Resident Evil: The Final Chapter

In a world populated almost entirely by zombies, an ex-mercenary must stop an evil corporation from finalising their plan for world domination.

The Resident Evil movies have managed to grow on me quite a bit since I first gave some rather heavy pans to Apocalypse and Extinction a while back. The plan to graft post-Matrix cinematic coolness onto the source game's survival horror set-up may not have resulted in the most faithful adaptations, but they still provided serviceable genre hybrids that at least tended to be flawed in interesting ways. Though the first couple of installments hit some stumbling blocks even as they stuck fairly closely to the games' mythos, it soon mutated into a dependable series of post-apocalyptic tales about Milla Jovovich's amnesiac heroine Alice fighting hordes of the infected, rescuing whatever survivors she can, and trying to keeping one step ahead of the sinister Umbrella corporation. Even with this admittedly formulaic approach to the storytelling, the previous three installments still managed to find sufficient room for variation that kept things from getting too repetitive. 2012's Retribution even allowed the series to reach a late peak thanks to its distinctive premise and clean execution, plus it ended with the promise of an epic conclusion to the long-running saga...

Unfortunately, even without the relatively high expectations set by Retribution. The Final Chapter ends up coming across as a considerable backwards step for the series that makes it a contender for the weakest entry in the series. This is a tad curious considering how the franchise has actually had something of an auteur in Paul W.S. Anderson, who served as screenwriter and producer on all six Resident Evil movies and directed four of them. What's notable is that he directed the previous two, so The Final Chapter should have seemed like an extrapolation upon the flashy competence he had already displayed rather than the kind of gaffes you'd expect from an action journeyman following producer notes. Even the rather familiar plot - which sees Alice be given 48 hours to save the world, to put it very simply - has the potential to grant the series a greatest-hits finale. In the minutes following the presumably obligatory recap, it soon becomes clear that it's at least as likely to feature all the series' greatest misses - and possibly introduce some new ones. The story even seems to be tracing the series' development backwards as it sees Alice travel from the post-apocalyptic landscape (Afterlife/Extinction) through Raccoon City (Apocalypse) all the way back to the high-tech laboratory known as "the Hive" (the original film); what seems like a deliberate example of the series coming full circle instead makes it feel like it's going in circles.

Though this is Alice's story, it's a shame that more characters don't return because this film really could have used a proper squad to meet the epic demands of a "final chapter". As it stands, we only get a small handful of familiar faces on both sides of the good-evil divide. Jovovich is still the same as she ever was as she handles all of Alice's usual modes of self-expression ranging from grim-faced determination to not-quite-stoic emoting, which poses its biggest challenge when she has to react to other characters delivering tidal waves of exposition (especially when said waves start getting really personal). Ali Larter shows back up as Alice's semi-regular sidekick Claire, once again proving a fiery foil to the coolly collected Jovovich but little else beyond that. The returning villains thankfully provide a welcome source of scenery-chewing to balance out the heroes' stilted yet earnest dramatics. A character as steeped in stylish yet absurd videogame aesthetics as Albert Wesker deserves no less than Shawn Roberts keeping up his mesmerising Agent Smith impression for the third film in a row. The real show-stealer ends up being Iain Glen as mad scientist Dr. Isaacs; I'm always appreciative of classically-trained performers who actually commit to their roles in genre films and Glen does so with an admirable level of gusto. As for the rest of the cast...who cares? This is the least interesting group of survivors in the series, which is really saying something. I wouldn't have minded the lack of returning characters if the new ones had been handled well, but their general lack of distinction (including one remarkably half-assed sub-plot) is a major flaw.

Anderson definitely has his faults as a filmmaker, but one thing I tended to appreciate about the movies of his that I'd seen was his ability to shoot some reasonably clean and coherent action. Heavily stylised, sure, but I'll take that over nigh-incomprehensible approaches that treat speed as a hammer and the audience's attention as a nail. Unfortunately, there are far too many moments in The Final Chapter that see Anderson leaning more towards what I guess I should start calling the "hammer" approach, utilising jerky camerawork and rapid cutting to instill an unearned sense of excitement. Further research does make me want to lay the blame on budget cuts that would undoubtedly compromise the film's attempts to provide scope and essentially force Anderson's hand, but that just ends up clarifying how much things could have been planned so much better. At 106 minutes, this is the longest entry in the series and ultimately ends up drawing extra attention to flaws that could have easily been refined or at least glossed over. A notable set-piece involving a rolling tank surrounded by zombies could be said to suffer because time and resources get spent on the rather generic battle sequences that precede it. Still, it proves surprisingly possible to get used to these abrasive visual methods as the film progresses, though that may be more down to the rising action improving enough to compensate for said methods.

I've been trying to make an effort to be more lenient when it comes to assessing the movies that I watch. Going in with low expectations now feels tantamount to wanting a movie to fail, so I'm making the effort to realign my perceptions and try to see the true strength of a given work regardless of its place in an arbitrary hierarchy of artistic value. With that in mind, it is regrettable to see that The Final Chapter ostensibly sees the Resident Evil series end with something of a whimper. While there are appreciable scenes and qualities in the mix, too often they are compromised or obscured by the film lapsing into aggressive mediocrity on both technical and narrative levels (though it does get by on a thematic level by building upon concerns raised by the previous movies). I do wonder whether or not bringing up external factors like budget cuts or scheduling conflicts is really enough to excuse the film's most readily observable shortcomings, but it probably doesn't speak to Anderson's creative abilities that he struggles to adapt in sufficiently compensatory ways. Though time (and money) will tell if the franchise gets any more installments, I'd like to think that they would make better use of the modest potential that has been displayed by the series and its creators. A naive sentiment, perhaps, but this is 2017. Hope is where you find it, even if it is on a highway riddled with zombies.