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PREMIERE'S REVIEW (posted 9/24/07)

The dastardly Umbrella Corporation, which nuked a city at the end of Resident Evil: Apocalypse in a failed, last-ditch attempt to stop the spread of its zombie-making virus, is still in business at the beginning of Resident Evil: Extinction. The company's headquarters is now a post-modern bunker located miles beneath a surface world that contains little more than sand and zombies and a few roving bands of survivors. Still on the payroll, somehow, is Dr. Isaacs (Iain Glen), a Strangelovian figure who figured prominently in the last film. Isaacs has now more or less given up on forming plans to eradicate zombies and instead hopes to "domesticate" them. In other words, he's out of ideas, much like the Resident Evil movies themselves.

This, the allegedly final installment of the series, offers up little aside from a third helping of what we've already seen: zombie dogs, Umbrella goons, and multiple "Oh no, I've been bitten" moments. Back for the third go-round is Alice (Jovovich) the series' heroine who, at the end of the last film, was briefly recaptured by Umbrella, tampered with in some secret way, and then allowed to escape. When we catch up with her this time, she's decked out in a cowboy duster and boots, and is sporting twin Kukris blades, swiped from some post-apocalyptic rednecks who try to ambush her with a phony SOS signal in the film's opening moments — they end up getting eaten by zombie dogs for their trouble. Although determined to live out her days in obscurity, Alice is soon pulled back into the orbit of other Apocalypse survivors, notably Carlos (Fehr) and L.J. (Epps) who are leading a giant survivor convoy across the endless desert that also includes newcomers Claire (Larter) and Betty, played by R&B singer Ashanti. The convoy vehicles come equipped with giant zombie catchers on the front, a nice touch. Although the film's "zombie rules" are straightforward — anyone bitten turns into a zombie unless someone else takes them out — other issues of internal logic, such as Alice and her abilities, are handled sloppily. We know that she has been genetically enhanced — she's referred to as "Project Alice" by Umbrella Corp. employees — but the extent of her power varies throughout the film, and reaches a surprising supernatural apex during the most elaborate action scene. A swarm of zombie crows descends on the survivor convoy and is on the verge of pecking everyone to bits when Alice shows up and uses mental telepathy to create a firestorm that can burn the birds out of the sky. There's some nice CGI work to enjoy during this scene, but who knew she could do things like that, and why does she revert back to hand-to-hand combat afterwards?

The filmmakers were smart to use a sun-bleached outdoor setting and Western-style gunplay as a counterpoint to the "noir city" feel of Apocalypse, and all credit to cinematographer David Johnson for keeping the visuals above-par throughout, but that's not enough the hide the glaring lack of original ideas in the script by Paul W.S. Anderson, who penned the first two installments, or to shake off the overall "been there, done that" vibe that permeates throughout. In fact, given how aggressively similar the film's plot mechanics are to its predecessors, it's somehow appropriate that the fresh Western motif is eventually discarded and Alice ends up right back where she began in the first film: dodging a slice-and-dice laser matrix inside Umbrella Corp. and trading sarcastic remarks with the company's computer brain, holographically projected as a little girl. The Resident Evil series has gotten far on zombie-splatter dressed up as sci-fi, but enough's enough.

— Ryan Stewart