Director: Paul W.S. Anderson
Distributor: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Duration: 106 minutes
Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (Blu-ray) – Movie Review
The Resident Evil movies have been going for fifteen years now, and even though they are often ‘poorly’ received by fans of the games that expect the source material is followed to the letter, the movie series has been going strong and still has a sufficient amount of fans that enjoy them. Sadly, to all things comes an end, and now, after fifteen years we have landed at the conclusive chapter of the series, which is aptly called ‘The Final Chapter’. Alice will have to prove her worth one last time by going back to the source of all the evil the world has had to endure for over a decade, namely Raccoon City, or to be more precise, the Hive that is located underneath the desolate and destroyed city.
Alice (Milla Jovovich) finds herself alone again, this time in Washington. Still struggling to survive and damage the inner workings of Umbrella, she is contacted by the Red Queen (Ever Anderson), the AI of the Hive, who tells her that she is the only hope for the surviving humans to live on, and stop whatever Umbrella is up to. Of course, Alice doesn’t completely trust the AI, as it’s a program developed by Umbrella. Yet she still does as the AI commands, and heads back to Raccoon City, as there is supposed to be a cure, an airborne toxic that will kill everything that came into contact with the T-Virus. Sadly, she’ll have to pass hordes of zombies, Wesker (Shawn Roberts) and Dr. Isaacs (Iain Glen), the latter not being as dead as Alice thought him to be. Overall the plot is quite simple in this movie, as it’s all about Alice returning to Raccoon City, infiltrating the Hive, and hopefully find the cure within 48 hours, before Umbrella sets their final plan in motion and claim the Earth as their own.
The movie progresses clearly like it’s the final installment of the series, as unanswered questions are getting answered, snippets about characters are being revealed and everything else is neatly swept underneath the rug. You’ll be treated to a lot of action in the movie, a bit akin to the first film, which also played out in the Hive for the most part. You’ll get a proper succession of action, information and a few moments to properly catch your breath, while slowly being driven to the edge of your seat.
Acting wise there are a few bigger names that tend to be on the foreground of this movie, with mainly Milla Jovovich in the spotlight. After almost fifteen years, she’s still evolving in her performance of Alice, and she does her character justice. Iain Glen, who is probably a lot more known thanks to Game of Thrones as of late, does a great job in portraying a crazed Dr. Isaacs, who is clearly becoming more and more fanatical as the story progresses. Shawn Roberts, who plays Wesker, might not get that much screen time, he does a formidable job in portraying a Wesker that feels quite close to the source material, and by doing so, he adds a hint of familiarity to the series. Last but not least, Ali Larter plays one of the most known Resident Evil characters, namely Claire Redfield, and we regret that her role has been reduced to something minor, as Ali knows how to properly portray this character and she feels as a very underrated cast member in this movie, which is a downright shame.
In terms of extras, the Blu-ray edition comes with a fair amount of interesting features, such as the ‘Retaliation mode with Milla and Paul’, which is a mode to watch the movie, where certain scenes get broken down. Outside of that, we have a muck of more typical featurettes, revolving around the stunts and the weaponry of the movie, a small feature about the Hive, another short snippet about the female cast behind the movie and last but not least, a small glimpse of the soon-to-be-released Resident Evil: Vendetta, the latter being a CGI movie that follows the characters of the games a bit more closely.
Conclusion
Resident Evil: The Final Chapter is probably one of the series’ best movies, as it’s quite strong when it comes to entertainment value from start to finish, with a great buildup of the suspense, interesting action sequences, which have decent choreography, proper acting performances and a few great character development choices, as well as a rather surprising twist or two at the ending. If you’re into the series, or were on the fence because one of the earlier parts was disappointing, this last movie makes it worth to pick it up again, or simply skip everything and immediately aim for this one if you can put two and two together quite easily by reading a bit of the background on Wikipedia, or just watching the first two movies.
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