Resident Evil: Extinction
DIR: Russell Mulcahy • WRI: Paul W.S. Anderson • PROD: Paul W.S. Anderson, Jeremy Bolt, Robert Kulzer • DOP: David Johnson • ED: Niven Howie • DES: Eugenio Caballero • CAST: Milla Jovovich, Oded Fehr, Ali Larter, Iain Glen, Ashanti, Mike Epps, Christopher Egan, Spencer Locke, Jason O’Mara

By their very nature, video games are extremely tricky to adapt into films. Unlike novels or comic books, the experience of playing a game is one based on interaction rather than storytelling. If a character in a novel irritates you, you are forced to put up with them until the author decides otherwise. In a game, you can just shoot them in the head. As far as computer games go, however, the Resident Evil series was always going to be easier to fit to the silver screen than the likes of Super Mario or Mortal Kombat. For starters, the games are based very much on a set path – there is a story being told and the player is little more than a passenger along for the ride. Secondly, the series was always rooted in cinema anyway, being as they are schlocky zombie shoot ’em ups ripped directly from George A. Romero’s Dead movies. It made sense, then, when in 1999 Romero himself was hired by Sony to write and direct a feature adaptation of the game, as if the franchise had finally come full circle. However, for some reason, the powers that be weren’t happy with Romero’s script, and instead replaced one of the fathers of modern horror with its irritating, hyperactive third cousin, the much-derided Paul W.S. Anderson. Whereas Romero had a trilogy of genre masterpieces under his belt not to mention a relative boxset full of beloved cult horror movies, Anderson was the visionary behind Kurt Russell flop Soldier, and has since ruined another franchise with his take on Alien vs. Predator.

In any event, Anderson’s film – a clumsy, scare-free collage of rip-offs from other, better, movies – was successful enough to warrant a sequel (which, amazingly, managed to be exponentially worse) and now a trilogy, of which Resident Evil Extinction is apparently the final part. To say that Extinction is the best in the series is perhaps a back-handed compliment. It may be derivative, shallow, manufactured nonsense, but it is intermittently entertaining, something neither of its predecessors ever managed. As with the second film, Resident Evil Apocalypse, Anderson does not direct, but merely writes and produces (apparently he’s off butchering exploitation classic Death Race 3000). Directing this time round is Russell Mulcahy, whose experience (which oddly includes the first two Highlander movies and the promo clip for Buggles’s ‘Video Killed the Radio Star’) and talent far outweigh either Anderson or Apocalypse director Alexander Witt. It may be too late to save this particular franchise, but Mulcahy certainly brings a lot to the table, including previously ignored traits like coherence, imagination and directorial competence

Extinction is set five years after the outbreak of the T-Virus in the second film. With the zombie outbreak having spread worldwide, Milla Jovovich’s Alice wanders the Nevada desert, avoiding the sinister Umbrella Corporation. She eventually meets up with a group of stereotypes – sorry, survivors – led by Claire Redfield (Ali Larter, in a rare occurrence of a character from the original games making an appearance), and between them they decide to try and make their way to Alaska, where the zombie infection is apparently non-existent. Meanwhile, the shady Umbrella Corporation conducts experiments on cloning Alice to find a cure for the virus. Iain Glen's evil scientist does everything but twirl a handlebar moustache and cackle manically to portray just how evil he actually is.

It goes without saying that no-one goes to see these films for their plot, but at least Mulcahy tries to put a bit of meat on the film’s rotting bones. The concept of zombies in a semi-Western setting is a relatively new one, but with many of the ideas lifted wholesale from Romero's Land of the Dead (note the zombie gas station attendant and the fortified Umbrella headquarters) and numerous genre clichés (one of the survivors gets bitten but tries to hide it from the others – yawn) it's hard to take seriously. To be fair though, the scripts in these pictures are little more than springboards for noisy set-pieces, and it’s here that Extinction really outdoes its predecessors. Previous action scenes in the series were either incredibly dull (‘Oh look, she just kicked the zombie dog in the face in super-slow motion. Again.’) or edited to near-incomprehensibility. Here though, there are a number of entertaining set pieces, which are well choreographed and filmed. The best of these is an attack on the survivors by a flock of zombie crows (A nod to Hitchcock? Probably not), while the standard genre jumps and shocks are efficiently delivered. Furthermore, following the sub-Playstation special effects of the other movies, there is a refreshing emphasis on practical effects and gore, and what little CGI is used is well done. Unfortunately, the film runs out of steam halfway through, culminating in a lifeless climax which appropriately enough feels like an end-of level boss in a video game rather than a decent ending to a trilogy.

No doubt if you liked the first two films you'll enjoy Extinction as well, given that it follows the standard series format of Matrix rip-offs, a wafer thin story and gratuitous nudity from Jovovich, at least this time casual viewers are given something vaguely passable to watch. If, as we’re told, the series really is dead, then at least it had a half decent burial. However, given the relatively low cost of these films (the entire trilogy cost less than half the budget of Spider-Man 3) and their box office success, it would be surprising if Sony let the franchise go out on a comparatively high note, especially since the ending of Extinction threatens more films to come. To paraphrase Romero’s original Dawn of the Dead, when there's no room left in hell, Resident Evil 4 will walk the earth.

Scott Townsend
(Read biog here)

Rated 16 (see IFCO website for details)
Resident Evil: Extinction is released on 12th October 2007
Resident Evil: Extinction – Official website