MOVIE REVIEW – “What’s in your head, zombie?!” sung the Cranberries back in the nineties. While it wasn’t actually about zombies at all, we can call agree that there isn’t much an in zombie’s head. They are a bunch of crawling and/or running corpse, craving for human flesh – not much brain left in their head. While it’s understandable for zombies, still we wonder, what was in the head of Paul W.S. Anderson, when he directed this movie…

 

“Critically acclaimed” was never something a Resident Evil movie would be called, in fact, on Metacritic every one of them (there were five movies so far) have a score of around 30% in average, which means that they are pretty bad. Still, perhaps the first movie was a somewhat enjoyable action romp, with an average story, then it went from worst to worst. At least the action was watchable in them if you had enough popcorn and coke left with you during the movie…

Not anymore…

OK, so I do understand, that today’s Hollywood action movies have several cuts during the action scenes, to make them more dynamic. It’s getting more and more characteristic as years passed. But I cannot fathom for the life of me, what Paul W.S. Anderson thought when he used so many cuts, which made the action scenes almost unwatchable?! When Alice (Milla Jovovich) jumps from one place to another, there were like 4 or 5 cuts just for this brief scene.

That incompetence to cut the movie properly made the otherwise somewhat exciting action scenes a true nightmare to watch. And by “nightmare” I don’t mean the horror genre of the movie…

There was an action scene which had so many cuts, that I was unable to see, who Alice was actually fighting, and it was an important character. (Perhaps a zombie of some her companions, recently killed.)

Queens and kings of hammy acting

Besides the action scenes almost unwatchable, the story and acting are pretty bad as well. Milla Jovovich delivers a tired personification of Alice, the female lead of every Resident Evil movies. She truly feels like making one final effort in her husband’s movie to be the “kick-ass” zombie slayer girl, but it does feel she had enough.

Still, Milla is better, than almost every other actor present in this garbage movie. Iain Glen as Dr. Isaacs is so strong on the hammy acting that it makes you forget how good he was as Jorah Mormont in the Game of Thrones series. Other actors also plain annoying or boring. Of course it’s also due to the brain-dead scenario and dialogues. Perhaps the only actress who delivered a good performance was Ever Anderson, playing the role of the AI who guides Alice.

Let it be indeed THE Final Chapter…

Resident Evil: The Final Chapter is perhaps the worst video game adaption ever (if we can call Resident Evil movies the adaptation of the Capcom video games anymore). There are very few redeeming aspects to the annoyingly overcut scenes, the brain-dead story, and hammy acting. It’s truly a pity that Paul W.S. Anderson can’t bid adieu to that long-running franchise in an at least acceptable final chapter when the latest Capcom game, the excellent Resident Evil 7 is also released this week. Talking about a missed opportunity…

-BadSector-