Even though they accrued two Empire stars upon their cinematic release, both Resident Evil movies thus far – the plainly-titled original and the sequel, **Apocalypse **– have proved themselves to be fairly endurable and enjoyable post-pub Friday night caught-them-on-Sky-movies fodder. They’re not great movies, by any stretch of the imagination (the second is particularly inept), but they’re guilty pleasures to the max.
So we can say, without fear of seeming like hypocrites, that we’re actually looking forward to the latest in the Paul W.S. Anderson-supervised franchise – and the brand-new trailer for Resident Evil: Extinction, which has just gone live at Yahoo! Movies, hasn’t done anything to disabuse us of that notion.
Directed by Highlander’s Russell Mulcahy, which virtually guarantees that it will look nice but make no sense whatsoever, Extinction continues to follow the fortunes of the scientifically-augmented super zombie slayer, Alice (Milla Jovovich, aka Mrs. P. W. S. Anderson).
This time, she teams up with some survivors of the Raccoon City-based sequel (Oded Fehr as Carlos Olivera, Mike Epps as L.J.) and some new characters (the gorgeous Heroes star Ali Larter makes her series debut as Claire Redfield, a fan favourite from the Capcom games that inspired the movies) to trek through the Nevada desert and, specifically, Las Vegas, while avoiding zombie hordes. But waiting in the wings is evil Umbrella Corporation Josef Mengele-a-like Iain Glen, who has implanted Alice with some experimental wotsit that will make her do something (we’re not entirely sure what).
All sounds fairly intriguing, eh? And the Extinction trailer is a decent appetite whetter, starting off with a neat advertisement for a holiday paradise that soon pulls back to reveal that Las Vegas, with faux landmarks galore, has become a corpse-littered wasteland. A brief bit of CG malarkey that takes us up to space, and an Umbrella satellite, then segues into a wham-bam montage of action in which we see: Alice facing the sort of odds she likes – hundreds of zombies, while she’s armed with just two machetes; Carlos and Claire looking confused; Carlos – always an under-rated actor in our book – and Alice getting a little closer (or so it seems); Alice kicking more ass; Claire kicking ass; approximately 827 shots of Jovovich’s leather-clad thighs; some sinister Umbrella types; and a final shot of Alice framed against a backdrop of on-rushing fire.
It’s actually all pretty impressive, but we’re most intrigued by the fact that there appears to be a Mad Max-type element to this instalment, with car and truck chases across the desert highway, while the thing seems to take place during the day. That’s right – there’s not a single night-time shot in the trailer, which isn’t to say that the movie will shy away from the dark. But if Mulcahy and Anderson have set out to make a horror movie set entirely in sunlight, it’s an admirable and brave attempt, and we wish them well. Certainly, this trailer has moved Resident Evil: Extinction a notch or two up our ‘oooh-o-meter’.
If you want to check out the trailer, then click here for some zombie goodness in Quicktime, Windows Media and glorious HD.