Zero new ideas - and yet still quite entertaining
So here we go with another Resident Evil film. Again, Paul W. S. Anderson writes, though he doesn't direct.
This time Alice is on the run from the Umbrella Corporation who believe she is the key to stopping the T-virus plague that has turned most of the world's population into ravenous zombies. She meets up with a group of nomads who travel from town to town in a convoy of vehicles trying to eke out a life by scavenging what they need and staying one-step-ahead of the zombie hordes.
If you want originality, you are going to have to look elsewhere; Resident Evil: Extinction has zero new ideas. Absolutely everything here has been done before. There's the post-apocalyptic desert auto culture of Mad Max (you'd think without humanity cutting down rainforests and no longer running as many factories and stuff nature would flourish - but they clearly wanted the look and feel of The Road Warrior, so somehow the T-virus is responsible for plant life dying off - but not all plant life as you see plant life, and there's of course oxygen - never mind, don't think too hard about it, it'll only hurt your brain). Anyway, as I was saying from the setting to zombie animals, from the crazy scientist trying to 'domesticate' zombies to the guy who's been bitten but hides it - absolutely everything here has been done before.
And yet, the Resident Evil series has a way of mixing just the right amount of sexiness and ass-kicking, thanks to star Milla Jovovich, and pacing that is fast but never to the point of tedium that it still entertains. Some way, some how this series manages to defy the odds and be the lone standout amidst so many terrible video game adaptations.
One of the great things about the Resident Evil series is that you can pretty much come into it at any point. This film can stand alone or be watched as part of the series, so if you're a fan of the zombie sub-genre, you may want to give Resident Evil: Extinction a go. If you're already a fan of the series, then you'll want to see this one. If you generally don't go in for zombie apocalypse type stories you're probably not going to like it - but what did you expect?
