“Funny” story: this is actually the second RE movie i watched, and the only one i ever watched in theathers. I wasn’t that interested at the time in the film series, so i just picked up on DVD years later the first Resident Evil movie, but didn’t bother with the sequels.
But since it was gonna be the final installment, i was a bit curious, so i went to see at one of my local cinemas, and turns out it wouldn’t have really mattered much if you saw all the sequels or none at all, because The Final Chapter will forever remain in my head as one of the most embarassing final bouts for a film series, or movies that somehow end up being distributed to big cinema chains.
An istance where i could realistically see people asking for their money back at the end of the movie, where i would agree with their anger and supplement them with rotten vegetables, so they could aim for the distributors and anyone involved outside of the poor employees, because it’s not their fault, so instead of littering the floors, give them a rotten leek so we can all stick it up Sony’s picture (via their Screen Gems’ hole, specifically), or throw a tomato at the HQ of Costantine Films.
Jesting aside, i’d be embarassed to release a movie like this, personally, even if – truth to be told – it’s not as bad as i remember it being, not “if your eyes could puke” bad, it’s still incredibly badly edited, so choppy that it’s a miracle you can actually tell what’s going on in almost half of the action scenes that involve melee fights (and some others too), where you can barely see things happening, mostly thanks to some occasional slow mo, but still, it’s almost a “blink and you missed it” type of deal, so badly edited is more than a good 40 % of the action scenes.
Which is a good thing to say about a movie that – since it’s the final one – packs even more action and more bombast in it, and admitedly some cool dumbass scenes, like the mass torching of thousand and thousands of zombies, the crazied, Bible wielding clone of Isaacs who thinks is the original and uses live person as bait for the undead to follow him and his combat tanks.
As to WHY it’s edited like this, i guess it’s more to make the action feel even more fast n sleek (in theory anyway) and to play with the stupid ass time limit thrown into the plot, instead of facetiously suggesting it’s done this way to mask, how bad the effects are… but after Paul W.S. Anderson got back full control of the series with Afterlife, the CG and practical effects have been looking pretty much constant in terms of quality, and this one is no exception.
Guess that’s the raison-d’etrè for Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, a lesson in how editing is important and usually is not mentioned in reviews unless it’s either excellent or awful, almost subterranean in this case. A 40 million dollars one that anyone that has seen movies for a while could have given you, for free, that would help this one feel a bit less like the mess it is.
And mind you, it was also projected in 3D… despite not being filmed in such format this time around, for some reason, so imagine paying 20 bucks or more to see the unwatchable in an even shittier 3D garbled after the facts. Why cut corners NOW is mind boggling, since it’s fuckin finale, all RE movies made fucktons of cash in box office revenue, and The Final Chapter is actually the more lucrative one of the bunch, as even an idiot could expect for the finale of a popular film series.
Since i spent all the review so far to criticize the editing alone, do not let that assume it’s because it’s the only problem afflicting Resident Evil The Final Chapter, not at all, even if the editing was better there’s the fact the movie pulls a lot of bullshit too in terms of plot and characters, and not necessarily in an endearing way this time around.
In regards to the plot, The Final Chapter wants to the series go full circle and revisit The Hive and the Red Queen subplots, starting with the origin story of the T-Virus and how its original creator was killed and replaced by his greedy and ruthless business partner, whom made Umbrella the evil megacorporation we’ve come to know, and then having Alice come back to the Hive.
Why?
Because the Red Queen said she wants to be stopped by Alice (she wants to rebel against the program and serving Umbrella), and tells her there’s an antivirus that can be used airborne to fix all of the situation in one shot by killing all zombies, but the Antivirus is in the Hive, hence Alice needs to go back to Raccon City, after that Washington DC battle was an off-screen fiasco that we get to see only its aftermath, with some of those winged monsters from RE 5 still around the ruins…
Would have liked to see that instead of “jump cut extravaganza” (to say nothing of the shaky cam), but apparently we skipped what could have been at least half a movie, i mean, it’s the final one, the series it’s already excessive, go the extra mile since it’s the last one you’re gonna make. But NOPE.
Also, the Red Queen resets Alice’s timer to give her 48 hours…. wait, what timer? Why 48 hours?
No idea aside from the obvious reason of giving some urgency, it is vaguely explained as Umbrella is waiting for the last humans to die out before executing their secret plan that includes restoring the elite that got cryo-frozen to rule the new world reshaped by the hands of Umbrella and his monstrous creations…. which i don’t remember at all, and i’ve seen them all back to back in less than a i week when at the time of writing.
As i assumed right on my first viewing years ago, even before i was the other sequels, this was NOT in the previous movies, at all, so yep, another asspull, and speaking of shit we didn’t see and happened offscreen only so could know about it via exposition dialogue… Wesker tricked everyone and seized control of Umbrella back.
Or so he wished, but nope, since it is revealed the Dr. Isaacs Alice killed was just another clone, of course he was, and the original one is pulling the strings, Wesker gets done in kinda dirty and anticlimactic fashion (it’s kinda hilarious though), and not even by Isaacs or Alice.
Nope, that would be by the hand of the twist character of Alicia, the original, aged daughter of the T Virus inventor, aka the one that the Alice clones were modeled after, including “our” Alice.
Which would be ok if the origin story told to us as the beginning of the movie wasn’t a giant retcon of the T-Virus, not only in terms of what character created the dang thing or why, but also by having Isaacs being the puppet master, while he was clearly stated before Isaacs was working for Wesker, whom was the head of the Umbrella company.
This are big plot points, and this disregard for continuity can’t even be excused as a multitude of different writers being put in charge, since Paul W.S. Anderson wrote all the scripts.
Also, previously dead characters are revealed to have been clones of their original, because we’re gonna squeeze the clone thing even at the end, and we’re not gonna give any closer to any of the characters shown in Retribution that you were lead to believe would be in this finale as well.
Claire is back, but Leon Kennedy and Ada Wong are not, nor is Chris Redfield or Ashford’s daughter, for that matter. Which are minor issues given the many plot holes (like the half-assed, random and barely there Alice In Wonderland “theming”), obvious as hell retconning of huge plot points already estabilished in previous movies, and many of the fights being almost unwatchable, plus they often have bullshit, anticlimactic resolutions, even in the final act.
Speaking of which, the ending is kinda open but not really, since it says that the anti-virus will take years to travel through the world carried by the winds, so Alice’s mission is not over yet…. but basically all the plot points Paul W.S. Anderson cared to conclude (when he didn’t brazenly retcon them) are more or less properly closed, and this was indeed the final film in the series and the conclusion of Alice’s story.
See, i told you this was gonna be utter crap and the lowest point of the series as a whole, not just because of the awful, messy editing and even worse directing than usual, but because it’s as much as a mess as usual, minus any big surprise, but with plenty of anticlimactic resolutions and character’s deaths, some throwbacks but plenty of shameless retcons, nothing can be really alleviated by some cool and spectacular action scenes, since it kinda cheats on those too.
I mean, i’m inclined to believe this one released 4 years (instead of 3) after Retribution only so Paul W.S. Anderson could further weaponize time by having people believe all the retcons when this played in theathers, betting on the audiences’ hazy memories and the fact this kind of movie scripts were probably never meant to be read more than once or twice. Even by their own writer.
There is some fun to be found while digging through the carcass, but indeed Resident Evil The Final Chapter a primo example of how to end your series on a big wet fart, so potent i don’t blame Capcom for going the reboot route with the next Resident Evil movie they eventually would announce, that being the 2021 released Resident Evil Welcome To Raccoon City.
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