I’m on a hunt for the scariest movies of all time! I’ll be looking at films of any era, from any country, and then reviewing them based solely on how terrifying they are.

If you have a suggestion for a horror movie, please let me know on Twitter.

Please be advised, spoilers may lie ahead!!

Resident Evil: Extinction (2007)

Director: Russell Mulcahy

Starring: Milla Jovovich, Ali Larter

Another edition of RE Week comes with the unfortunate caveat that one of those days will be spent watching the Milla Jovovich “Resident Evil” films, a tradition that fills me with utter woe. I would like to take solace in the notion that, after tackling the third movie, I’ll be halfway through the saga — but knowing that I’ll have to do this three more times is hardly a comforting notion. Maybe by 2027, I’ll have found some other stooge to foist these off to.

So yes, the battered, bruised column where I rank horror movies by how scary they are gets subjected to a new low as I opine on the reprehensible debacle that is Resident Evil: Extinction.

When we last saw our beloved Alice (Jovovich), she had escaped from Raccoon City, the destruction of which she contributed at least five explosions to. Alas, the government was unable to contain the spread of the t-Virus, and the planet has been consumed by its plague, zombifying the population and inexplicably turning the landscape into barren wastelands. Alice now travels alone to avoid detection by the ever-present threat of the Umbrella Corporation, scavenging for whatever she can find to stay alive.

If you were sick of the tired zombie tropes prevalent in the first two films, you’re in luck, because they have now been mostly jettisoned in favour of tired post-apocalyptic tropes. The tone is set early when Alice runs afoul of a trap set by redneck bandits, who guffaw about how their plan “works every time, mama!”

Mad Max, this is not. Resident Evil, this is even less. You have to prepare yourself for that sad fact and try not to literally shake your head in response to what you’re witnessing onscreen here. I lasted about four minutes before I got to that point.

Elsewhere, Carlos Olivera (Oded Fehr) and L.J. Wade (Mike Epps) have joined up with a convoy run by Claire Redfield (Larter). There is no mention of where Jill Valentine has gotten off to, as if it wasn’t very explicitly shown that she was in their company by the end of Resident Evil: Apocalypse. This swap-out of beloved characters is fine, really, because their portrayals are interchangeable anyway.

Extinction is primarily set in the Nevadan desert, undercutting the one good thing Apocalypse had going for it. Whereas the urban landscape of Raccoon City is familiar, and a relatable atmosphere that we could envisage ourselves in, Extinction is typified by empty, sprawling spaces. Not only does this remove whatever immersion we may have had, but it makes things untenably dull, too.

Despite this bleak setting, everyone has fantastic, well-hydrated skin, and that fact bothers me more than it probably should. I just wanted to get that off my chest before we proceeded.

The narrative shifts between Alice and Claire’s convoy, dotted in between with the wicked machinations of the Umbrella Corporation, who continue scheming from their underground laboratories. Albert Wesker (Jason O’Mara) has been added into the mix to serve as an overarching antagonist, but he is thoroughly outdone by the sneering Dr. Isaacs (Iain Glen), who is attempting to rehabilitate zombies to regain some of their consciousness.

There’s one scene where a zombie test subject frightens the researchers by pointing a camera at them too vigorously, and it’s unintentionally hilarious — easily my favourite fucking part of the movie.

The main reason why Alice has been separated from the rest of the team is obvious. In-universe, she explains that it helps keep everyone else safe, but in actuality, it’s because there are zero stakes present whatsoever whenever she is in near-proximity.

Her ever-growing list of powers now includes telekinesis, which she will only apply when deus ex machina calls for it. It boggles my mind that Paul W. S. Anderson was given free reign to make such self-serving softcore pornography of his wife’s unstoppable power trip, and her dazzling array of talents makes her quite insufferable as a protagonist.

I would honestly rather watch 94 gruelling minutes of Jake Muller, and I fucking hate Jake Muller.

Beyond these grievances, Extinction hardly even passes the bar as a serviceable action movie. The first film was functional in this manner, and the second one was fun schlock, at the very least. This one is downright punishing; the downtime spent discussing what the convoy should do next drags on horribly, and the high-octane scenes are more hollow than ever.

For the first time in the brief, underwhelming existence of this column, I found myself fast forwarding through multiple scenes. I just couldn’t stomach it.

Even the inclusion of murderous crows (pun vaguely intended), the closest which we get to any kind of RE fan service, falls flat. There’s a few moments of feigned tension, then a lot of shouting and pecking. Some unimportant people die. Then Alice arrives on the scene and saves the day by making all of the crows catch fire. Hooray, Alice!

The worst injustice of Extinction is that it fails even at basic storytelling conventions. In the opening monologue, Alice narrates that survivors avoid major cities in order to prevent being surrounded by masses of zombies. By the second half, the entourage tours directly through the heart of Vegas, and lo and behold, they find themselves surrounded by masses of zombies.

In this moment, L.J. — who had been bitten earlier on and hid this fact from the others — succumbs to his infection and attacks Carlos. The notion that they planted this seed of an inevitable zombie turn, only for it to pay off at a time when there are already lots of zombies attacking our heroes, makes me want to bang my head against the wall.

It’s a clear example of how this movie refuses to fucking movie properly, to the point where it is insulting.

Trying to locate the “scary parts” is as difficult as rummaging for resources in post-apocalyptic Nevada. There are constant jump scares employed for cheap jolts, and one visually gratifying scene towards the end where Alice infiltrates the Umbrella laboratory, only to find all of its personnel brutally murdered.

That is honestly all I’ve got, though to me the most frightening notion is that the cliffhanger suggests that the next film is going to focus on Alice joining up with an army of clones. It’s as if they saw the feedback for the first two movies was that there was too much Milla Jovovich, and then multiplied her out of pure spite.

I walked away from this movie, honestly feeling quite empty. Not just empty in fact, but as though something had been stolen from me by having watched it. It’s not a scary movie, it’s not a particularly riveting action movie, and you know what? It’s hardly a fucking movie at all. It gets zero paws on the scare metre, but its actual score is probably negative four.

I hate it so much. I recommend watching The Keeper’s Diary instead, to wash the taste of this mind-numbingly atrocious cinema from your mouth.

Final Verdict

By this point, the Resident Evil movies have descended from feeble to openly offensive. Claiming it to be a horror movie is like claiming that spiders invented crystal meth, and at least the latter could make for an interesting explanation.

In shifting to barren plains, Anderson has managed to betray not only the license but even a cursory opportunity to manufacture tension. Its closest comparison is the latter stages of The Walking Dead, wherein the threat of the zombies has long since taken a backseat to the question of whether there’s enough food to go around. And I mean that in the most negative possible way.

Trace Thurman once wrote an article that claimed Extinction was the best film in the franchise. The only conclusion I can come to is that Trace Thurman lost a particularly cruel bet.