“Resident Evil: The Final Chapter” is the seventh movie in the Resident Evil franchise starring Mila Jovovich and is directed by her husband, Paul W.S. Anderson. It features Jovovich reprising her role as Project Alice, a physical weapon created by the Umbrella Corporation. This is marketed as the last of the series of movies in this zombie apocalypse world.
Alice’s goal is to right the wrongs made by her former bosses in The Umbrella Corporation. The corporation after conducting experiments on Alice released a destructive virus called the T-Virus on the world. The virus has converted two-thirds of the world’s population into mindless flesh eating zombies. Exposure to the virus occurs, either through blood contamination or by being bitten by a zombie.
The onset of “Resident Evil: The Final Chapter” gives the audience an abridged view of all the characters and subplots associated with the first six movies of the franchise. Optimism about the structure of this movie is relatively high within this portion as it further swells expectations of what will be seen. This “refresher” on the previous movies while annoying to some viewers, proved as introduction for newcomers to the franchise.
However, the movie takes a turn for the worst and emulates several different movie franchises in particular, “Mad Max Fury Road,” which is known for its fast paced action scenes with fast paced editing. It then begins to solicit cheap thrills from viewers with jump scares. The jump scares in the scenes of this movie are void of any music or sound, which is abruptly disturbed by action.
“Resident Evil: The Final Chapter” then continues on its quest of attempting to bring finality to the franchise, by tying up loose ends and unexplained plot holes left behind by previous movies. One of which is the origin of the Red Queen, a holographic projection of a young girl within the Umbrella Corporations facilities.
“Resident Evil: The Final Chapter” is not short on action; when it gears up, there are only non-stop heart racing thrill after thrill. What goes unnoticed, however, is the trivializing of Alice’s abilities. Initially, the franchise portrayed Alice as having superhuman abilities and even telekinetic powers. Her abilities in this movie though, are as common as any person with access to martial arts training and weapons. This makes this film feel disingenuous to a series of movies that have built a legacy behind a character of great strength. In the previous iterations of the series, Alice used her superhuman abilities given to her by The Umbrella Corporation’s experiments, to fight against the company and the hordes of zombies and monsters they have created.
Overall, “Resident Evil: The Final Chapter” is a guilty pleasure for all fans of the franchise in terms of seeing their favorite character on the screen once again. But in an effort to wrap up an already convoluted series, it creates even more questions than answers and does not provide the satisfaction that it had advertised.
