Resident Evil: The Final Chapter

This review may contain spoilers!

Well thank God that film series is over! I would give Resident Evil: The Final Chapter a 2/10.

The special effects in this film looked fairly decent, you got some very horrific creations and also some interesting new ones such as the flying creature Alice fights at the start of the film.

The best performance came from William Levy, who played Christian. I liked how abrasive this character was from the start, his open hostility to newcomers inevitably made him the most grounded and realistic role of the film. Levy brought a hardened edge to this character, you felt as if he'd gone through a lot before you met him and it showed in the way he carried himself. Levy had some good minor interactions with other cast members, which allowed you to see the history of this survivor camp and the relations established there in ways the script never revealed at all. Levy did a great job in standing out with a script that can't have been the easiest to work with.

Where do you even begin when talking about a plot like this? This is going to take a bit to unpack but let me highlight some of the serious issues. A big issue that has always plagued the Resident Evil series is continuity. If you've created a sequel then it should follow on from the events of the previous film. Last Resident Evil film saw our heroes gearing up for a battle in Washington, this is rather poorly scrapped and explained away in this film leaving you dissatisfied from the start. But it doesn't stop there! No longer is the Red Queen the antagonist of the film she has been retconned back to her anti-hero days (and given a whole new backstory), Dr Isaacs has been brought back from the dead thanks to that miraculous plot device called cloning and no longer is Wesker in charge as the film bizarrely retcons things so that Isaacs is the big boss baddie (presumably to make the role more enticing for Glen). It's all a weird disconnected mess as Alice fights through hordes of villains to miraculously wipe out all the zombies and find out that she isn't even a real person! That's right, the series undercuts itself by revealing that Alice is little more than some clone of a board member of the Umbrella Corporation; a lazy and confusing plot twist to say the least. The cinematography is about as horrendous as it's ever been, with focus shifting in really unnatural and disjointed way right in the middle of a shot. The score for this Final Chapter is bland, presenting an action fanfare that has no hint of originality whatsoever.

Milla Jovovich, who played Alice and Alicia Marcus, has no emotional range at all as the series protagonist; furthermore that plot twist in which we see her as Alicia was shockingly bad and Jovovich certainly didn't rise to the occasion of playing a new identity. Iain Glen, who played Dr. Isaacs, was a real disappointment as the film's antagonist; I wish he hadn't had to play multiple versions of himself through the clones it really dropped the quality of his performance. Ali Larter, who played Claire Redfield, was a character from past films that I don't think anyone was particularly eager to see return; she was just bland and seemed to have no real importance on the events going on with the narrative. Shawn Roberts, who played Wesker, really got delegated down in this film; for the past few films he's been set up as some sort of main antagonist only to become the token henchman of this film. Eoin Macken, who played Doc, had very little connection with Larter his supposed 'love interest'; I found the plot twist that he was a traitor unnecessary and a major waste of screen time. Fraser James, who played Razor, was up to nothing in this film; James was only there to be killed off. Ruby Rose, who played Abigail, was a supreme waste of great acting talent; her screen time felt surpressed and she was never really given an opportunity to stand out before she was killed off. Ever Anderson, who played the Red Queen, is probably the least intimidating of the Red Queen performers to date; the intense almost horrific edge this character originally possessed is replaced with a bland exposition delivering nightmare.