I received Resident Evil: Extinction yesterday via Netflix. I’m a big fan of zombie movies and a tepid fan of the Resident Evil movies. They’ve never been good but at least they weren’t Uwe Boll bad. They were Paul W.S. Anderson bad. That is, you felt like they weren’t really worth watching but at least you weren’t sick that you wasted 90 minutes of your life on something that made you feel stupider. RE:E didn’t raise the bar over the other RE movies. It felt about the same. However, I watched the special features and the making of RE:E kept talking about what an original movie it was. I’m calling it out.

Zombie evolution/Smart zombies/Running zombies

There’s so much that’s taken from Romero’s Living Dead series (Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, and Land of the Dead) that it’s kind of shameful. A bit of rip off is understandable (called “homage”), but the special feature made it sound like RE:E’s super-zombies were innovative.

In Night of the Living Dead, the zombies were slow and single-minded. In Day of the Dead, they had recovered memories and returned to their former lives. In Day of the Dead, a mad scientist works on a lone zombie and finds out they can be domesticated and is smarter than expected. In Land of the Dead, the zombies begin demonstrating their intelligence en masse.

Cut to RE:E. They talk about the zombies evolving (albeit from experimentation) and the big deal is that they run. Okay, we’ve covered the evolution, but the Day of the Dead remix brought running zombies (also honorable mention to 28 Days Later, although do we call them “zombies?”). Nothing new here.

A doctor experimenting on zombies

Day of the Dead did this first. It’s remarkably similar, right down to when the scientist puts an object on the table and remarks about how the zombie remembers it. Also, the scientist sacrifices/murders his coworkers to the zombie. Except for the RE:E guy turning into a tyrant in the end, it’s pretty much the same role.

The underground bunker surrouned by a fence

RE:E has an underground bunker filled with scientists and paramilitary staff. They have a helicopter and a fence. There’s a ton of zombies at the fence trying to get in. This is straight from Day of the Dead.

Convoy

The good guys travel around in a convoy. There’s a fortified school bus, tanker, and various other largish vehicles. Putting vehicles in a zombie movie goes back to the Dawn of the Dead remake and, to a particular extent, to Land of the Dead. However, this convoy was taken from The Road Warrior. It goes right down to one of the heroes single-handedly commandeering the tanker, driving it into the enemy, and crashing it.

Sniper crossbow

There’s a scene where Alice (Milla Jovovich) shoots an arrow into the head of a zombie using a crossbow. It’s eerily similar to Cholo (John Leguizamo) shooting a zombie with an arrow from a crossbow in Land of the Dead.

Daylight

The self-aggrandizement in the special features talked a lot about how the daylight was a big innovation. Both versions of Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead mostly took place in the daylight.

Scavengers

Land of the Dead pioneered the use of a convoy to raid towns for food and supplies. RE:E apes the concept but not the execution.

Going up north

RE:E has a minor red herring where everyone decides to go to Alaska. Simon Baker’s character in Land of the Dead wanted to do the same thing. They even used the same rationale: there aren’t any infected up there.

There’s a laser hallway

Not content to rip off other movies, RE:E rips off the first RE movie. It was cool the first time we saw it, but it’s just kind of boring and uninspired here. Did they run out of ideas ripping off other movies? Also, the tyrant is nice (and one of the few things unique to the series), but it’s just a variation on a theme. Where are the giant alligators/spiders/snakes from the games? The games are about biological weapons, not just zombies. The head licker from the first RE was a nice touch. What about the hunters or those bug things from RE4? There’s enough in the series to bring something interesting to the movies, but the filmmakers simply failed to do it.

Conclusion

The Resident Evil series has never been particularly good. It’s good enough to watch but not good enough to recommend. Only fans of the zombie genre or the video games are likely to enjoy them much. I’m also not in any way opposed to derivative works. There have been some very good movies that take a common idea and reinvigorate it. However, I’m rather annoyed when the creators claim to have created something innovative and unique when so many elements are directly ripped off of other movies.