An Average Movie-Goer’s Review
Spoilers! If you don’t want spoilers – check out the Spoiler-Free post
I love horror movies and if I’m going to watch them anyway, why not write an entertaining/funny review from the POV of an average movie-goer and not a professional critic.
Today we’re looking at 2007’s Resident Evil: Extinction. The sequel to 2004’s Resident Evil: Apocalypse and the overall 3rd entry to Paul W.S Anderson’s Resident Evil series.
Years after the events of Resident Evil: Apocalypse, Alice’s former companions struggle to stay alive across a desolate world as Alice hides from Umbrella.
Is Resident Evil: Extinction Scary?
No, while there are maybe two jump scares in the entire movie, Resident Evil: Extinction continues the series’ trek into action/science fiction territory and doesn’t even try to be scary.
Overall you won’t leave the movie scared unless you recently broke out of a large pharmaceutical facility that also creates zombies and bio-weapons.
All of our Paul W.S. Anderson Resident Evil Explanations/Reviews:
Related Article: Resident Evil (2002) Explained
Related Article: Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004) Explained
Related Article: Resident Evil: Extinction (2007) Explained
Related Article: Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010) Explained
Related Article: Resident Evil: Retribution (2012) Explained
Plot Synopsis:
Last we left Alice (Milla Jovovich), she was saved from the Umbrella facility by Carlos Olivera (Oded Fehr), Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory), L.J (Mike Epps), and Angela (Sophie Vavasseur). This film opens with a “fuck all that” approach and, Alice wakes up in the mansion from the very first movie almost in a scene-by-scene reenactment of the first time we saw her.
Stepping outside of the mansion, Alice finds herself in the laser room as her memories flash in her head. She dodges the lasers and climbs up into a convenient vent that leads her into the facility from the end of that film. After almost getting cut in half by a guillotine, she steps on a pressure plate which releases a small disk that shoots and kills her.
Several Umbrella scientists approach the body and one of them is revealed to be Dr. Isaacs (Iain Glenn). They’re also wearing hazmat suits for some reason which doesn’t make sense especially when Isaacs removes his helmet. Why wear a suit if you’re just going to remove the helmet? He orders the others to take a sample of Alice’s blood and throw her out.
We see the facility is underground in a desert, surrounded by a fence keeping out zombies. Also, this isn’t the first “Alice” to be put through tests. She’s a clone!
Title screen! Next, we get a voiceover brought to you by the real Alice who fills us in on the last few years. After the destruction of Raccoon City, the infection spread, and within months the entire world was infected. The infection affected plants, rivers, etc. essentially drying up the planet so everything is basically a desert. It’s also a way for the writers to say, “hey, remember all that stuff that we set up at the end of the last movie? Neither do we.”
We see the real Alice traveling by herself, on a motorbike through the wastelands. She hears a distress call and goes to investigate the radio station but it’s a bunch of scavengers who attempt to kill her. After she kills one, the rest knock her out and put her in a pit with a bunch of zombie dogs.
Since Alice still has some powers, she uses her super-human agility to avoid the dogs and, in some ridiculous nonsense, ends up using the dogs to collapse the pit. The dogs then run up and kill her attackers. By the way, the entire time Alice is setting up the collapse, her attackers are watching her, and moments later we see they have her weapons laid out on a table next to them. At no point did they decide to use them…
Alice grabs her weapons and sets off across the barren wasteland. Cut to our group of survivors leading a convoy and having a conversation over the radio where they unnaturally use each other’s full names (or nicknames) that way anyone listening can know exactly who they are.
We have Claire Redfield (Ali Larter) and K-Mart (Spencer Locke) in one truck, Carlos Olivera (Oded Fehr) in another, L.J (Mike Epps) and the cowboy Chase (Linden Ashby) in another, Nurse Betty (Ashanti) in yet another, and finally, Otto (Joe Hursley) driving a school bus full of kids.
And another cut, this time we cut to the villains as we see Chairman of Umbrella Albert Wesker (Jason O’Mara) in a hologram meeting with Dr. Isaacs. Isaacs believes that by using Alice’s blood, they can create a serum that will allow them to domesticate the zombies.
Unfortunately, the clones aren’t providing an effective version of the serum and without the real Alice, results have stalled. No one bothers asking why he’s putting the clones through deadly obstacle courses though.
Meanwhile, Alice stops for gas and finds an empty gas station. Searching inside she finds a dead body with a journal nearby conveniently pointing to an isolated safe haven. Alice grabs the journal and finds out it leads to Alaska.
The convoy group stop by an abandoned motel and the tech wiz Mikey (Christopher Egan) broadcasts a radio transmission to look for fellow survivors. Carlos and L.J. head into the motel and split up to clear it. After some annoyingly bad dialogue, L.J. runs into a zombie, and kills it, but gets ambushed by another and is bitten on the chest.
Carlos saves him but somehow doesn’t see that L.J. was bitten and assumes he’s fine. Betty patches up a headwound L.J. received from the fight and L.J. doesn’t say anything to anyone about being bitten. Dick move.
The group decides to hunker down for the night as a storm approaches. We see that Claire is the leader of the group and deals with diminishing food and gasoline yet, somehow, they have unlimited battery power for the electronic surveillance rods with cameras that Carlos and Mikey set up.
Back at the facility, Isaacs and two researchers test a serum on a captured zombie. Although it appears to work, a moment later the zombie becomes feral with increased strength and aggression. Isaacs escapes the room and locks the zombie in with the two researchers.
That night, Alice gets some rest completely out in the open and while she sleeps, she dreams of her past memories. The trauma causes her to unleash some kind of psychokinetic abilities that levitate her motorcycle and rocks nearby. Alice wakes up in a panic and her bike falls from the sky, breaking on impact.
At the facility the artificial intelligence, the White Queen (Madeline Carroll), alerts Isaacs that she has detected psionic ability signals in the desert, meaning that they can track Alice. The next morning the convoy is attacked by hundreds of feral crows who have been eating the bodies of the infected.
L.J. and Betty are forced to hop onto the bus with Otto and the children as their truck is stuck in the sand but this leads the crows to the bus. With the windshield completely obscured, Otto accidentally crashes into a pole. The rest of the group return and start a transfer between the bus and their trucks. Meanwhile, Betty and Otto attempt to hold off the crows who are breaking through the windshield.
Multiple of the group are grabbed by the birds and pecked to death. While Betty helps bring a child from the bus to L.J., Otto is unable to hold back the crows and is killed. Betty closes the door and sacrifices herself as L.J. safely gets the child onto the truck. It’s a stupid sacrifice because she had plenty of time to get off and close the door.
The crows overwhelm and kill the flamethrower guy causing the flamethrower to spin around shooting fire uncontrollably, despite the fact that a button needs to be held to release the fire. Carlos spots a woman about to be grabbed by crows and he grabs her just as he notices the flames headed his way.
Luckily Alice arrives having seen the crows earlier and saves Carlos and the woman with her psionic abilities. Extremely convenient that she just happens to be near walking distance of her previous group but here we are.
Alice reverts the fire back at the crows and kills them all as she collapses in Carlos’s arms. At the facility, the White Queen detects this new spike in Alice’s power and estimates a 45% probability that it’s Alice. …what?
Are there other enhanced humans out there in the world who can use psychic abilities detectable by the White Queen? No, but the movie needs a dumb reason to not have the villains attack the main characters yet.
The following day Alice meets the remaining members of the convoy and Carlos asks what happened to her after they rescued her. Apparently, Alice knew Umbrella was targeting her and was able to control her with satellites so she left them for their safety. You think she would have mentioned this to them before she abandoned them. Also, no one mentions Jill Valentine, one of the main characters in the previous movie.
After she left them, Alice broke into an umbrella facility and downloaded the satellite trajectories so she’d never be near them. Checking the time, she looks up to the sky and AT THAT EXACT MOMENT, Isaacs has moved a satellite to her position and takes her picture.
A short time later, Claire approaches Alice and thanks her for her help but says she can’t stay because the people are scared of what she can do. Are you serious? The woman controlled fire and killed every crow. No one was injured due to her abilities. People are afraid of having a superhero around them during a zombie apocalypse?! It’s a dumb trope used incorrectly so it’s bad writing.
At the facility, unbelievably, the AI only calculates the picture of Alice as a 62% match. They have her clones! Dozens of reference points and only 62%?! Anyway, Wesker thinks the percentage is too low and wants a 100% match. Why? Because the movie needs to pit Wesker against Isaacs for drama. Isaacs wants to send a strike team to get Alice but Wesker orders him not to.
At the convoy, Alice tells the group about Alaska and everyone agrees that should be their next destination but they’ll need gas first. I guess everyone is suddenly cool with Alice all of a sudden. Meanwhile, at the facility, Isaacs edits recordings of Wesker’s voice and makes it appear as if Wesker approved Isaac’s strike team.
The convoy thinks they found some gas but the road is blocked by a random shipping container. Claire sends Chase the Cowboy to high ground to act as a lookout and the rest, including L.J., who has still not told anyone about his bite, slowly approach. Alice realizes it’s zombies and orders everyone back as it opens.
Turns out this is Isaacs’s strike team, a shipping container full of hyper-aggressive and super-strong zombies. During the attack, Mikey is killed, and Chase the Cowboy is attacked, falling to his death. L.J. finally turns and bites Carlos before he’s killed.
Using a satellite, Isaac, who is set up in a tent nearby with a security detail, is able to shut Alice down but she fights the programming and destroys the satellite with her mind. Don’t ask. Somehow this has also told her where Isaacs is and she immediately rushes over. She singlehandedly kills the security team and Isaacs attempts to escape by helicopter but is bitten by one of the enhanced zombies.
The pilot kills the zombie and Isaacs instructs him to take off for the facility. Alice chooses not to shoot down the helicopter and K-Mart arrives asking why. How about K-Mart explain how she knew where Alice was first? Alice says the new plan is to use the helicopter to fly to Alaska and the two go to scope out where the helicopter lands.
A short time later at the facility, the head of security, Slater (Matthew Marsden), finds Isaacs looking real sick but injecting himself with multiple vials of the anti-virus. Isaacs says since the enhanced zombies were mixed with Alice’s clone’s blood, the virus is stronger. Slater tells Isaacs that he is out of control and says under Wesker’s orders, he is to be deported. In other words, death. Slater shoots and kills Isaacs.
Unfortunately for Slater, Isaacs gets back up and has started mutating into a tyrant. Isaacs shoots out tentacles from his hands and kills Slater.
Outside the facility, the group it’s surrounded by hundreds of zombies and Carlos chooses to sacrifice himself to create a distraction since he’s already bitten. Driving a truck filled with explosives, Carlos rams the zombies and ignites the bomb.
The rest of the remaining group in two trucks, ram the gates and get to the choppa. After helping them fill the helicopter to what I believe is way past max capacity (about 15 people), Alice decides to stay behind to head into the facility. Claire and K-Mart don’t debate or try to convince her otherwise.
Alice heads down into the facility and finds blood everywhere. The White Queen appears and fills Alice in on Isaacs’s transformation but also reveals that Alice’s blood can be used to make a cure right there in the facility. Unfortunately, the White Queen has a small Isaacs-Tyrant problem and Alice agrees to go kill him.
Wandering through the facility, Alice finds a lot of dead bodies, and one of her clones still in stasis.
The I-Tyrant (Isaacs-Tyrant) attacks, knocking Alice into the stasis pod and waking up her clone who appears to die in her arms. Alice chases the I-Tyrant further into the facility and the two fight in the replica of the mansion from the first movie.
Alice slashes at his chest with her knives but the I-Tyrant regenerates with no problem whatsoever. The I-Tyrant says he realizes he is the future and has no need for Alice. He grabs her with his tentacles but she’s able to slice them with her knife.
Alice psychokinetically throws the I-Tyrant through a wall but he returns and reveals he also has psychokinetic abilities. Alice is thrown through a wall and lands in the laser grid from the first movie and the start of this movie.
As the I-Tyrant is about to kill Alice, she laughs and tells him they’re both going to die. The laser grid starts up and in an instant cuts the I-Tyrant into pieces but it stops before it kills Alice.
It’s revealed the clone is actually still alive and was able to shut the machine off before it reached Alice. Seventeen hours later at the Tokyo hub of Umbrella corporation, Wesker is holding a hologram meeting and says the North American branch has gone M.I.A. Alice interrupts the meeting through a hologram, tells them she’s coming for them, and this time, she’s not alone.
Alice and her clone walk over to a room in the facility and as we pan out, we see there are hundreds of Alice clones.
Review:
Resident Evil: Extinction is okay but it’s teetering on the edge of being not good. If you’re a fan of the previous Resident Evil films you might like this one but if you didn’t like them, don’t bother watching this. Extinction suffers from the same problems the last two suffered from, poor directing (constant cuts) and iffy acting (although it’s slightly better).
Somehow the dialogue has gotten worse and the plot has become even more nonsensical. Everyone is afraid of Alice in one scene after she saves them all but then a scene later they’re all cool with it. There are a bunch more examples but one that really bothered me was Umbrella waiting to grab Alice. Wesker is demanding Isaac rush to finish his research but when the satellite finds her with a 62% probability, Wesker orders him not to go after her unless it’s 100%.
Why? Besides the fact that the probability should be higher because she looks directly at the camera, why wouldn’t Wesker approve a mission to get her? There is no government, there are no cops, no law, and the Earth is a desolate wasteland, what is Wesker afraid of happening if they’re discovered? It’s just really bad writing.
In fact, I’m pretty sure the writer of this movie planned out some action scenes first and then wrote the rest of the movie to fit the action scenes even if it didn’t make sense. Characters also make the dumbest decisions, why wouldn’t L.J. admit he was bitten? That might have created better character development for all the new characters as we see them come to terms with his impending death. Why did Betty sacrifice herself despite having plenty of time to survive? Why have everyone get out of the trucks just to inspect a shipping container?
Resident Evil: Extinction is full of bad writing and dumb character decisions. Some of the action scenes are pretty good but would have been better with a director who wasn’t constantly cutting. Overall I don’t recommend watching Resident Evil: Extinction unless you were a fan of the first two movies or if bad zombie/sci-fi movies are your guilty pleasure.
Cast IMDB