The third and hopefully last in the woeful "Resident Evil" franchise, 'Extinction' manages to surprise by the fact that it's not as terrible as you'd expect. It's still a lacklustre action flick at best, but thanks to the production having the first at least competent director in charge, the campiness is ditched in favor of a grittier approach.
Russell Mulcahy has taken over the reigns of this one, a veteran helmer whose work veers between the inspired ("Highlander," "Swimming Upstream"), the half-decent camp ("The Shadow," "Razorback") and pure gutter trash ("Tale of the Mummy," "The Real McCoy"). 'Extinction' fits solely in the mediocre category. With its post-apocalyptic "Mad Max" style setting, the film's look is quite different. Yet there's a definite harkening back to the original half-decent 2002 film with the opening sequence, mansion setting, frequent 3D CG blueprints of an underground installation, and a mixed array of characters being the focus.
Ditching the camp jokes and hyper-violence of 2004's utterly woeful 'Apocalypse,' this sequel instead favours a more desolate and serious approach to its zombies and survivors with one-liners practically non-existent, and multiple subplots involving political powerplays, survivor mentality and of course Milla Jovovich and her increasingly supernatural powers kicking ass. The action at times is pretty effective, from an attack by an infected flock of crows, to some brutal fighting in a sand-engulfed Las Vegas.
A lot of the good will that builds up in the first two-thirds is lost in the final act however. Deliciously slimy Iain Glen morphs into a mutant, but this time the beast is rendered as a .
