Resident Evil: The Final Chapter

• Written and Directed by Paul W. S. Anderson
• December 23, 2016 (Tokyo) / January 25, 2017 (France) / January 26, 2017 (Germany) / January 27, 2017 (United States) / February 3, 2017 (United Kingdom)

Alice faces off against a returned Dr. Isaacs as the fate of the world hangs in the balance in this final confrontation between Alice and the Umbrella Corporation.

Let’s get the basics out-of-the-way. It turns out everything that happened at the end of the last film was to gather as many survivors as possible in one spot for them to be all wiped out in an attack which apparently worked. Albert Wesker (Shawn Roberts) was still in league with the Umbrella Corporation which is still controlled by Dr. Isaacs (Iain Glen) who it seems has gone a little crazy with a sense of religious fervor. The Dr. Isaacs that Alice (Milla Jovovich) killed was actually a clone.

Yeah. I’m having a little trouble buying all that too, but this is what they gave us and in this fictional world you can kind of buy it. There is just enough silliness in these films to make the aforementioned elements work so long as you do not think too hard.

Dr. Isaacs was apparently the cofounder of Umbrella Corporation along with a Dr. Marcus (Mark Simpson) who in turn developed the T-virus as a way of treating his young daughter Alicia’s (Ever Gabo Anderson) progeria. It worked and others at the Umbrella Corporation saw multiple applications in it.

The revelation about the creator of the T-virus seems to be at odds with the revelation in the second Resident Evil about the creator of the T-virus. It seemed pretty clear that the guy in the second movie was the one that actually developed it per the second movie but they totally ignore that here. These films often retconned things in the following movie but not to the point that it the retcon was completely contradictory.

They also totally ignore Alice’s “daughter” Becky (Aryana Engineer) from the last film. Alice doesn’t even mention her once, but she does mention Claire Redfield (Ali Larter). Then again she is in this movie. Li Bingbing (Ada Wong), Sienna Guillory (Jill Valentine), Spencer Locke (K-Mart, Wentworth Miller (Chris Redfield), and Johann Urb (Leon S. Kennedy) all failed to return but had survived until the closing moments of the last film. Talk about disposable characters.

It turns out that The Red Queen (also Ever Gabo Anderson) is not the one actually in control of the Umbrella Corporation. It works for Dr. Isaacs. Once Alice escapes the devastated Washington, she makes a bargain with The Red Queen to go back to Raccoon City and release an airborne version of the T-Virus antidote. If she does not The Red Queen will be forced to destroy all remaining human settlements. She has no desire to do so but her programming forces her into compliance with Umbrella Corporation directives. However recently obtained information has put her programming into conflict. She will do everything she can to help Alice but ultimately it is up to Alice to end things.

One truly shocking revelation in this film is that this was not all some act of sabotage and theft as it was stated in the first film but rather a plot by the Umbrella Corporation to bring the human population under control as well as to deal with climate change and wipe out a significant chunk of undesirables. Interesting ideas but the whole sabotage thing strikes me as all contradictory to the information given in the first film.

In that aspect the contradictory nature of some of the revelations here feel a little bit like how they handled the mythology of the live action Transformers movies. By the second or third one story developments felt nonsensical and not really attached to anything review beforehand. I can forgive the whole switch to the idea of a controlled apocalypse. That kind of fits with what happen but I am annoyed by the total ignoring of information that was firmly established in the second film. Still though for films later in the series you won’t notice really unless you’re marathoning them like I did.

It was said previously that Alice is one of 50 basic model clones created by the Umbrella Corporation. It is revealed that Alice is not only a base model, but she is a clone of the founder’s daughter (seen here as an adult also played by Jovovich) whose genetic structure was tweaked to prevent progeria. That was an interesting twist.

Once again the action in this movie is top notch. It will get your adrenaline pumping. The ticking clock MacGuffin is used to great effect here. Alice only has so much time to stop Isaacs and she has a watch that she regularly checks counting down. You know Alice will pull it off, but the excitement comes in how close she comes to not pulling it off. All the bad guys, returning and new, get what is coming to them and that includes all the Umbrella Corporation people and any rich slobs who were willing to go along with this genocide.

This film not only manages to resolve most all of the plot threads that were developed in the preceding five films but also opens the door for possible more movies (should anybody want one) with Alice or even the proposed series that never happened. The characters were not happily skipping off into the sunset but there is a possible positive future for everyone involved.

Resident Evil: The Final Chapter is an enjoyable resolution to the Resident Evil film series. If you’re a fan of the films this will satisfy you. If you haven’t seen any of the films watch them all the way to this. This will satisfy you.