Resident Evil: The Final Chapter

The Resident Evil film series is one of my guilty pleasures. I'm not a huge fan of the video game series but I'm familiar enough with the games to get a feel of it. They are known for starting out as survival horror with the first couple of entries until Resident Evil 4 before going to action oriented games (and decline in quality) starting with the Resident Evil 5 and the entry before Resident Evil 7: Biohazard. There are some consistent features about them: the creatures are well diversified, the characters primarily action heroes that strive to survive the monsters in their path, the dialog isn't praiseworthy, has plenty of one-liners, and stories that try to be complex. The film series carries some of those features but follows its own separate timeline in an alternate reality. I don't defend these movies as good adaptations or any critical darlings. Instead its status of a guilty pleasure comes from it being a B-movie action sci-fi flick that embraces its ridiculous over the top action. To prepare for the sixth and final entry for Paul W.S. Anderson, I watched all 5 movies to see the good things in each of them as well as find anything they have in common (like opening narration, parts of the movie taking place underground, and Milla Jovovich doing insane action scenes). So I entered the theater ready to see how the director is going to end the series and left it satisfied.

Plot: The story follows our main protagonist who's under a time limit to travel back to Raccoon City to defeat the evil incompetent Umbrella Corp once and for all (finally!). The story is fast paced where it gets to the important story points instead of pointless filler detours. Something funny to note is how fast time actually moves in the movie as well as the film series. As mentioned earlier, storytelling isn't exactly a strong point in the franchise and it shows here. The opening narration contradicts material from the previous entries and the plot gets very silly in the second half. Essentially the formula for this entry is find some little bits of story exposition followed by an action scene then repeat. Overall the plot of Resident Evil: The Final Chapter is easy to follow, gets right to the important parts of the movie, and does have silly complicated parts in the second half.

Characters: The characters to focus on are Alice (Milla Jovovich) and Dr. Isaacs (Iain Glen). Alice is our Mary Sue action heroine of the series with no memories of her life before her crusade against the Umbrella Corp and foes created from the T-virus. Milla does a good job in this role showing that she's having fun killing monsters, zombies, and incompetent Umbrella soldiers. Dr. Isaacs is another stereotypical slimy Umbrella businessman with the evil plans for the world that Alice encountered in the second and third entries in the series. Iain also does a good job portraying cartoony nature Isaacs has with his maniacal plans and strategies, resulting in a capable opponent to overcome. Honorable mention goes to Agent Smith from the Matrix Albert Wesker for Shawn Roberts hammy performance as another Umbrella evil character who's arrogant to the point of wearing his shades indoors, despite his limited screen time. Overall the actors are having fun portraying the stereotyped characters with their own charisma and exaggerated acting.

Action: The film series is no stranger to doing insane ridiculous over the top action and this entry is no exception. It holds nothing back with giant explosions, encounters with monsters, hand to hand combat on vehicles surrounded by zombies, and other zany shenanigans. There is one major issue to point out however with the majority of those action scenes. In the past two entries (Afterlife and Retribution), the director loved to use excessive amounts of slow motion where some uses were good while others were unnecessary. In this film, however, it's at normal pace but the editing is terrible with jump cuts in the first majority of it you need to concentrate on what's happening. Overall the action concepts are fun but the execution is compromised by the jump cut shots in the sequences.

Why the film series my guilty pleasure: The Resident Evil film series guilty pleasure status comes from it being B movie action sci-fi flicks that embraces its ridiculous over the top action. There are things in each movie I find enjoyable no matter how cheesy or over the top dumb it is. In the first movie, the laser scene is pretty cool, had a nice horror feel to it, the CGI effects on the licker are hilariously bad, and the effects on the zombie dogs look pretty good. In the second entry, anything involving Nemesis was cool, LJ had some really cheesy dumb one-liners, and the over-the-top action started to showing from that point on. The third entry has a good Mad Max kind of environment, the crows scene was cool, and the zombie makeup looked really good. The fourth film had an insane fight sequence involving clones in the intro, a pretty cool fight scene with the Executioner, and a final fight with a cartoony version of Albert Wesker as well as goofy looking zombie dogs. And the fifth movie treated itself like a video game experience of telling where to go for the next mini-boss fights, the special effects improved on some of the monsters, and had good hand to hand combat for the final boss. The Resident Evil movie series doesn't try to be more than what it is similarly to the Expendables series. It's not meant to be taken that seriously and throws any logical consistencies out of the window in exchange for mindless action entertainment.

Overall Consensus: Resident Evil: The Final Chapter ends Paul W.S. Anderson's turn with over the top terribly edited action, silly convoluted stories, and main actors having with charismatic hammy performances. ⭑⭑⭑

Reasons to watch it: You like watching the Resident Evil film series either as a guilty pleasure or to make fun of it. You like Milla Jovovich and/or Iain Glen. You like movies with mindless ridiculous action. You don't care about plot in action movies and just want to get to the cheesy overblown stunts. You like watching B-movie action sci-fi schlock. You like illogical action movies that doesn't take itself seriously. You don't mind action scenes that have jump cuts in the editing. You like action movies that are fast paced and get to the important points.

Reasons to avoid it: You don't like Resident Evil. You don't like the aforementioned actors. You are easily frightened by jump scares. You aren't interested in B-movie action sci-fi flicks that doesn't take itself seriously. You care about the story as much as you do action in movies. You are tired of zombies being used in media. You don't like fast paced action movies. You are sensitive to gore in action movies.