Plotline: Extinction

Now, I wasn’t expecting this to be good. But I did really like the first one, which, when removed from the video game it was based on, was a stylish bit of zombie headbanger fun. And while the second installment was bad, it did have its moments.

Resident Evil: Extinction is one piss-poor excuse for a zombie flick. Mostly because zombies have almost nothing to do with the narrative. Wait … did I say narrative? The only sign of a story here is a low-rent Mad Max convoy driving around the desert in circles, in a futile attempt to find some sort of a plotline to follow.

It seems that when the deadly T-virus that causes the living to go dead and come back all bitey exploded from the bowels of the Umbrella Corp. research labs, it also inexplicably caused all the water on the surface of the planet to dissipate.

Meanwhile, some mad scientist, under the employ of the ubiquitously evil corporation, is cribbing scenes from George Romero’s Day of the Dead as he trains zombies how to answer cell phones.

While all that nonsense is unraveling, our “Mad Maxine” (Milla Jovovich) is back in her fetish gear, tricked-out this time for the desert. She joins the vagabonds to help them fend off a flock of badly rendered CGI zombie crows. Then it’s back to driving around the desert, although this time (about halfway into the 95-minute movie) they decide to go to a CGI version of Vegas.

Yay! Something’s bound to happen in Vegas! Um, no … Vegas is empty. Seems that the zombie crows ate everyone left there, which is the biggest disappointment here … if you’re going to have a zombie post-apocalypse set in Las Vegas, then you damn well better kick down with some zombie showgirls and a zombie Elvis or two.

Things sort of get exciting here, as the Dr. St. Hubbins imports a bunch of the zombie berserkers in to liven things up, but it’s much too late and way too much CGI action. Even Jovovich’s face gets the CGI treatment when they go to a close-up … she looks so airbrushed that her face should be on the side of a cruisin’ van, not a movie screen.