Russell Mulcahy is back for a fun, but not immortal, movie

Rating: 7/10 (2 November 2007)

I like "Highlander" and I like Zombies, so I went to see this movie, even though I didn't saw the previous ones and ain't too aware of the video game (I've played once or twice to one of them, but I'm not fanatic about video-games). In my mind, the movie was a crossover between sword duels with living dead and cheap visual kitch effects. Well, I wasn't disappointed. I'm sure that the desperate high-tech visual touch of the movie will become kitch in no time (let's wait ten years and see how old this movie gets). But what I particularly enjoyed are the absurd fights robbed in a referential package, that pleased the B-movie lover in me.
"Extinction" is surely not an intellectual movie, not even a Tarantino-like post modern film, but the way the movie deals with cinephilic references is quite intriguing. Two examples (but the movie is full of scenes like that) : there's an obvious Hitchcock'homage when infected crows began to attack people as in "The Bird". And of course, I especially like the "Day of the dead" parody, that you can see through the all movie that confronts a mad scientist with stupid soldiers. Romero's parody culminates in a hilarious scene, where the crazy scientist believed he archived to domesticate one of the dead, but the finally doesn't seem so ready to be a human slave.
The visual aspect of the movie is most intriguing part of the film. I don't know about the first ones, but "Resident Evil" manage to be a gore movie (with blood and rotten living dead), but also tries to be clean, just like a numeric video game. I think I never saw blood looks so clean on a movie before, and for that, "Extinction" is quite unique. It's like a gore movie made for the all family to watch. To sum up, there's funny references, well done action and fight scenes, and a rather unusual visual style that makes "Resident Evil : Extenction" a rather funny and pleasant moment.