All Okay Franchises Must Come To An End (until they're rebooted one year later)

Paul W.S. Anderson's Resident Evil series will never go down in history as being the Nightmare On Elm Street of its time, but it would be incredibly wrong to discount some of its achievements. Coming out the same year as 28 Days Later, it took an ambitious step in embracing zombies in an age that hadn't seen an undead hit in over a decade. More importantly, from the very beginning, the movies made an admirable and genuinely successful effort to include not one but always two badass female action heroes. 

Milla Jovovich has such a clear affection for this franchise, and it has shown itself onscreen for six full films. Though the actual products ultimate range in quality and never quite hit the highest tier of horror, that in itself carries them to being something special in their own way. 

Quick Plot: For a series of action horror flicks based on a video game, there's a surprising lack of easy plotting when it comes to most Resident Evil movies. This is perhaps best encompassed by Alice's narrated prologue montage...which takes a full five minutes.

Here's my incredibly concise rundown of what I remember thus far of the first 5 RE films:

Part 1: Alice has amnesia and excellent fashion sense. There's a Cube-like hallway that slices up people, zombies, zombie dogs, hologram British girl, a super angry Michelle Rodriquez, and a Day of the Dead homage at the end.

Part 2, Apocalypse: Everything and everyone is stupid in Raccoon City. No more Cube things, but still zombies, zombie dogs, some sort of zombie giant hybrid monster, and a pimp

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Part 3, Extinction: Las Vegas is covered by zombies. Ali Larter helps Alice kill said zombies. I remember nothing else.

Part 4, Something: Wentworth Miller joins the group. I remember nothing.

Part 5: Clone Wars: THERE ARE CLONES! AND THE LITTLE GIRL FROM ORPHAN! AND MICHELLE RODRIGUEZ...es. It's kind of delightful. 

The only odd thing? It ends, and Part 6 starts, and as far as I can tell, nothing that happened in that one matters.

So here we are, in the swan song of Paul W.S. Anderson's epic (ignoring the fact that a week after I watched this, less than a year after it debuted, it was announced that the series would be rebooted because this is 2017 and we let nothing die). Alice finally has the chance to save the world by releasing an antivirus that would kill all the undead, zombie dogs, zombie pterodactyls, and whatever other CGI creations have been unleashed. 

Alice re-teams with Claire, who now has a new band of feisty (and mostly ill-fated) survivors. Together, they scale through an army of Jorah Mormont clones, zombies, industrial fans, and the return of the Cube-inspired chamber that still makes no sense. 

Look, I'll be honest with you: I am not the person to go to for any kind of sensical recap of what happens in the Resident Evil movies. While I proudly paid to see the first three in the theaters, I've never watched them in full since. I watched parts 4 & 5 (or "the bland Wentworth Miller one" and "the clone one," as I like to call them) off of a recorded SyFy airing while doing other things, like playing Words With Friends or, you know, writing reviews of horror films. I am no expert in Alice's Adventures in Raccoon City. 

That doesn't take too much annoyance out of my sails when Part 6 opens up with no reference to what happened to the few survivors left from The One With the Little Girl From Orphan Who Wasn't the Orphan. Again, I'll fully admit that I might have just missed something, but...did I? Or does Part 6 just start fairly fresh?

I'll put that mild annoyance aside because you know what? The Final Chapter is pretty fun. Unlike most of the other ones, the plot is fairly straightforward with few complications, making it all the more pleasurable to sit back and watch Milla Jovovich wrestle genetically engineered monster thingies. Seriously, if there is one thing Milla Jovovich is good at, it's wrestling genetically engineered monster thingies.

Said monster thingies are never that special (it's been a week since I've watched the movies and I'm having a hard time remembering a thing about any of them) and most of the non-Alice/Claire/Jorah Mormont characters blend into the background so well that I'd believe it if you told me they were also computer generated. But anybody that comes into a Resident Evil movie expecting much more than that hasn't learned a lesson in the last 15 years. 

High Points

It's the high point for all six films, but come on: Resident Evil's commitment to making its female characters heroic and strong warriors is something special

Low Points

That very small part of my brain hung up on things like logic couldn't accept it 15 years ago, and still can't quite let it go: it's a chamber with the ability to laser cut living matter in any configuration, so why, seriously WHY does it not just, you know, LASER CUT IN ONE PASS?

Lessons Learned

Nail guns are cost-effective weapons when fighting zombie hordes

Skyline transportation is not an advisable means of travel in the early stages of a zombie apocalypse

The nice thing about the future is that hands are easily replaceable. The less nice thing is, you know, the zombie apocalypse

Rent/Bury/Buy

As another entry in the Resident Evil series, The Last Chapter is perfectly solid entertainment. As the grand finale of a 15 years-in-the-making 6-film franchise, it's adequate. As a chance to watch Milla Jovovich wear leather and kick ass, it's kind of glorious.  

Crazy In Love (but not with this movie)

Since seeing the trailer for Obsessed back in 2009, I've pretty much been convinced this Beyonce-powered Fatal Attraction rip-off was, in all likelihood, the best thing every made by human hands. It's a sad day when I learned otherwise.

Quick Plot: This is the story of Derek Charles (The Wire's Idris Elba, who will forever be known as Stringer Bell, will thus be referred to as Stringer Bell for the remainder of this review. I suppose by remainder, I mean whole thing).

Anyway, Stringer is a successful vice president of something at a coolly lit office somewhere in LA. Back at his new home, wife Sharon (Beyonce Knowles; remember, if it’s a serious movie, her roles are not played by the singer Beyonce, but by the actress, Beyonce Knowles...even though she sings on the soundtrack) spends most of the day not really fixing up the new digs and playing with baby boy. Life is filled with financial security, loving glances, and smooth R&B infused montages of happiness.

Cut to a meet-cute elevator encounter with Stringer and Ali Larter’s Lisa, a hot pantyhose-less temp eager to take his calls.

Literally, because she quickly ascends to serve as his makeshift secretary, a minor problem since Stringer had previously promised Sharon he’d only hire men for the job. Discrimination? Sure, but also some marital safety since the last femme to fix his coffee was none other than Sharon herself.

Naturally, Sharon has all the reason in the world to worry since Lisa turns out to be nothing less than a complete psychopath with the libido of Pepe Le Pieux. Luckily for Sharon, Stringer Bell is a loyal family man, something he’s quick to tell Lisa, sexist coworker Jerry O’Connell, Lisa, detective Christine Lahti, Lisa, Sharon, and Lisa, all about 35 times in the course of the film. 

And therein lies the biggest issue I had with what is otherwise not nearly as trashy a film as I was hoping: not once in Obsessed do we ever believe Stringer Bell will give in to the blond beauty thrusting herself at him with more earnestness than Nomi Malone. Not when she’s trying her damnest to fellate him at a Christmas party. Not when she’s clad in lingerie in the front seat of his car. Not when she’s wearing a dress straight from Kira Knightly’s closet in Atonement and slipping him Roofies at a tropical work getaway. This is a good, if rather daft and dull man and as a result, all we get to do is watch a strong well-dressed executive try his best to not touch a woman dry humping him at every turn.

Yes, there is some joyful bitch slapping catfighting rounding out the finale and yes, it’s the highlight of an otherwise inert film. At the same time, it’s not like we really know a single interesting fact about Sharon or Lisa to actually care about the outcome. Sharon is a married woman and mother. She wears colorful clothing and has big hair. Lisa is a crazy blond. She dresses like a skank and drinks dirty martinis. 

Whose side are we on? Wake me up when we care.

High Points

Larter doesn’t come near capturing a smidgen of the talent of Glenn Close, but the sheer ridiculousness of her character at least makes Lisa the most interesting thing onscreen

Low Points

So the day before I watched this film, I caught D.C. Cab, a truly joyful 1983 romp with not a single limit. You know what it DID have? A montage. An effing amazing montage. You know what Obsessed has? Two montages. A quiet, happy-family-move-in montage and another, Daddy-playing-with-kid-while-Mommy-watches-from-window montage, both with less pulse than a zombie flea.

Aside from the final countdown and a few random moments of embarrassing failed seductions, about 97 minutes of this 108 minute film

Lessons Learned

Cosmos will buy you all the info you need on the boss of a bitchy gay man

No matter what the film or target audience may be, Scout Taylor Compton remains a babysitter you should never trust with your children’s lives

The good ones are always married. Or straight. Or, one might assume, both.

Attractive women make popular additions to male-dominated offices. While this isn’t really a surprise, it is rather jarring to hear every heterosexual male in a suit comment so crassly on the newest employee

Rent/Bury/Buy

This is one of those days when I say a small prayer to the gods of Netflix for putting the right films on Instant Watch. I was truly excited to seeing Obsessed--one might go as far to say I was obsessed with seeing Obsessed, which would not be true but it would be exciting to say--and my hopes were dashed by the late night cable feel of a minor dud. There’s some fun to be had for sure, particularly in a bitchin’ girl fight and Beyonce Knowles’ attempt to be badass. Overall though, Obsessed doesn’t quite commit to the trashiness it wants to assume.