Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2016)

By the time Resident Evil: The Final Chapter landed in cinemas in early 2017 (a December 2016 release in select territories), the franchise it was closing out had been running for the better part of fifteen years. What began in 2002 as a video game adaptation built around a largely original character had grown into one of the longest-running horror action series in modern cinema, spawning five preceding films and consistently finding an audience even as critical opinion remained, to put it charitably, mixed. The tagline "Evil comes home" pointed audiences back to the series' roots, with the action returning to Raccoon City and the underground facility known as the Hive, the very location that started everything. Whether that homecoming would feel earned after all that had come before was, naturally, the question.

The film was directed by Paul W. S. Anderson, who also wrote the screenplay and has been a guiding hand over the franchise since the original. Anderson has a long history with genre material adapted from games and other source properties, as anyone who has read the site's coverage of Mortal Kombat or Death Race will know well. His aesthetic is polished but unremarkable, favouring kinetic editing and heightened visual spectacle over character grounding, a tendency that has sat comfortably enough in the middle entries of this series but which carries obvious risks when you are trying to bring a long saga to a satisfying close. Production was spread across several countries and studios, with Screen Gems, Constantin Film and Impact Pictures all involved, the latter two having been aboard since the beginning. The runtime comes in at 107 minutes, which for a film carrying the responsibility of concluding six instalments is, on paper at least, quite lean.

At the centre of it all, as ever, is Milla Jovovich as Alice, the character she has inhabited across every entry in the series. Jovovich has always brought a genuine physical commitment to the role, and her work here is no different in that respect. Those curious about her range beyond the franchise might find the site's look at The Fifth Element worth a visit. Alongside her, Iain Glen and Shawn Roberts both return to the fold, with Ali Larter and Eoin Macken rounding out a cast that mixes familiar faces with newer additions. Glen in particular brings a certain weight to his role that the film is not always sure what to do with. It is worth noting, for those keeping track of the series on the site, that the two films immediately preceding this one, Resident Evil: Afterlife and Resident Evil: Retribution, were also directed by Anderson, meaning this closing chapter arrives with a degree of authorial consistency, for better or worse.

Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2016) arrives with the weight of a six-film saga behind it, and promptly stumbles under the burden. Marketed as the grand finale to Alice’s war against the Umbrella Corporation, it delivers flashy action and a few nostalgic callbacks but collapses under a plot that’s equal parts rushed, convoluted, and emotionally hollow. For a series that once flirted with coherent sci-fi horror, this feels like a checklist of fan-service tropes stitched together with last-minute script revisions and CGI bandages. The action sequences are loud and occasionally inventive (especially an early motorcycle chase through a zombie-filled wasteland) but they lack spatial coherence or real stakes. Characters return with little explanation, motivations shift on a dime, and key emotional beats (like long-awaited reunions or sacrifices) land with all the impact of a damp firecracker. Even the much-hyped “Alice twist” near the end (a revelation meant to reframe her entire journey) feels undercooked, arriving too late to resonate and too abruptly to satisfy. Visually, the film is a mixed bag: some practical sets ground the chaos, but over-reliance on murky digital backdrops and weightless CGI zombies drains tension. And despite Milla Jovovich’s committed physical performance, Alice remains more symbol than person, her arc concluding not with catharsis, but convenience. The Final Chapter isn’t without moments of energy or ambition, but as a series finale? It’s a mess. Rushed, tonally inconsistent, and ultimately unsatisfying. After 15 years and six films, fans deserved better closure than this haphazard sprint to the finish line. It ends not with a bang, but a shrug.

I'll be honest: going in, I was hoping that Anderson might find something meaningful in the homecoming structure, that bringing Alice back to where it all began might produce at least a moment or two of genuine weight. There is something to the idea, and you can see the bones of a more satisfying finale somewhere underneath all the noise. But good intentions and a decent location do not make up for a script that never slows down long enough to let anything breathe. For a series that, whatever its flaws, built up a mythology and a following over fifteen years, this feels like it deserved at least one quiet moment of reckoning. Instead, it just keeps running. Sometimes that is enough for a Friday night. As a full stop to a franchise? Not even close.

Rating: ★★  | Year: 2016  | Watched: 2026-04-26

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Trailer

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More from Paul W. S. Anderson: Resident Evil: Retribution (2012) · Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010) · Death Race (2008) · Mortal Kombat (1995)
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