Release Date: January 26, 2017
Genre: Action, Horror, Science-Fiction
Director/Writer: Paul W.S. Anderson
Cast: Milla Jovovich, Shawn Roberts, Iain Glen, Ever Gabo
Anderson, Ali Larter, Ruby Rose, Eoin Macken, William Levy, Rola
Plot: Alice, one of the only survivors of the zombie
apocalypse, is contacted by the Red Queen, the A.I. of the villainous Umbrella
Corporation. She is told that deep within the Hive, an Umbrella facility where
the outbreak started, the company has developed an antivirus that may help save
what is left of humanity. She has 48 hours to find the antivirus before
Umbrella unleashes another wave of the zombie-creating T-Virus and ends
humanity, and there are thousands of zombies between her and her goal.
Acting: Milla Jovovich might be one of the blandest action
heroes of the millennium and no doubt a strawman excuse for why there aren’t as
many female action stars currently in circulation. Unfortunately, even on the
supposed final lap of the franchise that gave her her prominent in the
industry, this does nothing to change that impression. Nevermind the fact that
she’s been written to breeze through pretty much every single encounter she’s
given, Jovovich herself lacks in the charisma that is sorely needed to make this
kind of uber-powerful action hero work.
Aside from her, we essentially get sentient window-dressing
and I’m not sure whether or not to be thankful that the film isn’t trying to
placate fans of the video game series by shoehorning-in dozens of characters
from it; we get Claire Redfield, we get Wesker and that’s about it. And quite
frankly, aside from Milla Jovovich’s involvement, the villains are the only
ones who end up registering any kind of reaction and not for any of the good
reasons. Shawn Roberts is used to the slimy shoes of Wesker by now, and he
fulfills his obligation as a barely-even-trying-to-hide-it villain role. Then
there’s Iain Glen, whose sheer bloody-mindedness when it comes to chasing after
Alice looks like he’s trying for Javert and ventured too far towards the
Russell Crowe version without the singing… and he’s somehow even more
laughable.
Liked: If I have
to be charitable to this thing, I can at least say that it’s a fairly easy film
to get into without the five films worth of follow-up. The Resident Evil films
have always played hard and fast with their continuity, up to and including
reducing the entire world to a desert wasteland in one film and then it
suddenly isn’t in the next, and this
is no exception. As such, it manages to avoid the pitfall that even the better
franchise pictures of today fall into and doesn’t out-and-out require the
audience to do their homework in order to watch the latest installment. If it
sounds like I’m stretching for a positive, it’s only because I am.
Disliked: The action scenes are mesmerising in how
incompetent they are, with Anderson and editor Doobie White apparently
stringing themselves out on molly before setting out to stage these setpieces.
I don’t know when exactly incoherent shaky-cam nausea became the mainstay for
modern action filmmakers, but this continues the tradition by highlighting it
at its absolute worst. The camerawork is way too close to the action, meaning
that we barely get to see any of it, and the editing seems unable to hold onto a
single shot for more than a second, resulting in disorientation pretending to
be exciting.
And speaking of things trying and failing to be exciting,
this film’s horror credibility is dubious at best. Now, don’t get me wrong; not
every zombie film automatically needs to be scary and I have liked many a
stupid zombie action film in the past. However, if a film is going to try and
be scary in this context, it needs to do a lot better than just insert lame
jump scares every five minutes. It’s bad enough when they are telegraphed as
badly as they are here, but when there is little to no atmosphere or tension to
create even surface chills, you start to wonder why they even bothered in the
first place.
Of course, this is all small potatoes next to the behemoth
of a problem that is the story here. I am 100% convinced that Anderson just
made it up as he went along because, aside from not making sense in continuity
to the previous films, it fails to even make sense with itself. It keeps
bringing up plot points and then dropping them off thematic cliffs so often
that, even if you are somehow on board with this narrative, you will likely
fall right out of sync with it before too long. Then we get into the specifics
and it’s here where one of the bigger lingering issues of the franchise,
Alice’s character, somehow reaches a crescendo of stupid. She maintains her
status as literally the only competent character on screen, but once we get to
the ending, we see just how far they are willing to go in order to keep up her
image as the best thing ever in this film’s universe. The fact that the two
most active characters, Alice and the Red Queen, are played by the director’s
wife and daughter respectively really drives home what a truly egotistical
exercise this is. This officially being called The Final Chapter is probably
the most entertaining thing about this, knowing how much Paul W.S. Anderson
sucks at actually concluding his stories.
Final Thoughts: If you have the capacity to laugh at bad
movies, rather than just feel like you’re wasting your own time, then you might
get some entertainment out of this. Otherwise, there is honestly no reason to
watch this. The story makes no sense, regardless of whether you’ve caught up
with the previous films or not, the action is lame, the acting is bare bones
and Anderson’s boastful approach to storytelling is alive and well, resulting
in a rather pathetic offering.
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