Resident Evil: The Final Chapter

At its best, “Resident Evil” is a franchise that embraces its inherent goofiness and just goes for all-out action / horror extravaganza. At its worst, it falls into low-budget lameness mixed with grating self-seriousness.

“Resident Evil: The Final Chapter” is the sixth and supposedly final movie, tying up “loose ends” and bringing the story started in 2002's "Resident Evil" to a somewhat coherent conclusion. Ranked, it falls squarely in the bottom half of the series for me — not enough excitement and far too much proselytizing about a journey that, to begin with, never had any emotional weight.

“The Final Chapter” opens with Alice (Mila Jovovich) surviving in post-apocalyptic Washington D.C. after the end of 2012's “Resident Evil: Retribution.” Her cadre of fellow badasses from that movie are largely absent here, and she is once again fighting off monsters all by her lonesome. As always, the evil Umbrella Corp. once again enters the frame, led once again by Albert Wesker (Shawn Roberts) and Dr. Alexander Isaacs (Iain Glen), villains who have died multiple times already in the series but oh well. Alice must fight across a wasteland to an underground base filled with all manner of tricks, traps and zombies, with the possibly vain hope of saving the last vestiges of humanity.

Paul W.S. Anderson has written the entire franchise and directed four of them; his signature style of quick-cuts and general plot incoherence is in full form here. Additionally, “The Final Chapter” continues the franchise tradition of hand-waving the events of every previous entry. Characters return as often as they die; the Umbrella Corp. has multiple underground bases with the same traps in each one; sometimes the apocalypse is preventable, sometimes it already happened, sometimes it's ongoing. What keeps the series fascinating on a creative level is how Anderson has never settled on any one backstory and redefines his cinematic universe with each entry, which has led to series-bests "Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004)" and the aforementioned "Retribution." On an emotional level, though, it means that anything beyond pure insanity renders the movies emotionally inert.

What sets “The Final Chapter” apart, though, is that instead of creating new rules, new scenarios and new absurdity, it instead borrows most of its action by retreading "Resident Evil: Extinction (2007)" and "Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010)." I'm down on "Extinction" and think "Afterlife" is underrated, but unfortunately "The Final Chapter" only borrows superficially from the latter; it contains none of the energy or fun. Given that this is supposed to be the final entry in the series, it seems odd that it so dramatically diminishes the scale of its story from “Resident Evil: Retribution,” which had brought in most of the characters from both the video games and previous movies. De-escalating from a wacky team-up to another solo movie was a poor move.

I'm sorry to report “Resident Evil: The Final Chapter” is a dull affair, the kind of film that was clearly much more exciting to make than it is to watch; as a conclusion to the franchise it might make some fans happy, but if you're looking for a brainless action outing, your best bet this week is still “xXx: Return of Xander Cage.”