A review of Resident Evil: Extinction (2007) from a fan of the games. It covers the desert setting, Alice’s psychic powers, the convoy led by Claire Redfield, the crows and Las Vegas, and the clone twist that opens the film.
The reviewer loves the clone twist and the desert look but finds Alice too powerful and Umbrella too foolish, and lands at 4 out of 5.
I’ll give Resident Evil Extinction a 4 out of 5, and I’ll be upfront that it took a slightly different turn than I was expecting. I know it’s a zombie film, but this third one has gone somewhere new: the T-virus didn’t stay in Raccoon City, it killed off most of the world and dried the planet out with it, and America is now a desert. After the first film in the Hive and the streets of the second, a big open landscape with dust and sun in every shot is a very different kind of movie. I still enjoyed it, just not as much as the other two. It’s a strange feeling, because on paper this is the one I should like most. It’s got the biggest ideas, the widest shots and the strangest villain, and yet the two earlier films stuck with me more.
Alice is on her own on a motorbike, keeping away from Umbrella’s satellites, because she now has psychic powers and Umbrella can use her to track anyone who gets close to her. And her powers seem to have no limit whatsoever. The film opens with a fake-out, too: Alice wakes in the mansion shower again and works her way through the first film’s traps, until she dies at the end of them. She’s a clone, one of many being run through the course in an underground base in the Nevada desert, so that Umbrella can work out what makes the real Alice special. I loved that twist, and it’s the best idea in the movie. Other fans seem to have liked the dusty, run-down look and the crow attack too, and I’m with them on both. Seeing the same shower and the same corridor again, only this time as a test rig, made me sit up in a way the rest of the film sometimes didn’t.
The convoy, the crows and Las Vegas
The rest of the film follows a convoy of survivors led by Claire Redfield, Chris’s sister from the games, played by Ali Larter, with Carlos and L.J. from the last film along for the ride and a teenager called K-Mart named after the store where she was found. Alice runs into them after finding a diary that points to Arcadia, a supposed safe zone in Alaska, and she joins them heading north. It gives the movie a road-trip shape, and it’s a nice way to bring a few faces back. The desert looks great, and it’s basically Mad Max with zombies, which is a sentence I never expected to write about this series. Every shot is bleached and dry, and after two films of corridors and city streets it’s a relief to see the sky. The survivors’ trucks and the dust trails behind them feel like they belong in a different franchise altogether, and I mean that as a compliment.
The stand-out sequence is at an abandoned motel, where hundreds of infected crows attack the convoy and Alice burns them out of the sky with her mind. It’s spectacular, and it’s also the best example of how far her power has gone, which brings me back to my problem with it. When she can do that, there isn’t much left that can threaten her, so the tension has to come from everyone around her. The half-buried Las Vegas they head into for fuel and supplies, with casino signs poking out of the sand, is the film’s best location, and it’s where things go wrong.
Clones, and Umbrella’s bad plan
Vegas is a trap. Dr. Isaacs, the scientist behind the clone experiments, has been breeding faster, smarter zombies, and he sets them on the convoy. L.J. hides a bite, turns, and bites Carlos, and Carlos drives a fuel tanker into the horde to clear a path and blows himself up. The rest of the survivors fly on towards Alaska while Alice goes into Isaacs’ base to finish this on her own. He’s been bitten too, overdoses on anti-virus and turns into a mutated Tyrant, and the final fight takes place in a copy of the laser corridor, where one of Alice’s clones lends a hand.
Here’s what I couldn’t get past. Umbrella keeps experimenting with viruses and clones and superhuman soldiers, and you’d think that somewhere in that company there’d be at least one person with a modicum of brains who could see that this isn’t going to end well for them. Every time they push it further, it blows up in their faces, and they just carry on. It undercuts the stakes for me, because the villains seem to be working against their own interests, and it made me care a bit less about how the story was going to resolve. I’d have happily swapped a couple of the big set pieces for one scene where somebody at Umbrella says out loud that this might be a bad idea. Even a single line would have done it, and the film never gives me one.
The ending turns towards the next film. Alice contacts Umbrella’s chairman, Albert Wesker, in Tokyo, tells him she’s coming for him, and behind her an army of clones is waking up. The army of clones is the payoff for that opening fake-out, which ties the film together neatly. It’s a big finish and it’s got me curious about where they go next.
Rating: 4 out of 5. I did enjoy this one, but it isn’t my favourite of the three. The clones as a twist were great, Alice’s power scale has no limits, and I wish Umbrella had a single sensible person in the building. It’s still a fun watch, and the desert setting gives it a look the others don’t have.