Resident Evil: Extinction, the third chapter of the shockingly popular video game-based franchise, finds super-human Alice (Milla Jovovich) and her zombie-hunting pals in a post-apocalyptic Nevada desert, searching for the gasoline needed to make their trek to Alaska, where the last remaining zombie-free outpost resides. Meanwhile, The Umbrella Corporation, the sinister conglomerate responsible for the virus that turned most of the human race into an army of the undead, hopes to capture Alice and use her blood to make an antidote.
Resident Evil: Extinction constitutes a vast improvement over its predecessor, Resident Evil: Apocalypse, in that it is actually watchable. New director Russell Mulcahy tries to inject fresh blood into the franchise by borrowing heavily from The Road Warrior, with Jovovich playing the Mel Gibson role. That's not to say that there's an actual plot in this movie; it's really about finding ways to competently transition between a machete-wielding Jovovich laying waist to scores of zombies. To that end, it is a success.
The key to enjoying this movie is to lower your expectations. This is a zombie movie, after all. Not only that -- it's a zombie movie based on a video game. There's nothing spectacular about Resident Evil: Extinction, but there isn't anything overtly excruciating either, save for an exceedingly lame zombie bird sequence, in which a murder (that's the word -- look it up) of infected crows lays siege to a compound of uninfected survivors. Zombie birds? Is that what the genre has come to? If so, let's just shut the whole thing down right now and call it a day.
ReelzChannel Rating: 