The movie's still running?

1/2 out of ★★★★

Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2016)

Runtime: 107 minutes

MPAA: Rated R for sequences of violence throughout.

A while ago, I labelled Resident Evil: The Final Chapter as one of the worst films I've ever seen. Since I haven't got the chance to play some newer releases (theatres are closed around my area, online streaming sites can't load movies), I decided to dissect this massive failure and explain to you why, despite its mixed reviews, I find it an atrocity. Please enjoy my first half-a-star review.

Starting off immediately after Resident Evil: Retribution (though almost all of the cast don't return), Resident Evil: The Final Chapter finds Alice (Milla Jovovich) being one of the only survivors against the T-virus, which has rendered all except about 4,000 people as zombies. The Umbrella Corporation has just developed an anti-virus that could be the only chance of saving humanity. Then, as usual, Alice has to rush to The Hive in Raccoon City to obtain the vial, where a series of uninspired and excruciatingly boring events play.

To get straight to the point, the plot is terribly written. It is so convoluted that it re-explains certain scenes, and I believe, rewrites some scenes of events that happened. There are so many things that are difficult to understand, but like I said, don't waste any of your time learning about the film's proceedings, because it amounts to nothing meaningful or compelling. Another depressing aspect of the plot is its lazily set up events. For example, Alice has 48 hours to reach the city and obtain the vial. However, the most laughably bad of things happen, for example:

- Alice sleeps or is knocked out unconscious for about three-quarters of the journey. She spends some unnecessary time conversing to humans and stupidly falling into enemies traps.

- By the time she assembles a group and they enter The Hive, they have 30 minutes left.

- When Alice and a surviving companion talk with the 'villain', they have 9 minutes left.

- Five minutes left, Alice fights the villain for ten minutes.

- She runs out and does yet again some meaningless stuff then fights the villain again, and there's still a minute left. 

The film-makers are so bad at managing their pacing that the 107 minutes feels like 107 hours of explosions, noisy gunfighting, huge spinning fans that swirl needlessly, and atrocious fight scenes.

Resident Evil: The Final Chapter fails to offer anything exciting or compelling, because of its choice of excessive action, which mean nothing. Aside from the shallow characters and empty performances from the main leads Milla Jovovich, Ian Glen and Ali Larter, most action sequences are devoid of any excitement and uninspired. It literally borrows from an earlier release Mad Max: Fury Road and waters it down to produce bland, bleak, and dull (figuratively AND literally) scenes, in which even the CGI can't compromise for. Perhaps the most agonizing part of the experience is its editing. Appallingly edited, the action scenes cut about two times every second; it'll make you either scream as you don't understand the happenings, or scream as in, 'The entire movie should have been published as a photo album!'

Though the zombies are poorly designed and the scares are cheap, one potentially redeeming scene saves Resident Evil: The Final Chapter from being in the same league as the depressing, disgusting and offensive Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2. It is one line that genuinely sounds cool (The childhood you never had combined with the woman she could never become). Or maybe the movie is inoffensively bad. I don't think it's the latter, because this movie is an utterly meaningless waste of time, and the only way for the director, Paul W.S. Anderson, to tell us that he and his wife are cool and no one else. It pains me to know that so much time, money, and human lives were wasted just to produce this gobsmacking fiasco.

The ending doesn't conceal the fates of all characters, and leaves a slight possibility for a remake. I haven't seen the remake yet, but let's hope this is the last time we'll ever see something this lazily contrived.