Resident Evil: Extinction - R
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Common Sense Note
Parents need to know that this video game-based zombie movie features extremely gross and graphic violence, with many disgusting deaths. People are in extreme peril, and most of the main characters -- even sympathetic ones -- wind up slain grotesquely. There's some swearing (though maybe not quite as much as you'd expect, considering the butchery and the R rating) and non-sexual nudity. The heroine is a courageous and capable woman, and the good guys are a nicely multicultural bunch (even if they don't last the duration). Some of the background story might be confusing if you haven't seen the two previous movies.
Families can talk about the appeal of zombie-gore movies. How does the action in the Resident Evil movies compare to that in films like Night of the Living Dead and 28 Days Later? Which is spookier? Why? You can also compare the Resident Evil movies to the video games they're based on. Which is more entertaining -- the interactive zombie-killing experience, or the passive one? For more facts about media and violence, see our guide.
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Charles Cassady, Jr.
The graphically violent Resident Evil movies are based on a popular series of video games in which players must use their weaponry against contagious, flesh-eating ghouls and monstrous mutations -- the spawn of an evil, high-tech corporation that infected humans and animals with a genetically modified virus strain.
You don't need to have played the games to comprehend RESIDENT EVIL: EXTINCTION; but it does help to have seen the original and its sequel. Extinction earns points as the least-predictable of the set, in basic terms of what happens next. But you can safely expect the gore quotient to be high ... and frequently sickening.
The movie takes place five years into a global plague of cannibal undead unleashed by the Umbrella Corporation, an evil multinational whose executives are holed up in bunkers around the world, trying to find a cure (though it really doesn't seem like these businessmen and doctors care all that much about humanity, since billions have already perished or turned into monsters). As seen in the previous movies, the heroine is a former Umbrella corporate security agent named Alice (Milla Jovovich), who was genetically transformed by an elite Umbrella researcher named Dr. Isaacs (Iain Glen) into a super-powered type capable of wielding psi-power force fields and performing martial-arts type acrobatics.
In Extinction, Alice wanders the U.S. desert wastelands in a way that's very reminiscent of the Mad Max series. She's avoided her former friends for years because of what her Umbrella pursuers might do to them, but now she reunites with surviving allies who've joined a highway convoy of uninfected refugees that's trying to reach safety in faraway Alaska. But Dr. Isaacs pinpoints Alice near Las Vegas, and he sets a trap with his own specially trained species of zombie.
Jovovich's Alice is a watchable and physical action heroine, even if the part doesn't exactly call for great depth. It goes in the "plus" column to have a courageous, capable woman at the center of things who doesn't dress for battle mainly to show off her figure. There's also a decent racial mix to the good guys -- even if most of them don't survive the finale. The Umbrella authorities, meanwhile, are overwhelmingly white and male.
You might ask older kids which they prefer more -- films in the escapist Resident Evil vein or more "realistic" zombie shockers like Night of the Living Dead and 28 Days Later. (But you won't lose any points if you don't think any of these movies are suitable for kids in the first place.)
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Sexual ContentSome characters allude to hot dates, but there's no sexual action. Non-sexual female nudity (in the form of clones suspended in fluid sacs in fetal positions) is viewed mainly in profile. One grotesque female zombie has a bare breast. |
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ViolenceFrequent carnage inflicted on humans and zombies (including dogs mutated into half-rotten zombies). Impalings, squashings, slashings, burnings, and more; one zombie is pinned by a crossbow bolt, and a crow subsequently pecks out his eye. Humans are bitten by zombies, and countless zombies are shot through the skull. Monstrous tentacles squeeze out a man's eyes. A threat of rape at one point. |
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Language"S--t" and "bitch" are used, though more at PG-13 levels than R. "A--hole" is a punchline over the closing credits. |
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Social BehaviorCharacterizations don't go very deep. Most of the "good guys" are striving to protect a convoy of the uninfected (including children), but they sometimes treat zombie killing as a sport. Villains (besides the ravenous mutated zombies, who can't help themselves) are the remaining authority figures, such as medical scientists (so callous and power-mad they even let their own colleagues get killed) and evil-businessman types -- who are all white males, by the way. That said, the good guys are nicely multicultural, and Alice is a courageous and capable woman. |
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CommercialismProduct names visible on computers, cell phones, and vehicles. Ruins of prominent Las Vegas casinos are identifiable. And, of course, there's the fact that the movie is inspired by a popular video game. |
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Drug/Alcohol/TobaccoBrief marijuana smoking, social drinking. |
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