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Two out of Five stars
Running time: 94 mins

Resident Evil: Extinction does exactly what you'd expect from a threequel – it's not especially scary or witty but if you want hot chicks kicking zombie arse then it delivers enough action to keep the Friday night crowd happy.

What's it all about?
Directed by Russell Mulcahy (Paul WS Anderson wisely sticks to scripting this time round), the third instalment in the Resident Evil series sees the genetically modified Alice (Milla Jovovich) surviving on her own in the desert-like zombie planet that the earth has become, killing off zombies and unscrupulous redneck survivors with aplomb. Meanwhile, deep in his underground lair, the sinister Doctor Isaacs (Iain Glen) is trying to develop an antidote to the virus and he doesn't care how many lab technicians or Alice clones he has to kill to do it.

Alice eventually hooks up with a refugee convoy headed by Claire (Ali Larter, from Heroes) and her old mate Carlos (Oded Fahr) and together they fight off a flock of zombie crows. When Isaacs realises he needs Alice's blood for the antidote, he sends a zombie army after them, but he hasn't reckoned on Alice's newly-developed psionic powers.

The Good
The Resident Evil franchise doesn't really have any aspirations beyond multiple shots of sexy ladies kicking zombie arse and if that's all you want from a threequel then you won't be disappointed. The sequence with the zombie crows is well-handled and the double-handed machete action is extremely violent, although the violence isn't as inventive as it might have been with another director.

The Bad
The main problem is that it just isn't scary enough and the so-called suspense sequences only consist of someone walking slowly down a corridor followed by a burst of loud noise on the soundtrack. Similarly, the film could use a bit more of a sense of humour, although it picks up in this regard towards the end.

Worth seeing?
Resident Evil: Extinction is a perfectly acceptable threequel, delivering 94 minutes of zombie-bashing, albeit without much wit or invention. That said, the set-up for the fourth instalment looks like it could be a lot of fun.