The best thing that I can say about this latest instalment of the zombie-action franchise is that it’s the best one of the trilogy, not that that’s much of a compliment. When I saw the original Resident Evil, my first thought was that I’ll never find a bigger rip-off of James Cameron’s Aliens than this. I purposefully swore off the sequel, Extinction, until I rented it a couple of days ago, but I was unsurprised to find that things hadn’t changed much in terms of quality or content.



Extinction picks up sometime after Apocalypse as the T-virus (the mutant bug that makes everyone zombies) has swept the Earth, making the planet a barren wasteland of deserts. The evil Umbrella Corp. continues to pull strings in top secret locations beneath the Earth’s surface. Our hero, Alice (Milla Jovovich), travels alone, scouring for supplies and survivors and ultimately catches up with old friends Carlos (Oded Fehr) and LJ (Mike Epps), who are part of a convoy of survivors just trying to stay alive. Of course, Alice’s worst feat comes true, Umbrella has found her and is prepared to do anything, and kill anyone, to get her.



Once again, Paul W. Anderson doesn’t fail to impress… at his ability to dig into other films in the genre and mine all the golden nuggets for his film, which comes out as the horrible Frankenstein of a monster of a movie. Anderson’s main rip this time: 28 Days Later. Say das vidania to the lumbering zoms of parts one and two, because Umbrella has exacerbated the aggressive instincts of the infected and turned them into thoroughbred rageahols. The story itself focuses on the needs of survival, a small group of remaining humans doing their very best to make it just one more day deep in hostile territory surrounded by the enemy.



If Extinction has one thing going for it, it’s that Anderson isn’t behind the camera (he’s busy screwing up Death Race 2000 by doing a pointless remake). Directing this potential trilogy caper is Russell Mulcahy, who’s perhaps most famous for bringing us the first two Highlanders. He’s competent enough to tell a good story, but Evil, by its very nature, is too derivative to be anything remotely original or interesting. The story elements that make the game such a compelling play, simply don’t translate as well to a narrative where you’re outside the story.



Then, even at that, the story is so woefully repetitive. The good guys are fighting a loosing battle, one of them gets bit by and zombie and becomes infected, all hell breaks loose, Umbrella interferes and Alice saves the day and lives to fight again. If the video game were this dull, it wouldn’t ever have become a best seller. That and the characters never seem really fleshed out, even Claire played by Ali Larter, who’s supposed to be the heir apparent for future Residents gets barely any screen time or an interesting story arc.



The ridiculousness of the Resident Evil movies would be funny if the people involved didn’t take it so seriously. Imagine if the next film got the Planet Terror treatment and became a ruckus, out of control C-movie that embraces its true identity. Now that’s a film I wouldn’t mind seeing, otherwise leave your zombies alone and bring on Diary of the Dead already.