Resident Evil: Extinction - 4K Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

Resident Evil: Extinction



Movie:
4K Video:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score:


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Movie
After the fan bomb that was Apocalypse most people weren’t expecting much from the third entry. However, Extinction turned things on it’s ears and ended up rivaling the 1st movie for entertainment value. It ended up doing what the 2nd one tried to do in terms of expanding the universe, and it did it by going back to the bleak horror roots that made the 2002 film so much fun. The characters have been expanded and given more depth, and despite being a short 94 minute film, packs much more density into the villains than we had seen before with Dr. Isaacs fully coming into his own villainous history.

The film opens up with a reel for reel copy of the opening of the first film. A move that perplexes and confuses at first, but is rather essential to the plot that unfolds later on (which I won’t spoil, even though it’s old history at this point). After that we get to see what’s happened to the rest of the Raccoon City tribe. After escaping the city Olivera, L.J. and several others have met up with Claire Redfield (the scrumptious Ali Larter) and formed a convoy on their way to a safe harbor of Alaska (which was supposedly not infected due to being so out of the way. Alice has been reduced to a wanderer, having separated herself from the group after realizing something is wrong with her (Dr. Isaac’s having cloned her and put a computer program in her head to control and monitor her burgeoning powers).

As the fates would have it, Alice reunites with her old friends once again, spurring Dr. Isaacs to unleash genetically modified zombies to take her down and/or test her powers. Realizing that Dr. Isaacs is never going to stop hunting them with her by their side, Alice and the rest of the crew decide to take the fight to Umbrella’s secret lair, and give Dr. Isaacs a TRUE taste of her massively expanded powers.

Extinction is a LOT of fun, and quite possibly the best film of the series along with the first. It fleshes out the relationship between Alice and Olivera, as well as finally gives us a glimpse into Claire Redfield. I wish they had given us some more Jill, but they left that for future movies, even if her appearance isn’t that great. The movie is much more gritty and nasty, killing off lead characters left and right. But it also is more heartfelt. You can see the conflict in Alice’s head as she tries to figure out who she really is in this apocalyptic wasteland, and that she doesn’t have to be alone. By the end of the film she’s a veritable wrecking ball of power, and the villain of the movie happens to be the best one yet. Dr. Isaacs has been a long time fan favorite, and Iain Glain plays the monster to the hilt. His transformation into the end baddy is one of the best of the franchise, and finally gives us an honest to god VILLAIN to cheer against who isn’t just a mindless monster.

The movie also changes visual aesthetics and tone as well. Instead of being inside and in dark caverns and night time city scapes, we’re all out in the open this time midst the sunlight. Zombies come from every angle, and no one is safe from being munched by them. It’s refreshing and radical for the series, and marks the last really GREAT (for the series, lets not give the RE series THAT much credit) Resident Evil film in the 6 film franchise.




Rating:

Rated R for strong horror violence throughout and some nudity




4K Video: Video:

Like the rest of the films so far, Extinction is a substantial raise in quality from the older Blu-ray. Extinction was the first of the films on Blu-ray to have a REALLY good transfer that was only marred by a few things (some of which I think was intentional). This time the leap is not nearly as great, but is still enough of an improvement to make the jump worthwhile. The Blu-ray and the 4K show some obvious tweaks due to the HDR, mainly to do with the brightness. The Blu-ray is almost washed out and super exposed on the white levels, which gives it an overly bleached and sun drenched look. The 4K UHD transfer dims the image quite a bit, taming those white highlights and actually showing off more detail in landscape backdrops due to the fact that the over brightness caused details to fade off into the image. The colors have also been tweaked just a tad, as they’re richer and more punchy, even the dusty brows and sand colors that dominate the picture. Blacks are deeper and inkier than ever before, and I noticed that the film isn’t as prone to grain spikes during some of the really dark moments. The ONE thing that kept this from being truly great is the fact that there seems to be some obvious smoothing around Milla’s face. My personal suspicion is that this was done on purpose, as it’s present in every DVD and Blu-ray version I’ve seen of the film. Most likely it’s intent was to keep the age lines from Milla’s face from being obvious, as she was finally starting to show her age instead of looking like the ageless model she once was. Can’t really confirm that, but just my personal suspicion.






Audio:

The Dolby Atmos track isn’t AS stupidly aggressive as Apocalypse, but it is still quite a nice upgrade from the 5.1 Dolby TrueHD track from the Blu-ray (and already great mix). It’s much more fluid and graceful, using ambient noises and background sounds to really flesh out the track. Don’t get me wrong, there’s still a lot of bass and a lot of action to keep the mix hot and flexing it’s muscles, but it’s really the background noises that do it here. The whipping of wind around the buses, or the cawing of zombie birds off in the background really come into play. The sand swept desert’s whispering noises constantly filter in from all directions, giving his one a very nuanced and refined feeling over the other outings.







Extras:

• NEW! Resident Road Map: Reflections on the Future of the Series (on 4K disc)
• Teaser Trailer (on 4K disc)
• Theatrical Trailer (on 4K disc)
• Audio Commentary with Director Russell Mulcahy, Writer/Producer Paul Anderson, and Producer Jeremy Bolt.
• Beyond Raccoon City: Unearthing Resident Evil Extinction
• Deleted Scenes
• Resident Evil: Degeneration
• Under the Umbrella: Picture-in-Picture Experience

Final Score: ​

Extinction was a great return to form for the franchise, and one of my personal favorites. It was gritty, took a different location approach to the formula, and solidified the relationships much better. The only downside was that it still is just a bit comicy and cheesy, which doesn’t exactly keep with the motif of the games. Over the years I’ve come to accept that, but when I first saw the first 3 movies I was a bit put off by the tonal change. Luckily the film is a lot of fun in it’s own right, and the new 4k UHD is a real treat. Fun watch.


Technical Specifications:

Starring: Milla Jovovich, Ali Larter, Oded Fehr, Ashanti, Lindon Ashby, Mike Epps, Iain Glen
Directed by: Russell Mulcahy
Written by: Paul W.S. Anderson
Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1 HEVC
Audio: English: Dolby Atmos (Dolby TrueHD 7.1 Core), English DTS-HD MA 5.1, French (Canadian), French, Italian, Hindi, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish (Castilian), Spanish (Latin) DD 5.1
Subtitles:English, English SDH, French, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, Arabic, Bulgarian, Cantonese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Malay, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Swedish, Thai, Turkish
Studio: Sony
Rated: R
Runtime: 94 minutes
Blu-Ray Release Date: November 17th, 2020

Recommendation: Fun Watch