Resident Evil: The Final Chapter

It has been ten years since the destruction of Racoon City.  The T-Virus has ravaged the Earth and Humanity is down to its last days.  As the end looms, a single hope emerges: an airborne Anti-Virus that could cure the entire infection.  The catch: it’s buried within The Hive, back where the nightmare began beneath Racoon City.  Once again, the fate of mankind lies in the hands of Alice, the former Umbrella Agent who has been fighting a neverending war against her former employers and the Undead.  Welcome to the Final Chapter of the End of the World.

Resident Evil: The Final Chapter is a film that, for all intents and purposes, goes all in on it’s far from Video Game roots premise as possible.  It is a film that tries to go out with the loudest bang with the biggest set pieces and a few last minute revelations to shake things up.  It’s also the most chaotically edited, boring entry of the franchise.  Even if one were to give the first five films the status of “guilty pleasure,” when the same cant be said of the big finish, something has been done very wrong…more so than what’s already been done wrong with this mess of a film franchise already.

One could site her very first appearance as the big indicator or when she was given top priority over familiar Resident Evil characters in Raccoon City.  Whichever moment you realized this, you’ve known this film franchise has belonged to Mila Jovovich’s Alice and had no intention of giving the spotlight to anyone else.  As such, this is HER finale and The Final Chapter never lets you forget it.  She is literally in about 95% of the film with nary a focus on any returning or newly introduced character.  The Final Chapter also attempts to do for Alice what hasn’t been done for her in six movies: give her a backstory and a reason to care about her.  Not only is it as dumb an origin as you’d expect, it doesn’t change anything.  Alice might be one of the most recognizable action heroines in film history.  But she’s still the same dull and characterless character that she was back in the very first film.  And honestly, even here it looks like Jovovich is just sleepwalking through the motions of a franchise she’s wanted to be done with several movies ago.

So, remember that big cliffhanger at the end of Resident Evil: Greatest Hits…er, Retribution?  The one where you had Alice standing on the White House roof with Wesker, Jill Valentine, Ada Wong and Leon S. Kennedy staring at an oncoming invasion force of Zombies?  Forget it.  Like Retribution before it, The Final Chapter ignores and borderline retcons that ending in favor of just getting back to Alice and sticking with her, no explanations provided.  Jill, Ada and Leon are all gone without a trace and there are only TWO Resident Evil characters from the games back for The Final Chapter: Claire Redfield and Wesker.  Ali Larter was always one of my favorite castings in the franchise and it is good to see her again.  But just like everyone else, she is placed in Alice’s shadow the entire time and given next to nothing to do.  Wesker gets the worst treatment, believe it or not, including one of the most groan inducing moments of any of these freaking movies.  The one glimmer of enjoyment can be seen in the return of Iain Glen as Alexander Marcus.  Back from the dead and playing two roles: the original Marcus and a Jesus crazed lunatic driven mad by the Zombie apocalypse, Glen chews the scenery nicely.  He knows as well as Jovovich just how bad this movie is…only he’s gonna have a little fun with his line delivery.

The Final Chapters pace and editing are some of the most chaotic and terrible work I’ve seen in any movie ever.  When the action kicks in, frames change every 1-2 seconds, barely giving the viewer time to take in what the hell is going on.  It’s like the movie wants to be over with and by jumping cuts contiuously, it’ll finish quicker (and yet this film is 100 minutes long).  Even when the action isn’t ragging across the screen, it’s been there, done that.  What do we care about this world or any of the new characters in Claire’s group?  The answer is we don’t.  Action is only as good as the story and characters you care about.  Even those classic action movies of the 1980s, be they good or bad, had some charm thanks to stars like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone.  The Final Chapter feels as empty and lifeless as the Zombies running through the wasteland, bored out of their minds.  While the previous films are a whole level of bad, they weren’t nearly as boring as this endgame, though Retribution was pretty dull in its own way.

The good news is that this movie lives up to one thing: the title.  Resident Evil: The Final Chapter is the final note in this poorly executed and poorly crafted film adaptation of the beloved video game franchise.  Alice’s story ends just as lackluster as it began and any and all cares that might’ve been given by the creators or what fans this series has have long evaporated by this point.  There is only one goal to this movie: get it done and move on.  Shoddy resolution, crappy editing, hammy performances, boring action scenes, The Final Chapter is about what you’d expect from a series that doesn’t care about its roots or the rich characters and history that populate the video games.  Here’s hoping that when the inevitable reboot comes along, filmmakers stick with the video games and their amazing lore and terrors…and keep it as far away from the character of Alice or Paul W.S. Anderson as humanly possible.

1/10