Saturday, January 28, 2017

Resident Evil: The Final Chapter

When the first live-action movie adaptation of CAPCOM's hit survival-horror franchise, Biohazard (Resident Evil) came out 15 years ago, fans worldwide have some mixed reactions upon witnessing the first five films from the first one to Retribution back in 2012. Some were pleased, some were thrilled, and some were disgusted that it doesn't feel like it came from the games. In Japan, watching these films made them want to forget about the games it based upon and focus mostly on the films because...let's be honest. It's more fun to live with it rather than play with it. And now, here it is, the final installment of the Resident Evil movies is here and this final hurrah will definitely end the RE films with a bang for a buck.

Resident Evil: The Final Chapter

Action starlet Milla Jovovich reprises her badass role as Alice, the woman who used to work for the Umbrella Corporation turned into a bio-organic weapon in her own right in her bid to eradicate Umbrella in the face of the earth. In this final installment, the battle between the final traces of humanity against Umbrella is on its last legs and Alice returns to where the nightmare began - The Hive in the now derelict Raccoon City. As Umbrella prepares its final strike against the last remaining survivors of the dreaded T-Virus outbreak, how will Alice end the nightmare, even if it means to end herself by any means necessary.

Apart from Jovovich, the film brings back Ali Larter as Claire Redfield, Iain Glen as Dr. Alexander Isaacs, and Shawn Roberts as Albert Wesker, as well as introducing Orange is the New Black's Ruby Rose as Abigail, The Night Shift's Eoin Macken as Doc, William Levy as Christian, Fraser James as Michael, and Japanese idol Rola as Cobalt.

All RE films look like they'll be more complicated to watch than any other zombie movies you're familiar with but they're not. They're basically hardcore and it doesn't really matter if you're not a big fan of the Biohazard films because for the non-fans, this film will let them go easy on them but for the longtime fans, this film will hit them with everything they got with familiar elements as seen on the games such as Claire's outfit as seen from Biohazard Revelations 2 as well as the awesome triple-barreled Hydra shotgun that packs a punch in lesser shells. How many references can you see in this final RE film? Not much but see if you care.

What made this film so amazing that Japan got their first dibs on this film last Christmas before the rest of the world grabbed their last hurrah and because it's a hit among Japanese moviegoers, people made them forget about...hmmm...well, you get the idea but not bad for their final hurrah.

It seems ashamed that we wave goodbye to the Resident Evil films with this Final Chapter that is absolutely brilliant but also completely useless.

My rating: 3.8 out of 5.

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