Resident Evil: The Final Chapter Review

If this had been the poster art, at very least, it wouldn't be false advertising. 

Paul W. S. Anderson gets a lot of slack from me. He made Event Horizon and Pandorum, which I think, are two of the best sci-fi movies I've seen. As such, I tend to be a bit of an apologist for his work. Yeah, AvP was fucking abysmal, yeah, the Resident Evil movies are campy, stupid and ridiculous (in a completely different way to the equally campy, stupid and ridiculous games), but overall, when he hits, he hits hard. The obvious caveat to that, however, is that when he misses, oh boy does he miss, and today, we're here to dissect his newest bout of cinematic diarrhea, the apparent 'Final Chapter', of the Resident Evil Franchise.

So, if you've watched the previous RE movies (I had the misfortune of sitting through the last one in theaters one day when I had $20 to kill and nothing better to do), you may remember that the last movie ended on a cliffhanger. After Johnny Bravo, sorry, Albert Wesker turned Alice's psychic powers back on (after the again previous movie where they were turned off), they were about to do a giant last stand against the Red Queen and her army of zombies and other undead mutants.

 

So yeah, remember that? Any of that seem familiar? Well apparently, it didn't for the screenwriters, because this movie completely skips over that action sequence and just cuts to the white house being destroyed. No mention of Leon or Ada or even Jill in her RE 5 cosplay, and for all we know (or care really), the previous movies all easily could have been a fevered dream, because the first scene of relevance has the Red Queen (remember, the AI who wanted to use the army of zombies to destroy humanity) contacting Alice and telling her that she needs to save the last bastion of human survivors.

Meet the third creepy little girl to play the Red Queen, and no, she can't pull off a British accent either.

The Red Queen has calculated that the remaining bastions of human civilization worldwide has (exactly) 48 hours before the zombies kill them all. This, throughout the movie is treated more like a hard deadline than the obvious guestimation that it is, because Alice resolves the problem (spoilers whoops) with like a minute to spare, which leaves the amusing thought that only 3 people are left alive on the face of the Earth. She also tells Alice that there's a magical antivirus cure in the Hive (remember, that big facility in the first movie that they blew up), that will fix everything. That exact same facility that she sealed in and murdered everyone working at to stop the virus from getting out. You know, it's definitely one thing to be in a different canon from the games, but it takes a special kind of stupid to invalidate the entire goddamn franchise you're working on. Top fucking marks.

Which brings us to our next re-occurring character (the only one besides Alice, Claire and Wesker to reprise a role), Dr. Jorah Mormont , sorry, Isaacs, from the third movie. You may remember him from being cut into Tyrant-sushi at the end of that movie. Don't worry though, that was just a clone.

I'm the new main baddy, by the way, even though I was taking orders from Wesker.

Iain Glen, the actor who plays him, who clearly does not give a FUCK, is easily the best thing about this trainwreck, to the point that he squarely out-hams Wesker and boots him down to being his evil minion, despite being clearly outranked by him in the third movie. So, because cloning, there are several Isaacs in this movie, one of whom is doing his best impression of a baddy from Fury Road while riding around in a tank, followed by an army of zombies. The other is in the Hive, and finally revealed the Umbrella Master plan.

We're going to have to up our evil for the next quarter.

So, the previous movies (and games or something) may have left you with the impression that Umbrella wanted to sell its viruses. It may also have left you with the impression that they were trying to make superhumans by combining the T-Virus with Alice and cloning her or some shit. Well you sir, are completely wrong, because the grand, master plan of the Umbrella Corporation (now partially owned by Isaacs in his CEO boss form), is completely stolen from Pentex, except so stupid, that Pentex wouldn't touch this bunch of goobers with a miles-long pole.

So, as Isaacs explains, with heavy handed and out-of-fucking-NOWHERE Christian metaphors, The Umbrella Corp intends to put all its stockholders in cryo-pods, and DELIBERATELY release the T-Virus, so, and I'm quoting here, 'it will cleanse the world while leaving the infrastructure and resources intact.'

All according to plan!

The flashback board meeting then conveniently cuts off at this point, because there is literally no way to finish that pitch without sounding like a fucking imbecile. Even better, he isn't even the majority shareholder of the company, so somehow, he must've actually CONVINCED the rest of the board that this was a good plan, because they apparently were all for waking up 30 years in the future to an apocalyptic, undead-infested wasteland.

Now, the company (AGAIN) retcons who its shareholders are. Previously, you may remember Wesker leading a holographic meeting of the bigwigs of Umbrella, but here, he's demoted to Isaac's flunky. The actual head of Umbrella is no longer Wesker, or even Dr. Ashford from the second movie (or, in a huge missed opportunity, his daughter from Code Veronica), it's SURPRISE, Alice again, or more accurately, her original incarnation in old-person make up. (Oh yeah, Alice is a clone. Shock of shocks). She's named Alicia Marcus, apparently the daughter of the previously completely unmentioned James Marcus (who's a goofy, leech controlling opera-singer bad guy from RE 0), who okayed this project, but then felt super bad for it.

Where's my complete, global saturation?

So Wesker gets the biggest shaft in this movie. After being built up by both the movies and the games to be the biggest-dicked badass there is, with Kung-Fu matrix moves and Plaga powers (or something) to match the director's hard-on for Milla Jovovich, Wesker does quite literally nothing in this movie except smirk and sip brandy. He's in the Hive, managing the defenses, and apparently doing a very bad job of it, since he leaves the front door right open for Alice and co. to break in, and then turns off his death-traps after they've killed one member of the party, because it wouldn't be fair otherwise. Because the Red Queen can't directly harm Umbrella Employees he gets to order the Red Queen around, but then Alicia just fires him ('cause she can do that, apparently, despite him working directly for Isaacs), and the Queen unceremoniously crushes him with a door. Say what you want about his death in RE 5 being anticlimactic, but fuck, at least he got to put up a FIGHT there.

So Isaacs, the new final boss, then reveals he's not content with stealing from one video game franchise, and shows off his Adam Jensen implants to kung-fu fight (I think depowered? It's hard to keep track) Alice. They go into the laser hallway (because these movies are never fucking done with the laser hallway), and he tries to kill Alice, recreating the scene from the first movie where the team gets sliced to pieces, except he conveniently forgets the laser grid pattern that kills both the team leader and HIM, from the previous ones.

I want a do-over.

Alice then gets her fingers cut off, but ho-ho! it was just a trick from sneaky old Alice, to plant a live grenade on Isaacs, (like literally, not half a meter away from the ONLY SAMPLE OF THE FUCKING ANTIVIRUS HE HAS IN HIS COAT), which gives him an ouchy stomach wound, but then he teleports outside, and his disgruntled clone finishes him off before being eaten by zombies.

So the movie ends with Alice cracking the antivirus open on a rock, (with, as mentioned before, minutes to spare from the last of the human race dying), blows up all the rich douchebags who wanted this to happen, and uploading Alicia's memories into her own mind, so she can be a real girl! Despite its status as the 'no, for reals guys, FINAL CHAPTER,' the movie ends on sequel bait, where she says that it will take a while for the antivirus to spread, and that her fight isn't over, while being chased by bat-monsters from RE 5, who for some reason, haven't been killed by the antivirus.

THIS MOVIE IS A FUCKING TRAIN WRECK, and really, there are plenty more pieces of stupidity that I didn't mention (like them setting an apartment building on fire, which was mentioned moments before to be filled with survivors). Still, everyone involved clearly did not have a single shit to give, and the end result is just this ridiculous montage of everyone trying to put on a more over-the-top performance than everyone else. I know the RE movies are hardly 'high art', but this is one of those special breed of movies that just gets more ridiculous with every line and actually punishes people who remember anything about the others.

I would recommend illegally downloading this movie, if only because of Iain Glen and Wesker, because they are absolutely fabulously hammy supervillains who spend the entire movie trying to out-snark each other. Let's hope that the title doesn't lie and that all these (clearly talented) actors can get on with doing something worthwhile.

FINAL SCORE: 1/5 

- Kephn