we get to see a bunch of lame crows picking on children that should been pictured in low budget films instead. And I would have rather seen Apocalypse’s Nemesis one more time than the final “boss” in Extinction, who did not really put up a fight against Alice. And who can forget the classic appearance of lickers in Apocalpyse…

All in all, Extinction feels like an expansion set for a successful game, with few new characters/creatures and little story development. The lack of action this time round does not help its cause.

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