daforce's Review

Comments (10)

Poster

©Probably Sony

Grade: B+
Reviewed Format: Theatrical Release
Rated: R
Stars: Milla Jovovich, Ali Larter, Oded Fehr, Iain Glen, Mike Epps
Writer: Paul W.S. Anderson
Director: Russell Mulcahy
Distributor: Screen Gems

Resident Evil: Extinction - Review (No spoilers)

By: daforce
Date: Friday, September 21, 2007

So I saw a special sneak preview of this on Thurs. night. That was pretty much the only way I was going to see it after the turkey that was RE:Apocalypse. Again, we have Anderson writing the screenplay, but this time around we have Russell Mulcahy ("Highlander") directing this outting.

The movie opens to five years after we last saw Alice and the gang escape from Raccoon City. The virus has spread everywhere, even into the plants and the water. The whole planet is becoming a wasteland. Alice is on her own, tracking down survivors and killing any zombies along the way. We also get to meet Claire's (Ali Larter) group of nomadic survivors, but very briefly. In fact, Larter's character is so one dimensional in this, she could have phoned it in.

Also back from the second movie is L.J. (Epps) and Carlos (Fehr). L.J. almost has the beginning of a little more character depth than the punchline he played in RE:A, but it's quickly abandoned since there really is only time in the movie for Alice. And Alice is the story in a big way. Jill Valentine is a no show, and she's never even mentioned in the movie (which is a shame). Dr. Issacs (from all the RE movies) is back in this one, and he's trying to get some of Alice's blood to fight the virus. See, Dr. Issacs is holed up in an underground Umbrella complex out in the desert of Nevada, and he's still experimenting. Which is never a good thing with this guy.

The script borrows fairly liberally from George Romero's "Day of the Dead" for part of the movie, and then abandons that tone and starts to follow the RE games a bit more near the final third of the movie. The end is definitely set up for a sequel. My guess is that they're waiting to see how this one does in the box office. Some of the special effects are pretty cheap, but a lot of the action scenes (especially the ones with Alice) are a lot of fun to watch.

If I had to pay money for this one, I'd say bargain matinee prices. I was a little disappointed in the zombies too. The makeup was really good, it's just that they had slow zombies, and really fast Zack Snyder zombies in the movie. Picking one or the other would have made this a little bit better.

Click here to read the staff review by Mania.

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Comments/Responses

gauleyboy420 • Sep 21, 2007, 02:38am •

Well you made me regret not using my free passes.
Just one "correction" of your review,
They're not Zach Snyder's fast moving zombies. They are Danny Boyle's fast moving zombies. 28 Days Later was a zombie movie (there are many types of zombies; risen dead, voodoo zombies, and a biologically created zombie.)
Danny Boyle breathed new life (no pun intended) into the zombie genre, which Zach Snyder tweaked and brilliantly used in his great remake of Dawn of the Dead.

daforce • Sep 21, 2007, 11:33am •

That's a common misconception, that Boyle used zombies. 28 Days Later's bad guys were *infected* living people. They weren't dead. Zombies are the walking dead.

gauleyboy420 • Sep 21, 2007, 12:26pm •

Wrong, zombies are not always "walking dead"
as I stated there are many incarnations of zombies. For instance (as I've stated) Voodoo zombies. They are indeed zombies, and are not dead. Voodoo zombies are created through black magic. In some instances possesion can create zombies (Evil Dead)
In the case of 28 days they are biologically created zombies.
Remember zombies are metaphors for humans, they can take on as many variations as the human race itself.
Like it or not 28 Days later IS a zombie movie. It's just a rare instance of creativity (creating something new in an already existing genre) in cinema.
Read the Zombie Handbook, or other literature of the like you will see what I'm talking about.
The misconception is in fact that zombies "have" to be walking dead.

AND for the sake of argument lets say they're not zombies (they are), Snyder still did not come up with the idea of fast moving zombies. He took it from Boyle's vision of zombies.

daforce • Sep 21, 2007, 12:42pm •

Actually, Boyle's infected could be killed with shots to the body. Zombies can only be destroyed by destroying the brain, or removing the head. Therefore, Boyle's psychos aren't zombies.

In the RE movies, the zombies are all the walking dead. They're decomposing and shambling around for the most part.

Zach Snyder's speedy-go-fast zombies were no different than the average slasher flick psychopath, and just weren't scary.

Same thing for Boyle's RAGE infected psychos.

Faster does not necessarily mean better. In the case of zombies, faster just takes the scary right out of them.

gauleyboy420 • Sep 21, 2007, 12:44pm •

here is more info on how zomnies don't have to be walking dead.
Several decades later, Wade Davis, a Canadian ethnobotanist, presented a pharmacological case for zombies in two books, The Serpent and the Rainbow (1985) and Passage of Darkness: The Ethnobiology of the Haitian Zombie (1988). Davis traveled to Haiti in 1982 and, as a result of his investigations, claimed that a living person can be turned into a zombie by two special powders being entered into the blood stream (usually via a wound). The first, coup de poudre (French: 'powder strike'), induced a 'death-like' state because of tetrodotoxin (TTX), its key ingredient. Tetrodotoxin is the same lethal toxin found in the Japanese delicacy fugu, or pufferfish. At near-lethal doses (LD50= 5-8µg/kg)[2], it can leave a person in a state of near-death for several days, while the person continues to be conscious. The second powder, composed of dissociatives like datura, put the person in a zombie-like state where they seem to have no will of their own. Davis also popularized the story of Clairvius Narcisse, who was claimed to have succumbed to this practice. There remains considerable skepticism about Davis's claims,[3] and opinions remain divided as to the veracity of his work,[citation needed] although there is wide recognition among the Haitian people of the existence of the "zombie drug". The Voodoon religion being somewhat secretive in its practices and codes, it can be very difficult for a foreign scientist to validate or invalidate such claims.

AND my point is that the 28 das later zombies were dead as far as higher brain functions and human instincs. They were dead, they just didn't die yet.

gauleyboy420 • Sep 21, 2007, 12:48pm •

This looks like a case of we're just gonna have to agree to disagree.
I think the idea of fast zombies is very scary, and I love the idea of them slowly deteriorating into slow lumbering zombies it just makes sense.
This is one of my favorite movie monsters and when Boyle reinvented the zombie, just as Romero had years earlier I was ecstatic. Didn't see the sequel though.

daforce • Sep 21, 2007, 12:53pm •

Yup, I know about the Haitian voodoo zombies, but I'm talking about modern movie zombies. Romero pretty much put his stamp on what the modern movie zombie is. That's the definition I go by, and that's what the RE movies have been using as well.

Hell, in the movie they even go as far as copying Romero's "Day of the Dead"'s Bub learning scene.

I like my zombies slow and shuffling. Anything faster than that just isn't scary, and may as well be another psycho in a hockey mask chasing down loose women in an abandoned summer camp.

gauleyboy420 • Sep 21, 2007, 12:57pm •

Thats cool they used the learning zombie thing.
I always liked that. They could give him an ipod instead of a walkman.
I'll still probably see this now because of your review, just wish I'd used those damn passes

audioslave69 • Sep 22, 2007, 07:53pm •

Kudos for the 2 of u for making constructive-ish criticism and not bashing and shouting to each other :P

mckracken • Oct 03, 2007, 01:03am •

I just saw this tonight, it was... well it was a little dose of everything thrown in for good measure... daForce is correct, that Paul Anderson steals every scene thats good in the script from Mad Max to Land of the Dead, with long drawn out homages to Day of the Dead, Matrix Trilogy, The Birds, 28 Days Later... but its when he starts stealing scenes that he's previously used in his OTHER Resident Evil Movies that I started looking at my watch ... COME ON, get real!
Quite frankly, as cool as it was, I didnt care for the creature that Dr Issacs turned into...because I didnt care when they did the exact same thing in RE: Apocalypse (big Bad fights Alice) only here, the monster is much more fun to look at but goes down really quick... he invented "the salad shredder" room... you'd think he wouldnt look so surprized when he walked into it and the friggin doors close.
oh, and the ending? WTF? If the next RE movie has no Milla Jovovich in it, then what was the whole point behind the set up? CLAIRE? are you friggin kidding me? They abandoned the rag tag fugitive Mad Max plotline a little slower than they abandoned the Day of the Dead "teaching and domesticating the zombies" plotline... what gives? In fact, theres so many abandoned plotlines that were lifted from other movies its hard to really care about the plotline of Alice and all of Dr Issac's Alice clones (that was totally lifted from AlienÂ³ also) because IT TOO was abandoned!!!!

I dunno DaForce... it seems a B+ here is heaping a little too much praise on a movie that borrows and abandons so many plotlines from other movies... who cares about Alice, who cares about Claire.... who cared about Jill Valentine... obviously not the writer or director or producer.
One more thing, if Paul WS Anderson had seen AKIRA he would have strapped a lazer on that Umbrella Corp. spy satilight and flamed the hell out of Las Vegas... and dont tell me he wouldnt have, he's probably saving that scene for part 4!

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Resident Evil: Extinction - Review (No spoilers)

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