Resident Evil: Extinction
Directed by Russell Mulcahy
Starring Milla Jovovich, Oded Fehr, Ali Larter, Iain Glen
Rated R

This wasn’t the worst movie I’ve ever seen. Coincidentally, that honor falls to Highlander II: The Quickening (a movie I dubbed The Sickening about seventeen minutes into seeing it in theaters), which was also from RE:E director Russell Mulcahy. It is arguably the weakest of the Resident Evil trio. But, if you’re there to watch Alice (Milla Jovovich) punch, pose, and pout… you’ll leave moderately satisfied.

In this third installment of the Resident Evil saga the T-Virus, developed by the shadowy Umbrella Corporation, has spread beyond Raccoon City and infected much of the known world. A caravan of a few dozen survivors, led by Claire (Ali Larter) and Resident Evil: Apocalypse survivor Carlos Olivera (Oded Fehr), aimlessly train their way through the desert in search of food, fuel, and … I think that’s it. Like my dad used to joke, somewhere to “Eat and get Gas.” Hey, that was funny when I was ten.

At its heart Resident Evil: Extinction is half-a-dozen poorly conceived set-pieces. The action is loosely strung together by a threadbare plot, which as long as we’re being honest we can agree is pretty much unnecessary. The first forty minutes of the movie felt like watching a Special Forces strike team perpetually burst into a room full of the unknown — dark and quiet locale, crew gets startled by something, crew shoots at something, some mild gore, we lose a few crew, repeat — sure there were a few moments of grizzly enjoyment here and there, but overall we would have benefited from an ounce or two less cut-scene and a gallon more substance.

I wasn’t going to waste time attacking any flawed science, but there’s so many glaring issues that I couldn’t leave it alone.

According to my research (read: Google search/Wiki), the timeline of the movie puts us about five years since the nuclear destruction of Raccoon City. In that time we’re vividly shown through time-lapsed CGI how all of the continents of the world have turned from lush habitable acreage to lifeless barren desert. To wit, every location in the film is basically straight outta the movie Dune.

How many rational people are with me in thinking that it would take a wee bit longer for the desert to *retake* our entire globe? Heck, when our caravan of the dammed reach Las Vegas, it’s blatantly overtaken by sand. I’ve been to Vegas, and I couldn’t help but mentally dispute its state of disrepair.

Yes, in spite of my willingness to accept an imaginary T-Virus, a world full of zombie people, zombie dogs, zombie birds, etc., and even the extreme close-ups of Alice that had her looking like an angelic Final Fantasy rendering, I couldn’t get past the whole sand business.

I know how silly this comes across, but it’s something I’ve said time and time again is and I’m sticking by it: Don’t take me out of my fantasy by messing with my reality.

Seriously, don’t. We’re already in the theater. We’ve willingly slipped into our suspension of disbelief. Why the fuck would you choose to patronize us with blatantly questionable malarky? It serves nothing but to force us to ask unnecessary questions in the midst of our fantasy. So, stop doing it! How hard would it have been to make it fifty or even five hundred years later? The plot wasn’t dependent on the date in the least, so adding a zero to the passage of time would have changed nothing but its plausibility.

Anyhoo, since I love post-apocalyptic settings, watching Milla Jo kick ass, and even more than both, I freakin’ LOVE Zombies!, I was able to have some fun with it. But there is nothing about this movie which allows me to recommend that you should go spend hard-earned cash on it.

Period.