Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2017)

Just what I expected

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Final installment of what should have been the best video film game adaptation, but what instead became merely a blandly entertaining series. This final installment see's Alice return to Raccoon City for a final showdown with the Umbrella Corporation, which is embodied in Iain Glen, who's a quite good sneering villain. Milla Jovovich is back as Alice, as is Ali Larter as Claire Redfield, but this long-in-the-tooth franchise is so bogged down in it's underwhelming mythology that it saps any fun from what should have been a straightforward George A. Romero style zombie film (there exists a Romero script for the first film when he was originally attached to direct and it's quite a good script). Writer/Director Paul W.S. Anderson delivers pretty much non-stop action that's reasonably well directed, but nothing that really stands out. The story isn't all that interesting and the characters are non-existant. I did enjoy the opening sequences of the film, which were much more Mad Max than zombie apocalypse, but the film quickly get's bogged down under it's own weight in trying to tie up the loose ends of the prior films. On the plus side, Jovovich is still good in the lead, and she's joined by Ruby Rose in a supporting role, which is very cool, even if it's in too short of an appearance, but despite a solid cast, decent production values, and nonstop action, this film somehow manages to be really boring. Ho hum.

I've long had a strange relationship with the Resident Evil movies. The game series has been among my favorites since I first fired up the original on my Playstation over 20 years ago. Despite the movies never really following the games (save for Apocalypse and some characters/monsters throughout the various movies) I always thought they were ok as dumb zombie action movies. But they were clearly out of steam by the time Retribution rolled around and the time was right to end things. Unfortunately, that end is this incomprehensible mess of a movie.The Plot Issues Oh where do I even start with this? I understand it being difficult to tie together 5 previous movies with numerous characters and plot twists but they clearly didn't care to make things even approaching coherent. For example, they immediately retcon and/or recycle several elements from previous films for no real reason aside from convenience. Remember where we left off the end of Retribution? With Alice being reinfected with the T-Virus by Wesker and seemingly teaming up with Umbrella for humanity's last stand in Washington DC? That's literally wiped away here in the first five minutes. Wesker apparently "pretended" to give her the virus before betraying her off screen prior to the start of this. So instead of a last stand in Washington DC we're given a race against time back to Raccoon City because apparently there's an airborne cure which will kill all the zombies and save the human race. Never mind that we've known there's a cure since the original and it's been used in several movies. Suddenly it's the deus ex machine for literally the entire series. But even lazier and most groan inducing is the final twist. Remember Apocalypse (part 2) when we learn the T-Virus was developed by a doctor to help his young daughter walk again, with the girl joining our protagonists? This is actually a nice allusion to the game series as Resident Evil 2's main villain was a mutated doctor who had worked on the virus and had his young daughter as a character helped by the protagonists. So of course they bring it back here... with Alice. Yes, the virus was developed by a father for his ailing daughter, who turns out to be the original Alice. No, not the Alice we've been following for six movies, as we find out *plot twist* she's a clone and has been the entire time. The film series has obviously done a lot with clones in the previous movies but this is such a lame move right at the end of the final movie just for the sake of a supposed big twist. I could continue on about more plot issues but there's no point: this movie is a mess and the good guys win. All you need to know.I'm Sorry, Who Are You? One nice touch is bringing back several characters for this movie, namely Claire Redfield. But any other character is just there to die. On this front, can someone explain to me why Ruby Rose is such a big thing in Hollywood right now? I don't get it as I have yet to see anything in any of her movies in the way of charisma or on screen magnetism. Granted, her part here was minor at best and could have been played by a million other nameless actors to similar effect. But that is the issue with most characters aside from Alice: we don't care. Even Wesker has nothing much to do in this movie as he plays second fiddle in his little screen time.Can You Focus For A Second? One frustrating aspect of this movie is the shaky camera work and editing. Segments of this movie feature such rapid fire cutting that it can make it difficult to decipher what is happening in certain action scenes. This isn't an uncommon occurrence in modern action movies but it wasn't present in the previous movies and it needs to stop. Film your action in a way that doesn't confuse the audience and stop having a cut every 1.5 seconds. Even if your movie is garbage at least it won't leave your audience trying to figure out what the hell just happened.Glad It's Over The Resident Evil film series is better off finished. They always favored more action over horror and while this made some sense when the original came out in 2002, it's course has been run. Despite starting up several years before the recent zombie craze, they quickly faced into the background as loud, dumb, and generic action flicks that managed to not do the series justice (similar to the Transformers movies). The Resident Evil games have their roots in B-movie horror and could easily be rebooted in this vein a few years down the road. As such, it was time for this series to end. As far as this movie goes, it's only really necessary if you want something approaching closure to the film series. Otherwise, this is an easy skip. 2/10

Where do I begin, well we finally made it to the end of the series. It's underwhelming at best,but it is the end, and I'm glad it finally finished. Milla jovovich is back with Ali Larter, the only other actor from the previous films to return for the last film surprisingly.The story, Alice has 48 hrs.to find the anti-virus and save the world before it's too late to save humanity (Something like that).This film is just OK, but what makes it lack is both the cinematography and story. First off, there is too much shaky cam, now hand held is OK but this has a lot of shaky cam which is distracting. But luckily it's mostly shaky at the beginning and less shaky (still shaky but less around 30 minutes) so you can actually see what is going on, which is good.Now on to the story, the story is just plain lazy from what I remember the film completely ignores Extinction by disregarding the plot device that her blood is the cure to stop the T-virus, but in this film the antivirus is use to stop the T-virus? Why? This makes no sense at all, and why set up that Alice's blood is the cure, if Paul Anderson the director/writer was going to use that plot device why wouldn't he just pay it off in this film? I don't understand why this was so hard for him to write that in this one, but this series is full of inconsistency's like that, simply lazy writing that's why.On to the good news,Milla Jovovich has never looked better she looks great in her black sports pants and tank top and for the first time she has boobs and I would say an A-cup and she has nice cleavage but she went into this one after she gave birth to her second child and her first child plays The Red Queen, who for some reason is now good? Ali Larter doesn't get to do very much but I'm glad at least she was in it.Overall a so-so finish to the series, but it cold have been better, manly in writing, but if I were you I would go into this with caution because many have expressed dissatisfaction with it including my one of my buddies.I give it a 3/10. I still like it, but it does lack and I'm at least glad it's finally finished.

Alice goes back to Raccoon City, back to the Hive to stop Umbrella and save the world. Done. That's it. No more. I've had it up to here *raises up arm* with zombies, clones, Paul W.S. Anderson, bad visual effects, ridiculous creatures that make no sense, Umbrella, Paul W.S. Anderson, T-Virus, antivirus, Las Plagas virus, Paul W.S. Anderson's mother's virus and lifeless supporting characters. Six films Anderson has milked out of one video game adaptation...six!? Yet we stupidly watch them at the cinema and buy the blurays like zombies being attracted to human flesh. We fuelled this! This is the worst of the bunch by far. It makes 'Retribution' look like a flipping entertainment masterpiece. The editing was atrocious, more quick cuts than Anderson shouting "Milla, babe...could you do another forward flip for me? Thanks Hun!". I literally could not focus on the action sequences, my eyes were spiralling out of control. The most undeveloped bunch of supporting characters of the series. Claire Redfield was underused. Wesker was substituted to be simply a pawn. He is supposed to be the main antagonist!? You can't just throw him away like a wet towel soaking in Anderson's sweat from all the hard work writing the script!? No! Nooo! I won't have it!! Then all of this business about the antivirus (which has taken us six films to discover), more clones just to bring back Dr Isaacs into the fray, a second act that imitated 'Saw' and weird flying enormous bat things!? Are you telling me Umbrella was testing on bats!? BATS!? What even is that! I'm done. I can't take it anymore. Six films people, six...flipping...films. This was underwhelming to the maximum, but atleast Milla Jovovich was having fun right? That's obviously the main thing because now my life is complete knowing she was having fun. Life. Complete. This franchise...it's killed me, honestly. I swear to God if we get "Resident Evil: Resurrection" in a few years, I will find you Anderson...