Resident Evil: The Final Chapter

Right about now would be the perfect time to queue up The Door's 'This is the End.' Fourteen years and six films later, the Resident Evil franchise comes to a titular close with Resident Evil: The Final Chapter. The dynamic husband and wife duo director Paul W.S. Anderson and star Milla Jovovich cap off their somewhat messy and wildly inconsistent adaptations of the venerable video game series with one last bloody, stiffly scripted, and frenetically-edited gore-fest that plays to the hardcore fans while leaving everyone else who hoped for a more restrained take on the material is left to the undead wasteland. 

The evil, diabolical, nefarious Umbrella Corporation led by the profit-driven maniac Dr. Isaacs (Ian Glen) and his murderous henchman Wesker (Shawn Roberts) have decimated the world. When the T-Virus swept through Raccoon City, it turned its victims into flesh-eating monsters of the undead and the plague spread throughout the planet. The lone survivor of the initial outbreak, Alice (Milla Jovovich), has banded together a small group of survivors to stop the Umbrella Corporation and put an end to the plague of the undead. With Claire Redfield (Ali Larter), Doc (Eoin Macken), Abigail (Ruby Rose), and Cobalt (Rola), Claire will have to return to where it all began, The Hive, the laboratory deep within Raccoon City in order to find an airborne cure and save the remaining 4,000 humans on Earth. The only problem being about a billion undead zombies and flying monsters - and very few ammo canisters - waiting for them.

To be honest, there's not all that much left to be said about the Resident Evil franchise or this supposed Final Chapter. If you've made it this far into the show and continue to be entertained, you should find this outing rewarding. Those of you who gave the franchise the college try and returned for two or three sequels but fell off the run sadly won't find much redemption here. For better or worse (depending on how you look at it) Resident Evil: The Final Chapter is simply more of the same. The plot, characters, continuity long ago stopped making any real sense and this film doesn't do anything to right the course of the ship. It's more or less another bit of stream of conscious scripting. Whatever popped into Writer and Director Paul W.S. Anderson's head went on the screen without much of an eye for editing or continuity. 

Anderson is one of those creative visual filmmakers who has a terrific eye for visuals and an unabashed love for making genre pictures. But at the same time, he's never felt like someone who reached his full potential. With Mortal Kombat he demonstrated a knack for adapting paper-thin video game plots. With Event Horizon he showed he could let mood, atmosphere, and buckets of gore and visual effects create a memorable sci-fi/horror hybrid. The first Resident Evil was a competent adaptation of the beloved video game series that showed plenty of franchise potential. Everything else he's made since 2002 has pretty much been the same movie again and again with varying degrees of success and failure. That said, I have enjoyed the Resident Evil movies for what they are, not what they could have been. They're fun, check your brain at the door action gore flicks and nothing more. If that's all you want, that's all you're going to get from The Final Chapter.

As much as I really wanted to just shut my brain off after a long day of work and just be entertained, I struggled with Resident Evil: The Final Chapter. The story still doesn't make a lick of sense; that's not the problem. The problem is how it was shot and edited. Paul W.S. Anderson traded in his traditional tried and true slow-mo camera-stylings for some truly nauseating swirling camera work with near-constant cutting. Whether the characters are sitting and having a conversation or Alice is in a knife fight with Dr. Isaacs on top of an armored vehicle with an army of zombies chasing behind them, the camera never stops moving and the edits never last longer than a fraction of a second. It's almost as if Michael Bay and Paul Greengrass movies hooked up and The Final Chapter was the result of that bizarre coupling. Eventually, I settled into the groove and the swirling visuals stopped being a detriment, but that first twenty minutes or so frequently forced me to look away or lest I lose my $10 bucket of popcorn. 

Resident Evil: The Final Chapter was marketed on the concept of finality. It promised a return of certain characters as well as a few fresh faces to help bring the franchise to a fitting and final conclusion. While there is a conclusion, I doubt most will find this outing fitting or final. If you've ever wondered why they keep making these movies, the answer is simple economics. These are relatively cheap movies to make that require little if any marketing and make hundreds of millions at the worldwide box office. The Final Chapter raked in over $312,000,000 worldwide against a $40,000,000 budget. With those kinds of bucks attached, I doubt this will be the last time we see Resident Evil atop theater marquees. My hope is they load up something more akin to the recent Resident Evil: Biohazard game and return to the series survival horror roots. 

Vital Disc Stats: The Blu-ray 

Resident Evil: The Final Chapter arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Sony Pictures in a single-disc Blu-ray + Digital HD set. Pressed onto a Region A BD-50 disc, the disc is housed in a standard sturdy snapper Blu-ray case with identical slipcover artwork. The disc loads to a trailer for the upcoming animated Resident Evil: Vendetta, Spider-Man: Homecoming and other Sony Pictures releases before arriving at a static image main menu featuring traditional navigation options.

Resident Evil: The Final Chapter drops onto Blu-ray with a 2.40:1 1080p transfer. Shot digitally, the film features a well detailed, colorful, and robust image transfer that is still somewhat flawed in places. The issue at hand is the constant cutting and swift camera movements make it difficult to fully appreciate any given scene. Few shots last longer than a second or two as such I felt as if there was a notable amount of image noise during darker scenes as well as a bit of motion blur. Colors skew towards the warmer yellows and browns for much of the film to convey that desolate wasteland sort of vibe. As such, flesh tones tend to look a bit jaundiced much of the time - but that's not a defect of the transfer. Black levels are nice and inky during the outdoor sequences. CGI green screen bits and some dark interiors can look a tad muddy in spaces and lose that sense of depth at times. All around it's a fine transfer, good for what it is, but is affected by the herky-jerky film style. 

Resident Evil: The Final Chapter leaps onto Blu-ray packed with a thunderingly effective DTS-HD MA 7.1 audio mix. This is an aggressive mix with near constant surround activity providing a quality immersion experience. Dialogue is crystal clear throughout largely keeping to the front/center channels. Occasionally there is a nice bit of directional dialogue that pulls your attention to the left or right if a character is off-screen. The heavy scoring and wall-to-wall sound effects ensure that there is very little downtime for your audio system. Levels are set just fine - it's a loud movie so be prepared for the explosions, gunshots, and so forth. You may even want to keep things a bit lower than normal. All around this is a clean and clear audio mix that lives up to the franchise's legacy! 

True to the Resident Evil home video formula, there are a LOT of bonus features available with this release. Some bits are more informative than others, but fans should have a blast digging through everything. The Retaliation Mode provides the most meat of all the bonus features, everything else feels like extended EPK promotional material. 

Retaliation Mode (HD 2:16:42) The Retaliation Mode viewing experience is actually pretty solid stuff. Featuring husband and wife duo Paul W.S. Anderson with Milla Jovovich, the pair clearly enjoys each other's company as they frequently jump into the film with full onscreen behind the scenes materials or provide a little bit of scene-specific commentary. There's plenty of material showing the practical effects work for all the gore and zombies. 

Stunts and Weaponry (HD 9:03) This covers the actors performing as many of the stunts themselves while also handling guns and knives.

Explore The Hive (HD 4:18) This is a very brief look at a return to the original locations and with some nice and gnarly gore bits. 

The Bad Ass Trinity & The Women of Resident Evil (HD 6:32) A very quick, somewhat self-congratulatory look at the female action heroes of the film. 

Sneak Peak at Resident Evil: Vendetta (HD 4:22) 

Love them or hate them, the Resident Evil franchise made an honest run. While they weren't the best films ever made - they never set out to be. They were made to entertain a target audience. If you found yourself in that target demographic, you should get some measure of entertainment out of Resident Evil: The Final Chapter. Sony brings the film to Blu-ray with a solid A/V presentation with a host of bonus features. Considering Resident Evil: The Final Chapter is the sixth entry in the franchise, this one isn't suitable for newcomers and is absolutely for the fans.