Resident Evil: Extinction

Zombies, zombies and more zombies. The place is crawling with them. The template was set years ago with White Zombie (1932), I Walked with a Zombie (1943), Plague of the Zombies (1966), and then the 'modern' cycle started in 1968 with Romero's Night Of The Living Dead. And just when you think the dead will rise no more...along comes 28 Days Later and then an exciting remake of Dawn Of The Dead (2004) and so on.

Why this fascination with ambulatory corpses?

I can't but help think it has something to do with us, the decrepit and ageing posse of consumer baby boomers - and it is no coincidence that a remake of Logan's Run is in the works.

The Resident Evil franchise started off as a video game homage to Romero's zombie movies flavoured with a couple of bits of business from the Alien movies: an omniscient and evil company (Umbrella Corp.); a crack team of commandos; a female 'civilian' whose look belies a steely inner core. Finally, a relentless orthodontically-challenged mutated beastie with a fondness for fresh cast member.

Perennial video game adaptor Paul WS Anderson took the director's chair and the result became one of the more enjoyable monster movies of the new millennium.

Part three picks up more-or-less from where we left off last time. The T-Virus responsible for all the carnage has managed to accelerate global warming and the world is predominantly desert. Our feisty heroine from the previous installments, the still-glam Milla Jovovich, is still out there wasting zombies with aplomb. A small cache of survivors tries to get along as best it can with dwindling resources. And the company, mad scientists akimbo, still tries to... well what exactly they are trying to do is a bit unclear, but they're not helping any.

The Resident Evil movies have never been above looting from the cinematic back catalogue, and Extinction is no exception. This one seems happy to pillage from both Mad Max and Day Of The Dead (even down to specific props).

A vague desire to get to Alaska seems to be all that is required plot-wise to propel the diminishing cast along from action sequence to action sequence.

Director Russell Mulcahy makes the set pieces exciting, particularly those set in a dusty, deserted Las Vegas, reminiscent of his Aussie outback horror, Razorback.

The sneeringly-nasty baddie is sneering and nasty as personified by Iain Glen, even if his motives seem contradictory. Ali Larter and Oded Fehr briefly register as determined survivors among the zombie fodder.

Alas the sense of déjà vu that hangs over the production ultimately makes this a less interesting film and the final plot mechanics that threaten us with Part IV indicate that the whole thing might launch into parody.