Pointless, meaningless and painfully unentertaining

Rating: 3/10 (13 April 2020)

"Resident Evil: Extinction" is a 2007 action horror film and video game adaptation directed by Russell Mulcahy starring Milla Jovovich and Ali Larter. After the previous film has been a terrible but still enjoyable fun flick I felt that I was more and more able to appreciate the extreme low quality of those films and even sort of made my peace with this wannabe horror franchise. I was even excited to find out what would happen next. My naïve enthusiasm was punished by this absolutely terrible next entry. First of all, there's basically no reasonable connection to "Apocalypse", but seriously pretends there is one. It states that the virus was able to spread around the globe and somehow even managed to dry out the whole planet. How the hell did that happen? It's just sad that it happened, but not how it happened. All of the sudden, the whole quest of containing the virus and the total annihilation of Raccoon City that was the main focus of the second film was made irrelevant. With not even the slightest touch of logic the film now depicts a post apocalyptic scenario in which Mel Gibson easily could have appeared. This outing now has lost any connection to any of the games and tries to survive on its own. To be honest, it could have been genuinely interesting and surprisingly entertaining, but having Paul W.S. Anderson as a screenwriter was again a fatal mistake. His screenplay is once again a paramount example for absolutely horrendous writing. He totally screwed up an interesting starting point and made absolutely nothing out of it. The film is basically two simple ideas (convoy of survivers and villains trying to make a clone of Alice) and stretched those to an one and a half hour feature film that offers nothing interesting at all. Before something useful actually happened the film offered scene after scene that was indeed stylish (I look at you, third repetitive zombie dog fight), but absolutely pointless in terms of plot development. That's the film's most massive problem: Pointlessness. Except for a handful of actually logic scenes the whole film is sheer stupidity and just doesn't bring any useful development. It's utterly stupid and simply not entertaining. It wastes most of its runtime by following the convoy and shows how it goes on and goes on, all the while failing to include any form of danger or tension. The crow attack? It was clear that they would survive that and was unrealistic harmless to the characters. Speaking of characters: Not only are the whereabouts of Jill Valentine completly unknown nor in any way questioned, all of the sudden and without any particular introduction Claire Redfield is there and in charge of everything. I literally paused the film to check if I accidentally left out a film, but it was all in best order. She was just there and Carlos and L.J. (who were both killed of disrespectfully in the process) and somehow Alice had to be there to. Surprisingly, Jovovich was not even as charismatic as before. With some new characters introduced and familiar faces reintroduced, the film then continues and ... offers nothing? I can't really explain, but no, it doesn't do anything about creating an atmosphere or a simplest form of suspense or action. As I said, the whole plot is pointless as hell. After more than an hour of nothingness (and useless shot of that one freaking sattlelite) the totally boring convoy arrives at the Umbrella facility and ... just flies off to Alaska without Alice? Yes and like it's no big deal. What is the point of letting the audience follow the fate of a group of irrelevant survivers just to have them escape easily and without any effort? It's so dumb. I almost fell asleep a number of times, because nothing happened that had me on the edge of my seat. Not even the obviously improved gore and makeup effects could do anything about it, as they were only used meaninglessly. Also, how many zombies do they want to fit in this one tiny box? It's tremendously unrealistic and just stupid. The final act doesn't change anything about it. Dr. Isaac's mutation is not only totally boring and the CGI nothing than awful, on top of that he doesn't pose as a threat or something. In the end, we get an absolutely dull and way too short and easily ended final fight and another extraordinarily bonkers setup for the next installment. Then the credits rolled and left me there after having experience nothing special. I was like "That's all? That's actually all?" and already forgot what this film has presented. All in all, this outing is without a doubt the worst of the series so far and doesn't offer anything in terms of plot development. It totally mistreats all the characters and loses itself in stylish but eternally pointless scenes that are solely there to showcase the updated gore effects. Any form of story? Nonexistent. Any suspense or tension? Extinct. Any meaning for the series? Missing. What am I to say? It's totally irrelevant for the franchise, doesn't lead to anything and is nothing short of a brain melting snoozefest. Anderson has unexpectedly undercut himself again. Having seen this film leaves me deeply wondering how anyone read that dreadful screenplay and thought it would make a great film. I'm also wondering how Anderson is still allowed to work in Hollywood after creating one disaster after another. He's by far one of the most untalented writer-director I have ever seen. I don't know what to expect from the next films anymore, because this film was indescribably pointless, meaningless and on top of that, painfully unentertaining. It's no fun and absolutely forgettable. It has to mean something when the most exciting part of watching this film is when I choked on my beer while watching it. Just terrible.