I’m giving Resident Evil The Final Chapter a 3.5 out of 5. It wasn’t as good as some of the others, but it did finally end the story, or at least I think it did, and after six films that counts for something. With a title like that it feels like it’s meant to end the series, and by the last scene all the main baddies do seem to be dead. I’m honestly still not sure they won’t find a way to bring somebody back, but if this is the finish, it wraps things up more tidily than I expected it to.
The thing I keep coming back to is what it left out. The last film ended with Alice and her friends about to fight a huge battle for Washington, and I would definitely have wanted to see that. Instead The Final Chapter opens with Alice alone in the ruins of the city, and everyone else from that cliffhanger has been dealt with off-screen. I’d been waiting for that battle, so skipping it stayed with me all the way through the film. Everything else has to work harder to win me back after that, and some of it does.
Back to Raccoon City
The set-up is a good one. The Red Queen contacts Alice and tells her what’s left of humanity, which isn’t much, and says there’s an airborne anti-virus in the Hive under Raccoon City that would kill every infected thing on Earth. Alice has 48 hours before Umbrella wipes out the last human settlements, so she has to cross the country to get there. On the way she loses and escapes Dr. Isaacs, who’s alive after all, since the one she killed in the third film was a clone. In the ruins of Raccoon City she finds a fortified group of survivors, including Claire Redfield and a young woman called Abigail, and Umbrella steers a horde of the dead to besiege their fortress.
It’s been a long road from the first film, and going back to the Hive and the laser corridor brings the whole thing full circle, which is neat. Milla Jovovich has been doing this kind of role since The Fifth Element, and she carries the series as the one constant through all of it. Alice has been powerful, powerless and powerful again in that time, and here she’s back to fighting with her own two hands. I’d also point back to the second film, because a lot of the loose threads it started are tied up here.
Explaining the Red Queen and Alice
What I liked best is that they finally try to explain the Red Queen and Alice. Umbrella caused the apocalypse on purpose, so that the elite could sleep through it in cryosleep and wake up to a clean world. The Red Queen turns out to be modelled on Alicia Marcus, the daughter of Umbrella’s co-founder, who’s dying of an ageing disease. And Alice herself is Alicia’s clone, made with her memories stripped out. That gives the whole series an origin story it never had before, and it’s the part of the film that worked best for me.
The finale is another trip through the laser corridor, with final battles against Isaacs and Wesker, and the Red Queen deletes Wesker. Alicia’s last act is to give Alice her memories back, and Alice releases the anti-virus, which spreads across the world and kills off the undead. She should die too, since she’s carrying the T-virus, but she survives and rides off on a motorbike with a lot of the world still left to clear. So I do think it closes the story, and I’m happy to take it that way.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5. It wasn’t as good as some of the others in the series, but it did finally end the story, or at least I think it did. I liked how they tried to explain the Red Queen and Alice, and I’d definitely have wanted to see the battle for Washington that the last movie ended on. If you’ve followed Alice this far, it’s worth seeing it through to the end.