Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2016)

Resident Evil: The Worst Chapter and the Final Contradiction. I knew it was going to be terrible but I watched all of the previous films. So I couldn't leave this one out, could I? I also wanted to get over the shitty week I had. You know I wanted to kick back, relax and enjoy the weekend. I tought the proper way is to watch a bad movie plus I was curious that how could they screw this up. This review may have spoilers. So be warned.

What a mess this was. Who came up with this stuff? Paul WS Anderson did. He wrote each part of this movie franchise and it is still like each part was written by somone else. He should have watched all of the movies before writing the script. He remembers and forgets things. This final movie  contradicts and retcons the previous installments especially RE: Apocalypse and RE: Retribution in various ways.

Resident Evil: The Final Chapter's backstory is different and it doesn't start where we left off at the end of the last part titled RE: Retribution. It promised a huge battle at the White House and The Last Chapter does something a troll would do. It starts after the end of this battle. It is even hardly mentioned what happened. Wesker tricked Alice. He didn't give her powers back and we don't know what happened in the battle. We just see the ruins.

This is everything I missed from RE: The Final Chapter. Plus I also missed the coherence with the other movies. A solid rewrite could have fixed everything but nooo.

Maybe Wesker has lost his powers as well because we won't see him fighting as in RE: Afterlife did. So don't expect as much The Matrix (1999) like movements as before. He was a badguy in Afterlife then he became a goodguy in Retribution and helped Alice to escape from an Umbrella facility. Now he is a badguy again but not a main one.

The main badguy is Doctor Isacs again. What? But he died in RE: Extinction. That's right, but don't worry he was just a clone. If you are the writer and the director you can do whatever you want. That's the miracle of storytelling. The main badguy is somehow enhanced so he is Super Doctor Isacs. I stopped caring a movie ago.

In Retribution they resurrected the Red Queen who didn't look or sound like she did in the first film. She became more annoying and less subtle than before. She was a main bad guy in Retribution and wanted to destroy humanity. That's why Wesker rescued Alice in the first place. He wanted her to help. Now in The Last Chapter we have a new plot. Wesker is one of the villains again and the Red Queen helps Alice to save the survivors. Confusing, huh? The whole last movie is like this. You better get used to it.

In the second movie RE: Apocalypse we are told that Dr Ashford created the T-virus in order to help his daughter, Angela Ashford to walk again. The Red Queen was programmed based on Angela's appearance and voice.

In The Final Chapter this was also thrown out into the trash can because this time Dr Marcus created the T-virus because his daughter, Alicia Marcus was ageing very fast. This is like an elseworld story or an alternate dimension. This movie sticks out like a sore thumb. It felt like I was watching Man of Steel and Batman v Superman because of the out of character moments and retcons.

At the end of the movie it turns out that even Alice is a clone. The original is the ageing Alicia Marcus. Alicia=Alice. It wasn't easy to find out this plot twist. I somehow expected this bullshit to happen. Especially when Alice spoke about her amnesia. This contradicts the first two movies. Her memory comes back at the end of those films.

With The Final Chapter Paul WS Anderson wanted to get back to the horror roots of the game but this idea wasn't successfully executed. He failed miserably. He only achieved to put in jump scares. As you watch this movie these scenes get really old and really fast.

So far in this movie franchise the best things were the music and the fight scenes. Well the fight scenes are messed up because of the style what Michael Bay does. Which is combining shaky cam and rapid fire editing. I wrote it in this blog a thousand times already that this documentary style ruins action scenes. It makes the fight hard to follow and it looks quite amateurish. It wasn't as bad as in Transformers 1 and 2 but still looks pretty bad for my taste.

The Final Chapter also has got a wind tunnel scene. I wonder if the creators watched Operation Condor before to recycle two scenes from that movie. In my opinion RE: Afterlife had the best and most enjoyable fight scenes and soundtrack of this franchise so far. They couldn't top that one in the last two films. The action scenes began to suck in Retribution because it seems like Jill doesn't need to aim with her gun before opening fire.

As a final thought Resident Evil: The Final Chapter was a huge fuck you to the fans of the Resident Evil films and the games. Paul WS Anderson didn't even want to make an effort to create a decent closure to or of these films. It has as many installments as Star Wars had but each part was worse than the last. The last enjoyable Resident Evil film for me that made some sense was Afterlife. The best ones are probably the first two films. They should have stopped making these movies at the end of Afterlife but they must have thought "The Show Must Go On" and "I Want It All".

If you plan to watch The Final Chapter please do yourself a favour and don't. In a way it was a complete wase of time. The story was awful. In this case the fight scenes weren't able to compensate this experience. It could have been much worse if I had high expectations with this one. What was good in the previous installments are long gone. There are many films like this and there are better movies to spend a rainy night. You can forget Resident Evil: The Final Chapter very fast. You should do that and this movie could proceed on its way to oblivion where it belongs.