Dishearteningly lacking in a few regards, but a fun viewing for action

Rating: 6/10 (10 November 2010)

I wish I could rate this movie higher, but the ending of Extinction left so much more promise. Afterlife leaves more than a bit to be desired.
Milla delivers a convincing portrayal of Alice. Several returning actors were promoted as having parts in this movie, but they actually had nearly zero screen time. Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory) for example, is barely recognizable when she DOES finally appear; K-Mart (Spencer Locke) gets about 2 minutes of screen time not including flashbacks which are either cut-scenes from Extinction, or very close parallel reproductions.
It was very predictable (to me at least) that the effects of the serum which rendered the 'T-Cells' in Alice's blood inert, was short lived at best.
I had expected more of the Alice-clone attack from the end of Extinction. With the minimum of 48 clones CLEARLY visible at the end of Extinction, 192 directly inferred and about 4x of that number at minimum insinuated in the pullback, it was disappointing that the Alice Clone assault was limited to 13 'clones' confirmed, possibly 15 if one assumes a couple were NOT the same clone. So less than 1/3 of the verified clones are ever seen in action. (We saw more 'dead' clones in the ditch in Extinction, and there were far more alluded to at the end of Extinction than we ever saw in action)
Based upon the experience and abilities of Alice circa movie # 2 "Apocalypse" Chairman Whesker should have been killed at least 3 times during the first 15 minutes of this movie.
The first 'undead attack' we saw in this movie conflicts with the historical progression of the T-Virus portrayed previously, as the Japanese woman is standing in the rain for several minutes, quiet and still, before suddenly attacking someone. According to the previously established premise, exemplified in Apocalypse, the infected should show some symptom and collapse before becoming 'undead' and once undead they do not understand subtlety, instead they simply attack.
No explanation or even hypothesis is offered about the appearance of the "Axeman" undead from the game, just "what the hell is that?"When Chairman Whesker appears at the end of the movie again, he moves like something from "The Matrix" and quite frankly if he can move that fast, he should have killed Claire, her brother, and Alice in under 1 minute flat based on how Alice is portrayed in this movie.
Based upon the history throughout the series as well as the games, Whesker should never have been able to get up again after Alice, Claire and Michael finished with him. T-Virus or no. And his 'fighting' the T-Virus for control of his mind/body seems so poorly conceived, as he did not have access to a viable clone of the original Project Alice, he should never have been in a position to be "everything she is, only better" given the time line presented in this movie.
I really WANTED to enjoy this movie. But it was a colossal let down in my eyes as a fan of the prior three movies, and someone who at least tried to play the video games. (I never got into the games enough, but my stepson played a lot, and I often enjoyed watching and offering advice on many of the puzzle components.)
I hate to give such a low view of what I really wanted to be a great 4th installment, but Extinction set too high a bar for Afterlife to measure up to. I almost wish this movie had never been released, as my imagination could create a hundred better 4th installments than what passed through the studio's approval.