I should've waited for DVD - and Romero needs a good lawyer to sue for royalties

Rating: 6/10 (4 November 2007)

Extinction was leaving British cinemas from this weekend so I thought, catch at least one of the Resident Evil films on the big screen for once. Wrong choice, I only watched Apocalypse on DVD the day before I caught this film and the small screen's the best place for them.
On the big screen my problem with RE Extinction was the fact that despite being based on a novel where some scenes could have been brought to life, standard scary movie clichés abound - Oded Fehr's recurring character is an ex-SWAT type, but after battling these creatures twice before these idiots *still* split up to search empty buildings instead of covering each other? If they've been driving through the desert, wouldn't they have needed to weather-proof the vehicles as best they can for a quick getaway, if they've "lost people before"? Guess what happens next... then there are other scenes where people die for no good reason because it's a horror film and common sense has to be discarded to move the film on and hit the 95-minute mark (eg the Day of the Dead "Bub training" scene).
The script is a travelogue, moving Alice on her own and this Land of the Dead-style convoy from A to B to C and actually, moves from ripping off early Romero like the first two films did, to Dawn of the Dead 2004, Day of the Dead and 28 Days/Weeks Later. There are visual steals from Planet of The Apes and Hitchcock's The Birds, the former being a cruelly wasted visual homage rather than amping up the scale of the action like it could have done - though it's stylishly done, it's hard to care about some characters that die if you were only introduced to them just under an hour earlier. Parts of Extinction deliberately take you back to the very first film, but once the slam-bang finale is over with, it sets you up for a big finish in part 4.
One problem that carries on from Apocalypse to Extinction is that the characters fight like they're in a video game which just doesn't work on film. Once again, Oded Fehr's character should know best but no, everybody stands around waiting for their ammo to run out before they start retreating, when they're up against the "28 Days Later" Zombies including trying to shoot them anywhere else but in the head without using big knives instead. That leads to the other millennial gender politics of film occurring since the convoy is decimated by the time they get to the life-saving transport - but in another magic edit, we don't get to see the zombies flood the outer compound. (It would have been more believable that they couldn't break down the fences had they been electrified as in Land of the Dead, probably a budgetary issue).
Ultimately the natural home for these flicks, while Paul Anderson's writing the script anyway, is on DVD. Direction is as well executed as you'd expect from the director of Highlander but he's only got the script he's been given. Hopefully no.4, if it's the last one, will be allowed maybe 10-15 minutes more if we're talking about a Terminator-styled bringing it back to the start in order to finish the film franchise. It's divided critics and fans alike but I will give it another viewing on DVD next year where I'll probably enjoy it a lot more.