Resident Evil provides nothing new for zombie-philliacs

*****

The zombies are still un-dead; the world is still in ruins; Milla Jovovich is still dressed like a street-walker; so what is new in the third (and hopefully final) installment of the Resident Evil series? Not much. Resident Evil: Extinction, released in late September, follows the storyline where it ended in the second movie, Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004).

After the T-virus outbreak at Raccoon City, a group of survivors are on the move, traveling in a caravan from city to city in search of a haven from the infection. These survivors include Carlos Olivera, the S.T.A.R.S. agent who first appeared in RE2, played by Oded Fehr (The Mummy; The Mummy Returns); L.J., the funkified scaredy-cat who avoided death about three times in the second movie, played by Mike Epps (Friday After Next; The Fighting Temptations); and newcomers: Claire, the strong-willed leader of the caravan, played by Ali Larter (House on Haunted Hill; Final Destination 1 & 2; Heroes) and Betty, the kick-your-ass/cauterize-your-bite-wound nurse, played by R&B Princess Ashanti (Coach Carter; John Tucker Must Die), amongst others.

The survivors set up camp at a seemingly-abandoned building, as would be expected from any "scary" movie, when a crowd of crows begins to swarm around them. Those birds, they realize, have been feeding on infected flesh - the bodies of the people the zombies killed - and now they want the survivors'. It is at this point in the movie that Alice (Jovovich) and the survivors are united in a throwdown, as Alice uses her newly-mastered superhuman telekinesis powers to encompass the fowl crowd in a sea of fire.

The caravan decides to head towards Alaska based on information Alice found in a diary that claimed the 49th state was free of infection. In order to make it there successfully, though, they need gas. Next stop: Las Vegas, Nevada - only now, the city is overrun by desert, its buildings covered in miles of sand. It doesn't take long before Dr. Isaacs (Iain Glen) of the Umbrella Corporation finds Alice in the City of Sin and sends his zombie minions out to take her down once and for all.

The movie was very predictable and not extremely innovative in its plot, but it turned out to be more entertaining than I expected. The main issue many fans of the Resident Evil video games have had with the movies is that few of the original characters have been in the movies; Alice, for example, is a completely new character who is never seen in the video games, along with every other character that appears in the three-film series except for two: Jill Valentine, seen in the second movie, and Claire Redfield, seen in RE3 (both are actual characters in the video game series).

Overall, the movie was acceptable - definitely not the worst zombie film ever made. As a zombie fanatic, though, I had hoped for better.