Or, 'Resident Evil: It's Stinkin', If I wrote for Mad magazine.

Resident Evil: Extinction

Plot:

A biological disaster has been unleashed. A small group of refugees tries to make their way towards the promised land of Alaska, while shadowy government forces wage a campaign of covert... wait a minute. This is what happened in 'The Simpsons Movie'! WTF?!

Comments:

I’ve been in training for this review all week, hitting the heavy bag, and boning up on my critical analysis. As a result I’ve pulled, oh, several muscles, and learned the book I was reading was written by someone from Salon.com. Now I’m achy and kind of depressed, basically the perfect mood for taking in the last (oh please dear God) film that claims the ‘Resident Evil’ name. Those of you who have read my last two executions know the spiel; I don’t review the movies exactly. (How exactly could I essay something as incoherent as this?) Instead, I pick them apart, nice and slow like, bit by incredibly stupid "I can’t believe a grownup filmed this" bit.
This will be the first time I actually paid cash money to see one of these films, a waste for sure, but I just couldn’t wait to be done with the whole thing. I’ve had this appointment in Samara for quite a while now

10

New, from Ronco!

We open with the shower scene from the first film, Milla puts on that stupid red dress, wanders down sterile hallways, and is attacked by the playful laser grid. It’s like a greatest hits compilation of dull scenes from the first two films.

9.5

It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel bored.

Humanity is on the verge of extinction, and nature has been blighted by the undead. Exactly why should I care what petty grudge Alice is dicking around with? Is Anderson going for a George Romero kind of impact here? (He might want to look up a little thing called “subtext” in the dictionary.) Sorry buppy, ain’t gonna happen.

9.0

Dumbasses of the apocalypse.

Responding to a distress call, Alice runs afoul of a creepy clan of fat, psychotic hicks. Are they cannibals? Do the sparse resources they steal from travelers support them while they endlessly wait around sending out phony calls? Wouldn’t a group of any more than three or four armed travelers wipe their assess with these lot? (Hard to judge the size of the “help” you’re soliciting.) What’s the point or ripping off the ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’, other than to rip-off the ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’? Truth is, there is none. It’s just a mean grimy little scene in a mean grimy little movie, and neither has a scrap of logical justification.

8.5

They're only shooting the corpses Americans can't be bothered shooting.

Zombies caused global warming or something, and now half of the US has turned to a desert. Heck nothing more exiting than watching someone drive around in sand for an hour and a half! Looks like Paul-Pothead found a way to write down his own production costs. (The film was made in Mexico, and I for one would have rather been watching El Santo fight the undead.) Sure it makes the film look like sh*t but hey, he doesn’t have to watch it.

8.0

"Anymore of the special cigs left?"

Time to defile another character. Hey I know, let’s turn brassy teenage ass-kicker Claire Redfield into a 30 something doper! (Couldn’t even give her a fu*king red vest, could they?)

7.5

"Mr Anderson, you disappoint me."

The underground office scenes introduce a new cardboard imposter with Anderson’s abortion of Albert Wesker. Of course, since the character is not even named until halfway through the movie, the audience has no idea who he is, and neither apparently does Anderson. Here, Wesker is the head of Umbrella; a desk jockey rather than a cold-blooded double agent. Adding to nothing is mumbley square-head Jason O'Mara’s performance of the character as a generic Agent Smith knock-off.

7.0

“You want a pencil to take notes? I could have you killed Doctor!”

The mangled Wesker immediately falls victim to Anderson’s evil = stupid equation. Wesker proclaims that not enough progress is being made on the Alice blood derived anti-zombie vaccine, and that it will now become the sole focus of Umbrella’s research. Dr. Isaacs, the head of research, informs Wesker that he will need the original Alice to complete the project. Wesker petulantly threatens to fire him if he does not produce results quickly with what he already has.
Yeah Al, cut his materials, avenues of research and replace the knowledgeable, obsessive head with an untrained underling. That’ll speed the project along!

6.5

Bullet-time, it's as up to date as an N Sync fan page!

Alice takes out a zombie at long range with a crossbow. The camera follows the bolt from her bow, all the way to the zombie’s head. Yeah, that gimmick hasn’t been used enough in the past decade.

6.0

"Hello Aunt Alicia, go on, say it!"

If I counted every act of plagarazation as its own point against, I think we’d run into triple digit negatives. Instead, here is a shot list of scenes and concept not inspired, but unabashedly ripped from other productions.

The dessert convoy/fuel scavenging cliché’s from ‘Mad Max’.

The creepy, inbred, murderous clan from ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’.

The scene of zombies crowding around the chain link fence of an underground research base from ‘Day of the Dead’.

Menacing birds gathering on the power lines from Hitchcock.

The Bub telephone scene from ‘DotD’

The running zombies from ‘28 Days Later’, and its later imitators.

Walls in the abandoned facility covered with bloody handprints from ‘Blair Witch’.

If hackery was a prosecutable crime, I believe ol’ Paul would be walkin’ the green mile.

5.5

"He looks agitated, let me stand closer to him and turn my back."

Oh, and that stolen scene where the scientists try to train a zombie? It completely telegraphs the coming attack. (Where exactly do evil companies keep buying these shackles and cells that break open on cue?) Despite the cheap, loud, jumpy nature of the film’s “scares”, they could not be any less surprising. Every monster and plot (yeah right) twist in this thing might as well be responding to a formal rsvp.

5.0

Un-warranted zombie wiretaps! You bastards!

Claire’s convoy are scavengers, but they have an advanced camera system to monitor their parameter. Powered by what?

4.5

"We kept marching and singing and marching and singing about some freak named John Jacob Jingleheimer somebody."

The convoy’s hardships seem to consist mostly of eating canned food and having a limited dating pool. Where’s the crushing ennui? The hopeless existential despair? We are told that after a few more deaths, more of Claire’s group will be below ground than above. Yet Milla has perpetually plucked and penciled eyebrows, and Redfield herself has nary a split end. This plot is supposed to be about the end of the world and it carries no more psychological weight than a bad camping trip.

4.0

Amazing PS1 graphic technology-the closest thing to the game these movies have yet displayed

Every scene in that takes place in Umbrella HQ begins with a ten or so second shot of a poorly done 3d computer map. Every scene transition, fancy that…

Every, fu*king one!

3.5

"Trampy, you can do magic things!"

It would have been a good idea to let the implications of telekinesis from ‘Apocalypse’ just drop. Of course since Anderson leaves no misstep untaken, we get Alice using the force or some damn thing to toss people around and barbeque evil crows. Oh hell, at this point why didn’t they just bring in Buffy and have her fight it out with Harry Potter?

3.0

Oh for God's... just let the Lewis Carroll reference drop already!

In a rare moment of lessened stupidity, it was reveled that the sentient OS that runs Umbrella’s computer was modeled by one of the Ashfords after his own daughter. Since he went against the company and was killed (Wasn’t he? I honestly can’t remember.) why exactly did Umbrella Corp. keep this ridiculous interface.

2.5

This is the only time you'll catch me agreeing with Al Gore.

In this post-apocalyptic world, ~~Mel Gibso~~ Claire Redfield and company find that fuel is their most precious resource. Which is why the tool around in a huge convoy of Hummers and industrial vehicles.
Now I’m not saying I’d try to armor plate a damn Prius or anything, but hell, couldn’t a fella’ just shanghai a good sturdy Japanese pickup truck. (Some would go with Ford because of the reinforced steel frame. Yeah, try reciting that made in the USA union crap when you’re water pump falls out in the middle of Zombietown.) It’s not like the armor is doing them any good anyway, any two revenants prove themselves capable of ripping the window grating off like a candy wrapper.

2.0

"Nah Jekyll, that broad has no meat on her."

Milla, wandering through the desert, is able to catch up with Claire’s convoy only when she notices a large flock of diseased bird rushing to attack the survivors. The large flock flying directly overhead. On their way to attack an armored convoy. And completely ignoring the UNDEFENDED WOMAN DIRECTLY BELOW THEM!

1.5

Misfired martyrdom. (Hey! Good name for a Palestinian rock band!)

Um, exactly what did Betty think she was preventing by distracting one crow in the bus while a gigantic murder swarmed around the rest of the convey all willy nilly?
That’s right, murder = a group of crows. People don’t use enough ornithological terms in film reviews anymore.

1.0

"Join, Us, And, the Boys, of Summer, For action! WNYX!"

Isaacs chops up a wmv of Wesker’s voice to fool - hell I dunno, somebody - into giving him the authority and resources he needs to pursue Alice. Who is he trying to convince; a sentient computer that can monitor him manipulating bits of its own program, or real humans who would recognize ridiculously stilted speech patterns when they heard them?

Gee now that I think about it, the “White Queen” certainly seems to have some selective omnipresence.

0.5

Ohhh, shiny!

We desperately need more establishing shots of the convey driving thought the desert while tuneless industrial music screams at us. 157 aren’t enough for me to remember that there are trucks in the movie.

0.0
"You Died"

“Brains yo. Mutha' fuggin brains, biatch!"

Let’s just sidestep the fact that no one notices L.J. turning into a pale, sluggish zombie, and instead ask why it takes him so damn long. In the original Rain went undead in less than an hour after being bitten, yet Willie Best Jr. seems to hang around for the better part of a week. (Though it’s sure as hell hard to tell with the film’s dyspeptic editing.) So how long does it take to transform? It seems to depend more on lame jump-scene setups than infection.

-0.5
Ah hell, here we go again.

Maybe she's grimacing them to death.

Speaking of arbitrary, how in the hell is Alice killing zombies in the siege scene by slitting their throats and stabbing their innards? The answer is obvious; while other, apparently disposable characters blast round after useless round at the aggressive undead, Alice possesses the magic Mary-Sue kukris, rending any minor flesh wound fatal.

-1.0
Lay down, you're dead!

I hate it when you get a chicken egg that's fertilized wrong and it has a circuit board in it.

Like Nemesis in the last lump, Alice can be controlled via remote control. Even though she’s apparently an organically grown clone. (Maybe? Is she a clone, or are the clones just clones of her? The film never makes it clear just where the hell she came from. Surprise!)
Due to the wonderful purity of her soul (*snicker*) Alice blows out her EvilCo brand Pentium chip in time to rescue a few of her comrades.
I have come to believe at this point that Paul Anderson is clinically retarded.

-1.5
It's just so very sad.

“Oh god! Not... I'm sorry, what was your name again?”

Of course Alice only gets to stem the bloodbath, almost half of our cast of characters(?) eats it in the skirmish. The film uses up warm bodies faster than a LA modeling agency, yet it expects us to, what, connect or react somehow when Carlos and Milla get tender? How are we supposed to care what happens to anyone when we have no idea just what the hell any of these people are like before we see them thrown away like used kleenex.

-2.0
You are so crescent-dead!

Cliché Akhbar!

Not that Carlos last much longer, he suicide bombs himself while smoking a doobie for the greater… good? (Hey kids, heroes do drugs then kill themselves! Great social message there Paulie!) Yep Carlos, stone dead, despite the fact that he will be the star of the upcoming fifth game. What was this supposed to be based on again?
(Note from Future Boggy; Actually, this was either bad info or an abandoned prototype, ala the "Hookman" and "Killer Fog" versions of RE4. Chris Redfield will be the main star of RE5, which takes place in Haiti, features voodoo zombies, and still bears absolutely no G-D resemblance to this slapdash, retarded fanfiction universe.)

-2.5
You're starting to smell.

Brain eating Eskimos, polar bears with tentacles, what?

So what does Claire find when she gets to Alaska? Are their survivors? Does civilization still exist there?
We never find out.
Eh, who cares. Claire was only the lead in two entire games in the series, oh, and the fate of mankind in general hangs in the balance, big whoop. What’s important is Alice! Everybody loves Alice! What’s she gonna glower at next?

-3.0
Hey, maybe the movie's a zombie!

You've seen the unintelligible movie, Now read the illiterate, poorly plotted book!

And while we're at it, just where in the living hell is Jill Valentine, and all the other survivors from previous films? I think I spotted online that Anderson wants me to read the paperback novelization to find out. Uh no, douchebag, I should be given perhaps a throwaway line or two in a 95 minute wad of yelling and explosions as some pitiful fig leaf of lucidity and continuity!
Ah hell, what I’m I complaining about? Jill Valentine was never in any of these films. I hope the imposter got eaten nice and slow. (Um, not in the good way.)
-3.5
I'm getting tired of hurting you.

Macerena Time!

‘Mortal Kombat’ was arguably the best video game movie ever made. (And brother, that ain’t sayin a hell of a lot.) Weirdly (or not) rather than growing as a filmmaker, Anderson has gotten progressively worse while clinging to utterly embarrassing affects from his 90’s films. ‘RE:E’ for example features the most horridly dated techno music this side of Finnish rave. It’s as if Anderson’s trying to catch the lighting in a bottle that was his lone watchable film, not realizing that this style of soundtrack went out with Bevis, Butthead, and the Sega Saturn.

-4.0
Ah, who'm I kidding, no I'm not!

“I say Jeremy, would you kindly pass that gentleman's cerebral cortex?"

Remember when I asked what left to hope for? I usual, I should have shut up. The White Queen informs Alice that her blood is the key to manufacturing a T-virus cure. Yeah hon, that would be great, if everyone weren’t already dead. “All this can end”, remarks Alice. Yeah, big giant happy, the ruined desert world will be populated by somewhat better mannered rotting corpses.

-4.5
My head hurts.

"Syntax Error; Please insert magic shamrock."

The computer just wished Milla good luck. Maybe it’ll lend her a holographic rabbit’s foot.

-5.0
Why did I pay money to see this thing?

“Rar! I'm da monsta!”

Large doses of virus and anti virus begin to mutate Doc Isaacs. Instead of some cool monstrosity ala Bill Birkin we get an all together easier for the effects department lumpy, short-ass Tyrant knockoff. Another “tribute” to the game’s fans I reckon. Well, I did find myself rooting for it against Alice, then I again, I’d wave a flag for Idi Amin if he was trying to ice that twat.

-5.5
Mmmmm, man-chicken.

Is there no balm in Gilead?

Tyrant- is lured to his end in the sarcastic laser grid. (You know, the one that likes to f-around with people before it dices them proper.) He doesn’t see this trap coming, even though he’s used this room to kill Alice roughly a kajillion times.
It gets even worse! The grid stalls right before it reaches Alice, and is shut off by her doppelganger. I actually swore in the theater and punched my leg when that happened!

-6.0
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore".

As if the zombies weren’t bad enough on their own.

In order to erase Umbrella once and for all, Alice creates an endless army of rice o’ pipple cloned in her own image. Cripes, from Mary-Sue all the way to Gnostic demiurge all in the space of three films.

This. This is what the shaggy-dog series that blasphemes by calling itself “Resident Evil” has been leading up to? Tame zombies and endless hordes of petulant, breastless Ukrainians?
If this is the future, I’m glad I’m already dead.

-6.5
Gads, Japanese girls will be considered stacked!

You know what? Screw you Anderson, and the Slavic mail-order skank you rode in on!

If, by some astonishing fortitude of will, you manage to sit through this film all the way till the end of the blaring industrial music laden credits, you’ll get to here one of Milla’s catchphrases addressed, seemingly, to the viewer;

“You’re just another asshole.”
That’s right, the movie INSULTS you for staying through till the end!
-7.0
I actually toned my intro to this one down.

So there you have it. Sad isn’t it? The experience wasn’t as punishing as I thought it would be, but there’s a definite reason for this. For those of you who don’t believe in miracles, just note that exactly halfway through my ordeal the film broke inexplicably, making for a nice intermission while I stretched my legs and informed the theater.
Thank you Jesus!

When the digital projector wound down and Chinese food ads and bad trivia question momentarily replaced our band of four-color caricatures, the guy behind me remarked “This is the best scene so far”.

So wow, we’re all the way down to –7.0, at this point making this the worst movie I’ve ever reviewed. But still, we haven’t counted the things I liked about the movie yet. Yeah, so here’s the part where I restore a full point for every scene that didn't make me want to eat some buckshot;

-7.0

The variant with a young Vicki Lewis and whipped cream available on request.

They keep cloning Alice. A bad idea on its face to be sure, but get this; they run the clones through a death-maze sort of like the DC universe aliens did to create Doomsday. (There’s your obscure comic nerd reference for the evening.)
Even though Milla can’t act her way through a decent death scene, we get to see Alice gut-shot, torn to zombie kibble, and dumped unceremoniously on a pile of other bloody rotting Alices! Throw in a nude Morgan Webb with a can of cooking spray and this could be one of my wet dreams.
(Yeah, I know, but I can’t afford the therapy.)

-6.0

I are being Hitchcokian!

While it consists solely of people walking down dark halls posing with guns before being accosted with large blasts of sound, the film does take some feeble kindergarten student stab at suspense.

-5.0

New and improved fakeness.

While the film still sends cgi to do the job of a half pint of liquid latex, the visual effects have increased dramatically since the beginning of the series. This is to say that a rotting zombie looks passably decrepit, and not like a homeless dentist or a colorform with downs syndrome.

-4.0

Milkbone time, baby!

Though it was framed by one of the skeaziest scene in the film, the bit where Alice outwits the bloody dogs was at least well paced. Also as noted, the dogs looked pretty good this time around.

-3.0

Is it hanged or hung, I can never remember.

The scene where Alice comes across a suicide displays at least some subtlety by only showing you the body’s feet. (Either that, or Mulcahy has some really weird fetishes.)

-2.0

This is the part where I make up some baloney to get the film to a 0.5 or something, right?
Well you know what? fu*k it. I’m not making excuses for this movie; it gets even more depressing the further I am away from it.

This wretched train wreck of a film franchise has at last reached its merciful finale. I wrote my review for the first 'RE' film years ago, in a composition notebook as a matter of fact. A slightly polished (well, by my standards) version was one of the first things built on this site long before it was actually uploaded. In a way, 'Haunted Bog' was intrinsically born from my hatred for what Anderson and his pet Barbie doll did to one of my favorite game series.
The 'RE' reviews belie a certain specialness; from my initial stumbling blurbs to my later pedantic ramblings, only these films received a half-point at a time dissection. (I think this is rather appropriate, the movies don't hang together as narrative so much as they do a clumpy blob of brain farts and idiocy.) Now my greatest enemy has been vanquished, the cycle is complete. Frankly, I feel a little empty.
And I think now, broken but breathing, it would be the logical time for me to hang up my critical chainsaw and call it a day.

Which is what I would do if I had any romanticism in my soul, or even common sense. But that would mean leaving the world just that more defenseless against soulless purveyors of crap. No, I'm afraid as long as there are direct to video Uwe Boll sequels, I'll be there. As long as there are pointless remakes of films the director didn't understand, I'll continue. And as long as people keep adapting video games to film…

Oh God, Oh God! It still burns! Ahhahahaha!
*Sob*

No wait! I will persevere! The site will go on!
Unless, you know, I get a girlfriend or a steady job or something.

Heck, maybe someday soon, I'll actually see a good movie! But whatever the future may hold, whatever horrors I must face, it will be in a world-God willing-that has seen the last of the Anderson/Jovovich "Resident Evil" films.

You know, I think I'll sleep well tonight.

-2.0