Reviewed by Rhianna Pratchett
Stars Milla Jovovich, Ali Larter,
Oded Fehr, Iain Glen, Ashanti,
Christopher Egan, Spencer Locke
Written by Paul W S Anderson
Certification UK 15 | US R | Australia MA
Runtime 95 minutes
Directed by Russell Mulcahy
Like so many people, I blanked Resident Evil: Apocalypse from mind out of sheer cerebral self-preservation. The first Rez Evil film is generally regarded as decent-ish, certainly for a game-to-movie adaptation. Which considering the current fare is like finding a dead rat in a pile of poo.
Nevertheless, I actually found myself quite enjoying Resident Evil: Extinction (now the third in the series) even more than the original incarnation. For those of you who are wondering, B-movie ass-kicker Jovovich, as the genetically enhanced Alice, gets naked approximately three seconds into the movie. So that’s guaranteed a few ticket sales right there. But largely she does remain clothed in a kind of sexed-up Calamity Jane Western-garb, which is de rigour come the ascent of the zombie hordes. As the title suggests, the deadly T-Virus has spread across most of the world creating a Mad Max style apocalyptic scenario where survivors trundle around in convoys of souped-up school buses. One such band is headed up by Claire (Larter, of Heroes fame) and Carlos (Fehr) who are doing a pretty decent job of surviving in a vaguely intelligent way. However, their world of guess-what’s-in-the-tin dinners is rocked by the arrival of Alice (who herself is on the run from her creators, the evil Umbrella Corporation) and the news that the virus may not have spread as far as Alaska. Zombies being notorious sun bunnies.
What follows is largely a race between the convoy, the Umbrella goons and the zombies — a race for oil, a race for the supposed ‘cure’ for the T-virus which is thought to be in Alice’s blood and a race for brains, sweetmeats and other body parts. Cinematically it’s a lot stronger than the previous movies and pretty well paced. That’s not to say it does everything right. The script is a bit silly in places, Ashanti as ‘Nurse Betty’ is to nursing what Mr Kipling is to the diet industry and it’s clearly borrowed liberally from other movies — particularly Alien Resurrection. But it works and it’s fun, which is all you really need from a Resident Evil movie.