Resident Evil: The Final Chapter

If there’s any video game adaptation that has survived the purge of audience-goers, it’s Resident Evil. Ever since its debut in 2002 the franchise has spawned 6 films over the past 15 years, with its concluding chapter coming this year: Resident Evil: The Final Chapter.

Resident Evil: The Final Chapter picks up where the previous film left off; our heroine Alice (Milla Jovovich) has survived the zombie attack on Washington DC and she is tasked by “The Red Queen” (the hologram villain of the first film) to go back to Raccoon City, where it all started, and find the cure. The villain in this film is Dr. Isaacs (Ian Glen) who returns to this series thanks to (surprise!) cloning. The film then ensues in the break-in of Raccoon City and later the evil Umbrella Co. fortress where the cure is held.

The franchise had been going downhill ever since the second film, Resident Evil: Apocalypse. There was frequent recycling of the same story and of the same characters, which had to be killed off two or maybe three times before excuses ran out in the writers’ room to bring them back. And then there were the common and cheap jump-scares, which hardly have any effect on the audience anymore, as it’s such an overused tactic by non-creative filmmakers. Many of these problems seen in the previous films, seep into The Final Chapter, making it one of the most predictable films of series.

But that isn’t to say that the film isn’t an overall improvement. I wouldn’t say it’s to the level of the first Resident Evil(which was a moderately entertaining action thriller), but it does seem to infuse some more original content. However, one of the must frustrating aspects of the film, and the franchise in general, is that it can’t keep from contradicting itself, or twisting the plot around so many times for it’s cinematic benefit, that the script probably was shaped like a pretzel. It’s incredibly downgrading to the writers and director, that they expect the audience to forget events in previous films simple because they’re not creative enough with their story.

The ending will deliver satisfaction to those fans that still hadn’t figured out the big twist, which had been subtly hinted in Resident Evil: Retribution. Yet the pasted clichéd tropes of its genre and some messy storytelling make you glad that this film series is finally over.

5.1/10