Zombies liven end of trilogy
Published Sept. 25, 2007
Maybe, in the future, Paul W.S. Anderson should simply produce every third script he writes.
The third movie based on the video game franchise that brought all the finesse and intelligence of zombie movies to the PlayStation, "Resident Evil: Extinction," takes place after all of the video games' famously awful plot machinations have already been revealed, leaving it to deal strictly in zombie dismemberment.
"Extinction" unwittingly does some of the most important things an action movie can do: It never reveals the plot in the dialogue, and it keeps the ham-fisted flashbacks to a minimum.
Because it leaves the mediocre storytelling to the previous movies, this is the rare action film that is not only better than its prequels, but it's also better if you haven't seen them.
Here's the story of the third movie: The world ended in a way that left a bunch of slow, man-eating zombies walking around. Some survivors, led by video game tie-in Claire Redfield (Ali Larter), who have seen a lot of post-apocalyptic movies, drive the usual weapons-filled scrap vehicles through the barren desert while killing zombies and looking for gasoline.
Alice (Milla Jovovich), a woman with psychic powers and a connection to the "Resident Evil" movies' resident shady world-domination conglomerate, Umbrella, does much the same thing by herself. Eventually, Alice and Claire meet up, which leads to a lot of dead zombies and a few angry, evil white guys from central casting. The previous two movies explain some of this to varying degrees of satisfaction, but I assure you it's better to not know.
Anderson didn't direct this film, but it has all of his mediocre hallmarks. Music video director Russell Mulcahy, whose most lasting contribution to cinema is and will remain Duran Duran's "Hungry like the Wolf," can't keep the camera on the action. But there is enough action that some of it was bound to get in anyway.
Some of his shots are impressive — there are a few great three-minute stretches, which should surprise nobody who's seen "Hungry like the Wolf" — but they're ruined by yet another instance of that creeping menace: the throbbing sludge-guitar action soundtrack.
Things proceed as zombie movies do, and it plays to its two audiences as well as a mediocre movie can. And, if you didn't see them, the asinine plot is far enough in the background that you can simply spend 95 minutes enjoying the truly absurd zombie body count.