I wrote this review as I watched the third turd in the series.
While the film loads:
I am not sure why I am bothering with this review. I mean, what are the odds that somehow the series gets its footing on the third try? It is kind of weird to watch a movie I know I am going to regret more than a binge at Taco Bell.
The review:
Since all of these movies start the same damn way I was worried I ordered the wrong one. No such luck (or unluck, or whatever).
Once again, we start with a retread of the first film (with a twist this time), and I guess this is supposed to be cool. Are we supposed to care? The Umbrella Corp is now trying to clone Alice for some reason, and we are introduced to our now destroyed world. We learn that the virus also dries out lakes—because that makes sense—and now we are more or less in Mad Max world. Well, Mad Max without the cool characters, directing, action, and anything else enjoyable.
Apparently the director made this film in less than 3 hours to unlock the cheesy cowboy outfit for Alice. We get to see more overcut-fu fight scenes as Alice has to take on a bunch of rednecks who lure her into a trap. Although we all know Alice could kill all of these idiots with her mind, we have to sit through an uncomfortable sexual assault. The way the camera moves to her crotch while this is happening is exploitative at best, and trying to sexualize sexual assault at worst. Great job film, in ten minutes you have managed to find a new bottom. I honestly thought this series was above this sort of garbage.
Seven cuts for one kick. Are the editors paid by cut? Honestly, this so is over-edited I can’t even tell what the hell is going on. I think this whole episode was done for sleazy reasons and to make sure the film hit an acceptable run time.
Wow, this really is ripping off Mad Max.
We get to see Claire (yay?) in this one, but this sure doesn’t seem like the videogame character. My guess is they opted to just use the names from the games instead of Mr. Grey and all that crap. They say Claire’s name 3 times in 20 seconds to make sure we idiot-folk notice her character. As said, these films must think that all gamers are complete morons.
Apparently Jorah Mormon (yes, he is actually in this) is doing experiments with Project Alice to get antibodies from her blood, but why are they making the clones go through combat training? Oh wait, I am wanting something to make sense in this pile of shit. My mistake.
The action is crap, but the plot might even be worse. Is there any overall arc to this? This play more like an extended episode of a really bad TWD ripoff than a feature film. I think they wanted abandon the games entirely (not like they had much to let go of) and break off into something new. However, this means that this steamer is the third start of a series more or less. There is almost no continuation. We might recognize characters, but others are missing, and they aren’t together now (despite being in a group at the end of the second film). It also seems like this is just a sequence of dumb set pieces that probably sounded cool on paper.
Since Alice is now a ninja-wizard or some stupid shit like that it all seems a little pointless. To be honest, it all seemed pointless before, but I like that sentence, so it stays.
This should have been a series on SyFy or something. The film really wants us to have an emotional reaction to people we don’t know, to be invested in things that don’t make sense, and care about a story with no clear direction.
I guess if I had to be generous, there are some semi-competent zombie-killing scenes, but I couldn’t appreciate them with every zombie dressing exactly the same. The zombies are literally carbon-copies of one another for most of the film—this seems like a bad oversight.
Once again, we have a crap film that seems to be trying to promise the world in the next installment. Thinking this way is like imagining food poisoning is more enjoyable the second go-round. 1/10
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