My eyes have been vacuum sealed

Each Day, A Film;
January 29th, 2012 (Retrospective)

Let's keep the inertia up and plough straight into Resident Evil: Extinction, which from memory - even though I only watched it recently - feels like four or so action sequences tied together with string and wishes.



One thing you may hopefully have noticed is that I hate to directly criticise any film, because until the far-flung future day when I've made any kind of film myself, I don't feel that I can criticise anyone else's work with any kind of validity.

I want to criticise Extinction, though. And most of it's down to logistics. This is a film where:

- A group of rape-hungry idiot rednecks has not only managed to survive in the middle of nowhere in a decimated desert environment but has also managed to corral several zombie dogs into cages just in case they need entertainment; the rationale is that, frankly, they're cannibals, but as this is a 15 rated film (UK certification, American readers), we're okay with the violence and the attempted rape but overtly mentioning cannibalism goes too far, dude, too far

- A character who has survived the previous film and has carried on surviving decides not to mention being bitten by a zombie - in full view of another character - right up until the point he has the burning need to eat someone's brains in the middle of an already-packed action sequence

- A cargo container can hold as many super-zombies as the plot demands - super-zombies who, being polite, only break out of the container when they smell Milla Jovovich, and up until that point wait politely in the black metal walls in the middle of the roasting-hot desert until they have to punch-in on the zombie time-clock and go a-killing

- A desert base surrounded by zombies is accessible by blowing up a fraction of their number on one side, ramming the chain-link fence - the fence which has magically held off an ever-increasing number of zombies - to let the horde in, then magically driving out through the horde as if it's no damn thing

- A protagonist whose psychic abilities come and go - they're no use during the aforementioned attempted rape, but they're quite happy to wreck her motorbike during her sleep, protect people from fire and keep away the naughty-naughty tentacles in the final boss fight

- The birds! The birds!

Again, I like to think that with a little bit of paring down; if you stripped out the Genetic Modification / Psychic storyline and put it in a separate film, and instead made the film about desperate survivors crossing the desert, devoid of hope and in ever-dwindling numbers, you could try and make the Paris, Texas of Zombie Filmmaking. The two genres don't mesh that well, though; the Psychic Zombie Fighter mish-mash just feels a little strange.

The conclusion, too, with there being hundreds more Alices just waiting to get out there and kick zombie ass, is almost a nice touch, but that just lets us segué into the next entry, which is...