Resident Evil Extinction: Mad Max for the next generation

Resident Evil: Extinction is the third movie in the Resident Evil series starring Milla Jovovich. When the movie starts it turns out that the T-virus has pretty much wiped out all life on earth including plants (why plants? do zombies eat plants? did the plants become zombies and eat each other?) leaving the entire world a barren, desertous wasteland. People travel around in vehicles that they have attached various scrap metal to in order to armor them, looking for places to get fuel and food. In other words, this movie is like Mad Max: The Road Warrior, if Mad Max were a hot chick with superstrength and telekinesis that fought zombies.

Yes that's right, I said telekinesis. In the first movie, Alice (Milla Jovovich) is just some chick that can fight really well. In the second movie, she's part of some sort of "Nemesis" project that gives her enhanced abilities by somehow making her part zombie through crazy genetic experimentation. How can you top part-zombie super strength and speed? Obviously by inexplicably giving her the power to lift motorcycles with her mind.

I've got machetes, bitches. Don't fuck with me.

Movies based on video games are notoriously bad. Most video games have just enough "story" to explain why you're shooting monsters, they're not well known for plots that translate well into film. Having never played Resident Evil I can't say much about how the movies compare to the game, however, unlike the first two Resident Evil movies, Apocalypse is one that can legitimately be classified as an action movie. The first one is mostly focused on horror, and the second is a mix of action and horror (and nonsense), but by the third movie no one is scared of reanimated hungry corpses any more, so everyone can just focus on shooting them in their rotting faces. And they do! Admittedly there is a lot of lag in this movie, with a couple of characters coming back from the second movie, and some women in the road-warrior-esque convoy that somehow have perfect hair and makeup despite living in a hellish zombie-infested wasteland, but when there actually IS action, it's some of the best.

There is Alice fighting zombies with her bare hands, chains, guns, and my personal favorite, machetes. The Umbrella corporation is still after her, so to up the zombie ante, they actually create EVEN FASTER, MORE AGGRESSIVE zombies. This makes sense, because in the first two movies, with the exception of the dog zombies and the crazy fucked up mutant zombies, the ravenous undead are pretty slow. The main danger is when they swarm you and trap you in tight spaces. But now regular zombies are able to run around at speeds comprable to living people, except they don't get tired or waste their time screaming, so they can actually catch people. And bite them. I'm not sure if the superzombies make more superzombies or not, though. They probably do.

Now I'm sure the real question weighing on people's mind is, "is Milla Jovovich naked in this movie too?" Boy is she ever! Not only do they take the zombies to the next level, they also take naked Jovovich to the extreme. How, you ask? Clones. That's right, Alice clones, ALL of whom start out their clone lives butt-naked. And that isn't a spoiler, you find that shit out in the first 15 minutes or so. Of course the clones aren't as good as the real thing, which is why Umbrella is trying to get their hands on the real Alice. Meanwhile Alice finds some notebook in a public restroom that has notes on how there's no infection somewhere and convinces the convoy to go there. So there's your plot for you.

What about other people? Well, the zombies get run over by cars, one guy drives a semi into a massive crowd of them and blows them up, we have snipers, shotguns, and plenty of "NYOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!" Also we have some kind of neat technology, which never goes amiss in an action movie. It's all pseudoscience, but they do us the favor of not trying to explain it, which always ruins the pseudoscience. There's also a little tribute to Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds," which is frankly just fucking awesome.

This movie does have long periods that are more suspense than flat-out action, a little too much "we have to really emphasize that they're after Alice," and some truly terrible dramatic dialogue. But as action movies go, if you like to see people kicking zombie ass, and you like Mad Max, you will probably get a kick out of this. You have to wait a while to see people being torn apart by crazed flesh-eating monsters en masse, but when it does happen, it's everything you could hope for. The bits in between aren't torturous, and the plot is cohesive enough if you don't think about it too much. Still it's not a movie I'd call "rewatchable," and while there are some memorable scenes, it's probably not something you'd want in your DVD collection unless you've got a real hard-on for Milla Jovovich.