Rent Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2016)

Surprisingly boring, even for a series fan. - Resident Evil: The Final Chapter review by BG

I've been into the Resi films from the beginning, and although they're not Oscar-winning stuff, each movie's usually good for some daft unpretentious fun. Movies are escapism, and there's nothing wrong with that. Although the quality of the writing and characterisation (except 'Alice') has gradually fallen, each of the movies has also tended to have one or two stand-out scenes that stay with you. Scenes like the killer dogs in part 1. The reveal of Nemesis in part 2. The killer crows in part 3, or the shower battle with the massive Axeman in part 4.

It's telling that I can't remember anything like that in this episode.

It's not that I'm tired of the series - Jovovich remains brilliant fun as series hero Alice, and the visuals and stunts remain terrific. However the series seems bored of itself. The episode is shot in such a frenetic, choppy style that it's frequently hard to see what just happened in action scenes. It also becomes very uncomfortable in 3D, which doesn't react well to extended bursts of stark lighting and rapid-fire camera cuts - a marked difference from the terrific 3D of the fifth film.

The directing relies massively on slow-mo...but worse, relies so heavily on tricks from earlier in the movie series that the entire film becomes drudgingly predictable. A trap with a motorbike feels heavily reminiscent of 'Extinction', and then merges into Daniel Craig's inverted gunfight from Quantum of Solace. Some characters come back to life so many times that it becomes boringly ridiculous. Events from the second film 'Apocalypse' are directly referenced, but then pivotal characters from that film are ignored so the series can make a whole new person the inventor of the T-Virus.

The Red Queen is now a completely different little girl - not just in terms of actress - the film wants us to accept a totally different character, based on a different little girl...within the SAME timeline.

I don't mind a few daft changes, but if a series can't even be bothered to respect its own plot, it's hard to get excited. The film even steals a trick from Guy Ritchie's second Sherlock Holmes movie about characters pre-visualising fights (which was pretty boring in the Holmes film to start with) - and then conveniently forgets it five minutes later when a character needs to get beaten up.

The list of 'can't be bothered with continuity or respecting the audience' goes on and on and on. The last films took a few inches. This takes miles. More miles than the runway in Fast & Furious 7.

Worse? Wesker's back. The weakest character from the last few movies gets even more screen time, and continues to be a Matrix clone so blatant I'm amazed they haven't sued.

And the fights go on and on and rely so much on the same tricks of flips and slow motion and kicks to the face that it starts to feel as repetitive as watching Michael Bay do slow-motion robots diving over people in the Transformers movies. I've never been genuinely bored in a Resi action scene before. Here it set in about 40 mins into the film.

So why 2 stars, not 1? There is some good stuff.

An attack by an intimidating quantity of gnarly-looking hounds is nicely tense.

Alice's memory gap is explained in a fun way.

And the visuals remain eyecatching.

There is enough here to just get you to the finish line. But this NEEDS to be the final episode. This is a film series that has now ceased to be Alice, and has become the zombies: - utterly brain dead and without purpose, but still moving.

Good ending to a good franchise - Resident Evil: The Final Chapter review by Pork Chop Express

Contains Spoilers!:

Like it or not, this is one of the highest grossing film franchises of all time. I actually found this better than people are saying on here. Action is good. I guess it maybe doesn't tick the box in the scares department. It is a shame they blew away all the former characters barring Wesker, Alice and Claire - but I thought finishing the series (which actually has 6 films as far as I know - not as described above) in the Hive back in Raccoon City was a masterstroke. There is a story but it is a bit weak. They do bring in a few new creations and concepts though so its not all re-hashed.

I did like the doctor villain from the 3rd movie but it was pretty silly to resurrect him. And it was a shame we never got to see the Wesker / Alice scrap the fans were really waiting for.

Personally I didn't like the opening. If they could have played out some of that battle on the White House "lawn" that would have been ace, but due to budget constraints they obviously wussed out of that idea. Not a patch on any of the other openings which included the slow-mo reverse sea tanker attack if you think back.

No I can't see them making any more. It's done and the conclusion was satisfactory in my view.

'Her name was Alice'. 'And [now] she remembers everything.'