Resident Evil: Extinction (2007)

Resident Evil 3
Resident Evil: Afterlife

Cast:

Milla Jovovich is Alice
Oded "I fought the Mummy" Fehr is Carlos Olivera
Ali Larter is Claire Redfield
Iain Glen is Dr. Isaacs
Ashanti is Betty
Spencer Locke is K-Mart
Mike "Don't forget me from Resident Evil:Apocalypse" Epps is L.J.

What the box says:

Milla Jovovich is back in the third chapter of the hugely successful Resident Evil franchise! This action packed horror film is set on the Nevada desert and filled with intense special effects and more zombie terror!

Las Vegas means fun in the sun. Well... at least the sun is still there. Except for a rusting landmarks, it looks pretty much like the rest of the desert - or the whole country, for that matter. The crowds are now flesh-eating zombies: the mass undead, the oozing, terrifying sludge of what remains. Here, the newly upgraded Alice, along with her crew (Ohed Fehr, Mike Epps, Ali Larter, Ashanti) will make a final stand against evil - with one goal: to turn the undead...dead again.

Plot:

Alice awakens in the Resident Evil mansion. Walking into the laser grid room and then jumps into the hospital room where she gets shot. Her body's thrown away with other Alice clones. The Umbrella Corporation has a lab in the desert fenced in surrounded by zombies.

Alice narrates how the T-Virus killed most humanity, and the planet dried up. She's motorcycling around the Southwest. Picking up a radio distress call, she goes to check on the people who tried to trap her. Dropping her in a pit with zombie dogs. She evades the dogs that escape the pit and go after the group.

A convoy (without the CW McCall song) led by LJ, Carlos Olivera, and Claire Redfield head down the road.

The Umbrella Corporation lab, Dr. Isaacs wants to use Alice's blood to domesticate the zombies. Unfortunately, the clones of Alice aren't good enough. Isaacs starts to train the zombies for servants.

Alice checks through more of the Southwest and seems to keep avoiding the Claire's convoy.

The convoy keeps searching for survivors besides trying to scavenge a motel. LJ gets bitten by a zombie. .

The clone Alice has some sort of psychic link to Alice. Original Alice accidentally uses her telekinetic power to lift her motorcycle and drop it.

The convoy discovers they're surrounded by zombie birds that start attacking them. As the LJ, Carlos, Claire and the others have to fight the zombie birds. Things aren't looking good until, Alice runs up to save Carlos. Afterwards, burying the dead, Carlos wonders why Alice left them.

Isaacs reports to his corporate bosses how important it is he needs to get Alice. They refuse to go after her.

The convoy learns about the Alaska base from Alice. They vote to go to Alaska but need more supplies which mean to resupply at Las Vegas.

Isaacs fakes an order to capture Alice.

A sanded over Las Vegas strip, the convoy starts looking and find a trailer full of zombies that attack. Machete Alice ensues. Isaacs is able to deactivate Alice from fighting. She deactivates the control.

In the melee, the zombiefied LJ bites Carlos. Alice goes back to zombie battling and heads after the Umbrella guys. Isaacs gets bitten by a zombie.

Back at the Umbrella lab, Isaacs keeps shooting himself up with the anti-virus. One of the aides shoots him but it doesn't stop Isaacs who now has protoplasmic tentacles.

The convoy spots the zombies around the lab. Alice wants to go after the anti-virus for Carlos. However, it is too cure him. He'll get them through. Driving a truck and crashes through the fence. Alice and the convoy get to the chopper. She stays behind as the chopper head off.

Examining the land, Alice finds a pile of dead clones. Heading underground, the lab is dark and ramshackled. She talks with the White Queen, the holographic AI. Telling her that Isaacs has mutated and apparently, Alice's blood could stop the T-Virus.

Searching for Isaacs, she finds a clone of her is a crèche. The zombies attack and that releases clone-Alice. Alice keeps looking for Isaacs in the Resident Evil mansion. The fight is on...Psychic powers versus Isaacs’s tentacles. In the laser room, Alice is fighting Isaacs-Tyrant. The grid cuts Isaacs apart. Things are looking bad as the lasers head for her. However, clone-Alice shuts the lasers to save the original.

Tokyo, Umbrella committee report when a holographic Alice calls in to warn them she coming after them.

Alice and clone-Alice look in the huge room of crèches full of more clone Alices.

What I say:

Saw the first 2 movies in the theater but missed catching this there.. Made this confession before, I've never played a single one of the Resident Evil games. Can only hope since I don't technically have any video game geek cred to not offend any of my Ten of Fans. My geek cred won't be throwing around the Tyrant, etc... with as much as I would in a superhero movie. So I have to go just on the basis of the other movies: Resident Evil and Resident Evil: Apocalypse.

Video game movies are typically one of the few movie sub-genres that get almost as reviled as bad horror movies or those painful horrendous comedies. Video Game movies abnormally fall into 3 groups: Uwe Boll's (which I still can't think are as bad as everyone else say they are), Resident Evil, and the other video game bombs like Wing Commander (but still hope for a Frogger movie...)

The post-apocalyptic movies (AKA "Mad-Max-sploitation") had pretty much disappeared by the mid-1980s after such movies like Warriors of the Wasteland. It's not quite the peanut butter and chocolate brilliance of Reese's but the post-apocalyptic zombie movie ala Mad Max taking on zombies...Somehow, a leather-clad Milla Jovovich fighting zombies just seems better than Mel Gibson at this point.

Milla Jovovich...She gave us the "Big Badda Boom" in the Fifth Element. Alice from the previous Resident Evil movies (starting to use telekinetic abilities that the movie Dark Phoenix find impressive) to her vampireness in UltraViolet. As Alice she's been running for 5 years trying to avoid being captured by the obvious evil Umbrella Corporation. Clone of the hero or heroine in this case. Alice and Clone-Alice looking on an army of clone Alices in the incubators.

The dream sequences if not flashbacks do tend to get to a bit jumpy. A sequel acknowledging a previous movie is almost revolutionary. With the Hive mansion being destroyed in the 2nd movie, why bother with it from the first RE movie and the laser grid room so much? Those flashbacks do drag to some degree the way they keep going back to them...

One of the worst things that annoys me in a movie is a the scene being so dark you can't see what's going on at all. Scrawling down the acronym TDTS (TOO DARK TO SEE) on my notes and the venom of my rage begins. Actually, Alien Vs Predator: Requiem was so dark, I even gave up on trying to review it. Resident Evil: Extinction is probably the most daylit zombie movie of all time if not the most daylit video game movie of all time, too.

The years after the zombies roamed the Earth haven't been pretty. Zombie birds attacking in a pack that a coffin-clad Alfred Hitchcock wouldn't have liked being considered to his movie the Birds. Las Vegas has been worn over with sandstorms for years. Finally, a movie that doesn't show the major cities that get "disastered" like New York, Los Angeles, or any of the typical foreign city landmarks.

Since the first 2 Resident Evil movies were directed by Paul W.S. Anderson, it is different to have the 3rd movie to be so different. Rather than the claustrophic scenes in the Hive or the chaotic night. Normally, I don't mention mcuh about the director unless they pop up in some other movies. Russell Mulcahy is probably more known for directing Highlander and its sequel: Highlander 2: the Quickening. He sort of fell into the typical 1990s movies the Shadow and Ricochet before disappearing by the late 90s.

Zombies are almost as popular as vampires. OK gothic teen girls think vampires are angsty and full of deep brooding emotions. Movies have been fired up to make zombie movies over the past decade or so by remaking George Romero zombie movies, the 28 Days, etc...The rules for zombie fighting are The slow zombie transformation by one of the characters is as necessary in a zombie movie as a vampire has to stay out of the sun. Think it is safe to say, any Resident Evil movie with plenty of zombie killing isn't going to be considered as "triumph of the human heart."

Quotable Dialogue
"Sorry about this, Stevie..."
"Sometimes, aggressions have their uses..."
"Climb the Eiffel Tower..."
"Good thing, we like a challenge..."
"I am the future.."
"Yeah, you're the future..."
Morals of the Story
Zombie dogs have white teeth.
The World needs more Iron Butterfly's Inna Gadda Da Vita.
Zombies need to use cell phones.
Flame throwers can scare birds away better than scarecrows...
Nothing makes holographic representations of artificial intelligences than English accents.