You will wind up looking through a pinhole, down upon your knees (2/10/08)
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Resident Evil: Extinction. [Russell Mulcahy, 2007. Written by Paul W.S. Anderson.]
In the aftermath of the ecological disaster triggered by the eruption of the T virus from the labyrinthine corridors of the ill-lit underground laboratory beneath “Raccoon City” [I can never get it straight whether this is supposed to be Detroit or not], the remains of the world are populated by zombie dogs, birds, rodents, cute little bunny rabbits, dung beetles, chiggers, ticks, fleas, caterpillars, flatworms, assorted echinodermata, rotifers, kudzu, telegraph vines, really gnarly zucchini, woolly mammoths, and a few dozen Real Humans, easily divided into two classes: the Good Guys, erstwhile homies of Milla Jovovich who cruise around the western deserts in a caravan of buses and SUVs looking to score their next carton of smokes/canned food cache/gallon of gas; and the Bad Guys, a few bent death-worshippers among them but mostly the members of the loathsome conspiracy of mad biochemists who precipitated the first catastrophe who continue with light hearts sunny smiles and consciences unburdened by any apprehension of responsibility to plot in their underground bunkers the engineering of the next one, which somehow is going to put everything right. [“Real men go to Tehran,” mutters Dick Cheney darkly from the holographic murk surrounding the Ernst Stavro Blofeld Memorial Conference Table.] Meanwhile in defiance of the laws of thermodynamics armies of the undead continue to shamble everywhere about the collapsed countryside, even though [a] there aren’t any live people left to eat and [b] they never really eat the people anyway, just chew on them reflexively [no zombie digestion, no zombie metabolism, no gas station restrooms of the living dead] to satisfy some kind of oral fixation. — But, who cares, whatever they are, they just exist to allow Milla to kick their asses anyway — with passing reference to
Mad Max,
Poltergeist,
The Birds, the Ozymandius moment of recognition in
Planet of the Apes [check out the ruins of Vegas buried by the shifting sands], George Romero, Hong Kong, George Romero, Hong Kong, George Romero, Hong Kong, and
Alien Resurrection. Which means we can expect in the next installment Milla will be marching at the head of an army of her cloned sisters on the master command center hidden under Tokyo — with, if they want my input, a giant zombie lizard at their side. The girl is good, but even she can’t knock down buildings with her tail.
____________“How do you kill mud?” (1/7/08)
