It all really started back in the late 60’s with what would eventually become a cult classic. A film-maker set out to do something that hasn’t been, at that time, really seen on the silver screen.
The film-maker was George A. Romero, and his film was entitled night of the living dead.
It was, in essence, the birth of what is considered to be the ‘modern’ style of zombie. Slow, virtually indestructible unless you destroy the brain, un-stoppable and insatiable.
A single bite and you’re doomed to rise as one of the undead to forever more hunt for the flesh of the living.
Since that initial movie, there have been a handful of similar zombie movies. Romero is responsible for four. We’ve seen black comedy styles, in the form of the Return of the Living dead and the masterpiece that is known as Shaun of the Dead.
And then there is Resident Evil – a zombie trilogy that is totally set apart from the others in the genre.
Originally conceived as a video game, it quickly became a best selling franchise which spawned three movies to date. Resident Evil, Resident Evil: Apocalypse, and Resident Evil: Extinction.
Each movie progressed the story a little more. The first movie was set in an enclosed environment, the Hive. The second dealt with the T-virus, the source of the zombie infection, escaping into the city above the Hive, Raccoon City. Hell, if I didn’t live so close to a city called Moose Jaw, I wouldn’t have been able to swallow that name.
With the third movie, many years have passed. The infection wasn’t contained in Raccoon City, it spread first across the continental United States, and then the rest of the world.
Resident Evil: Extinction is a true post holocaust movie. The few remaining survivors travel, never remaining in one place for more than a short period of time. They salvage what they can from small towns and avoid the major cities because of the undead.
The Umbrella corporation, the creator of the T-virus and the architect of the Apocalypse still survive, hidden in massive facilities all over the globe, trying to co-ordinate with one another to discover, if not a cure, a means to control the undead population so that they can one day return to the surface.
Of course, Alice, the heroine of the first two movies is the key to this returning to the surface and the domestication of the undead population.
But, enough spoilers for now.
The movie was action packed. The combat sequences are quite well choreographed and intense. The survivors are hardened and know what needs to be done.
The nice thing is to see the return of a couple of familiar faces from the second movie.
There were the inevitable plot holes that one would expect in any movie, and without really giving anything away, such as how there could be hundred, nay, thousands of zombies surrounding a fenced in facility and NOT cause the fence to collapse under the sheer pressure of the bodies surrounding it.
How hundreds of zombies could fit in a single container…
Things like that.
They cut back on Mila’s nudity in this one, upped the gore factor a bit, but not to the point you’re watching another SAW or Hostel.
Over all, I personally found it to be the best of the three movies. I really enjoyed it. And, as one expects, they left it wide open for Resident Evil 4. And you know something? I wouldn’t mind it.
4 out of 5