Editorials
Does ‘Resident Evil: The Final Chapter’ Contain the Biggest Plot Hole(s) of 2017?
*Keep up with our ongoing end of the year coverage here*
The Resident Evil film franchise is an interesting creation. Adapted from a 1996 video game, the first installment (released in 2002) had almost nothing to do with the game it was based on (save for the fact that there were zombies, zombie dogs, a Licker and an evil corporation called Umbrella). Nevertheless, it was a financial success (earning $102 million worldwide on a $33 million budget) and a franchise was born. Earlier this year Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, the supposed final installment in the franchise, was released. With a $26.8 million domestic gross, it was the lowest performing film in the franchise domestically (but it was saved by a $282 million gross from foreign markets, making it the highest grossing film in the franchise). Financials aside, Resident Evil: The Final Chapter has the distinction of taking a big ol’ dump on the series’ continuity, making it an insult to the fans that have followed it over the past 15 years.
Before I really dive into this, I want to address one thing: I know you are going to tell me that the Resident Evil films are brainless and I shouldn’t think too much about the plot. Save for the Resident Evil and Resident Evil: Extinction, none of them are particularly good. Fun? Absolutely. High-quality cinema? Not at all. But here is the thing: I don’t care. Even though a film series is pure popcorn entertainment, the creator should still have enough respect for his audience to give them a satisfying conclusion that also makes sense. If Resident Evil: The Final Chapter tells us anything: it is that Paul W.S. Anderson does not respect his audience at all. It pains me to say this, as I have long been a defender of this dumb but fun franchise. It is my guilty pleasure, but I don’t feel guilty about it at all. I actually like all of them except for Resident Evil: Apocalypse, which is a big heaping pile of garbage despite it being the most accurate adaptation of the games.
Resident Evil: The Final Chapter actually has a few plot holes that either retcon or undo information we were given in the previous five films. For instance, the big showdown that was teased at the end of Resident Evil: Retribution (a big battle at the White House) is glossed over, with everyone (Jill Valentine, Ada Wong, Leon Kennedy, Becky) except Alice (Milla Jovovich) dying off-screen between films. This robs the audience of what could have been a spectacular moment in the franchise. Of course, it’s likely that battle had to be skipped because Anderson couldn’t get the actors and actresses who portrayed those characters to return for The Final Chapter, but it’s still a crushing blow to fans, especially since none of those characters are even mentioned by Alice in The Final Chapter.
The series has always struggled with continuity (will we ever find out what happened to K-Mart? Why does Claire never mention Chris after Resident Evil: Afterlife? It’s her brother.), and it’s never really been that detrimental to the overall plot of the films. So let’s get into the major plot holes of The Final Chapter which are detrimental to the series.The big twist/reveal in The Final Chapter tells us three things:
- Umbrella’s founder James Marcus (Mark Simpson) “discovered the T-Virus” to save his daughter Alicia (Ever Gabo Anderson, the daughter of Jovovich and Anderson), who has a disease called progeria that causes her to age rapidly. He recorded every moment of her young life in order to preserve her likeness and spirit. His business partner Dr. James Isaacs (Iain Glen) had Albert Wesker (Shawn Roberts) kill him in order to take control of the project. Isaacs then used Marcus’ recordings of Alicia to create the Red Queen.
- The T-Virus outbreak was not an accident, but rather a decision made by Dr. Isaacs (Iain Glen) and the rest of Umbrella to kick-start an apocalypse that would wipe the world clean à la the Great Flood. All of Umbrella’s elite would then be cryogenically frozen and wait out the apocalypse until it was over and then repopulate the planet.
- Alicia Marcus is still alive and wheelchair-bound. Umbrella cloned her and that clone is Alice. Alice was “born” in the shower in the first movie. This means that from the get-go, she has been a clone and that was her first interaction with the world.
On paper, all of this sounds really cool. In fact, if you casually watched the franchise over the years and didn’t pay too much attention to the details, this would be a fairly cathartic set of revelations for the end of a franchise. The Final Chapter brings the franchise full circle and also gives it a heartfelt conclusion by allowing Alice to have the memories of the childhood she never had (Alicia’s memories). Unfortunately, these revelations also ignore or downright contradict things that previous franchise entries have told us.
Let’s start with item one, which seemingly retcons the origin of the T-Virus. In Resident Evil: Apocalypse, we are told that Dr. Charles Ashford’s (Jared Harris) daughter Angela (Sophie Vavasseur) had to walk on crutches when she was little. Charles “found a way to make [her] stronger.” This was the T-virus. Umbrella stole the virus from him and harnessed it to make Bio Organic Weapons. Okay, so who created the T-Virus? It all comes down to semantics. Charles Ashford “found a way” to cure his daughter and James Marcus “discovered the T-Virus” to cure his daughter. If it was Ashford then that means Marcus stole his research, squandering any sympathy The Final Chapter asks us to have for him. If Marcus created it then that means Ashford stole it from him, which also loses any sympathy that Apocalypse asks the audience to have for him. My bet is that Anderson knew the dialogue in Apocalypse was vague (he did write it, after all) and he kept it that way in The Final Chapter so he wouldn’t have to explain it.
Before we move on to items two and three, let’s have a little recap: the plot of the first Resident Evil film follows a Sanitation Team sent in by Umbrella to contain the T-Virus in an underground facility known as The Hive. When they get there, they discover Alice and Spence (James Purefoy), both of whom have lost their memories due to the Red Queen’s defense mechanisms. The leader of the Sanitation Team (Colin Salmon) tells them that they were security operatives for Umbrella posing as a married couple inside a mansion that sits on top of The Hive. They also find Matt (Eric Mabius) who eventually reveals that he and his sister Lisa (Heike Makatsch) were environmental activists who were working to bring down Umbrella. Lisa infiltrated The Hive with the help of a contact from Umbrella, who is revealed to be Alice in the third act. Alice worked with Lisa to bring down Umbrella because she no longer believed in what they stood for. It is also revealed that Spence knew of Alice’s betrayal and stole the virus from The Hive, intending on selling it to the highest bidder. He also released the virus in The Hive, thereby starting the viral outbreak.
Resident Evil: The Final Chapter seemingly undoes all of this (I say seemingly because it’s possible I’ve missed something, but I really don’t think I have).
If Umbrella released the virus intentionally, then what was the point of the whole Spence reveal in the first film? Was he working under Umbrella’s orders to release the virus? If so, why was he going to attempt to sell it to the highest bidder if his future had one of three paths: 1) Live out the apocalypse with the remaining survivors, 2) Become infected and die or 3) Be cryogenically frozen with the rest of Umbrella’s elite and wait out the apocalypse until it was over. In all of those scenarios, money would mean absolutely nothing.
Next (and here’s the big one), if Alice really is a clone of Alicia Marcus and her first moments of life were her waking up in he shower in Resident Evil then that makes everything that happened before that null and void, thereby undoing the entire twist/reveal in that film. It could be argued that Alice was made a clone well before the shower scene, and that she really did have all of those interactions with Lisa. Dr. Isaac’s exact words in the climax of The Final Chapter are: “You have no memory because you have no life. Nothing before the mansion when we created you 10 years ago.” Once again, it all boils down to semantics. Does he mean they created her to be Spence’s fake wife and after a few months she defected to become Lisa’s contact? Or is the film completely ignoring her relationship with Lisa and saying that her waking up in the shower was her first moment on earth? The fact that the experiments being done on other Alice clones in Resident Evil:Extinction always begin with her waking up in the shower seem to support the latter, but the plot of The Final Chapter is so lazily thought out that it could be either one.
Again, I’m fully aware that you’re not supposed to watch the Resident Evil films for their brilliant writing, but you would think that after 15 years Anderson would have had enough respect for his fanbase to offer up revelations that actually work with the continuity he has created. As is the case with so many other final installments in horror franchises (looking at you, Saw: The Final Chapter and Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension), logic and continuity are thrown out the window in favor of mind-blowing twists. It ends the franchise on a sour note for me, which is a bummer considering how much of a supporter of it I’ve been over the years. Oh well, at least it’s better than Apocalypse.
Twice a month Joe Lipsett will dissect a new Amityville Horror film to explore how the “franchise” has evolved in increasingly ludicrous directions. This is “The Amityville IP.”
A bizarre recurring issue with the Amityville “franchise” is that the films tend to be needlessly complicated. Back in the day, the first sequels moved away from the original film’s religious-themed haunted house storyline in favor of streamlined, easily digestible concepts such as “haunted lamp” or “haunted mirror.”
As the budgets plummeted and indie filmmakers capitalized on the brand’s notoriety, it seems the wrong lessons were learned. Runtimes have ballooned past the 90-minute mark and the narratives are often saggy and unfocused.
Both issues are clearly on display in Amityville Karen (2022), a film that starts off rough, but promising, and ends with a confused whimper.
The promise is embodied by the tinge of self-awareness in Julie Anne Prescott (The Amityville Harvest)’s screenplay, namely the nods to John Waters’ classic 1994 satire, Serial Mom. In that film, Beverly Sutphin (an iconic Kathleen Turner) is a bored, white suburban woman who punished individuals who didn’t adhere to her rigid definition of social norms. What is “Karen” but a contemporary equivalent?
In director/actor Shawn C. Phillips’ film, Karen (Lauren Francesca) is perpetually outraged. In her introductory scenes, she makes derogatory comments about immigrants, calls a female neighbor a whore, and nearly runs over a family blocking her driveway. She’s a broad, albeit familiar persona; in many ways, she’s less of a character than a caricature (the living embodiment of the name/meme).
These early scenes also establish a fairly straightforward plot. Karen is a code enforcement officer with plans to shut down a local winery she has deemed disgusting. They’re preparing for a big wine tasting event, which Karen plans to ruin, but when she steals a bottle of cursed Amityville wine, it activates her murderous rage and goes on a killing spree.
Simple enough, right?
Unfortunately, Amityville Karen spins out of control almost immediately. At nearly every opportunity, Prescott’s screenplay eschews narrative cohesion and simplicity in favour of overly complicated developments and extraneous characters.
Take, for example, the wine tasting event. The film spends an entire day at the winery: first during the day as a band plays, then at a beer tasting (???) that night. Neither of these events are the much touted wine-tasting, however; that is actually a private party happening later at server Troy (James Duval)’s house.
Weirdly though, following Troy’s death, the party’s location is inexplicably moved to Karen’s house for the climax of the film, but the whole event plays like an afterthought and features a litany of characters we have never met before.
This is a recurring issue throughout Amityville Karen, which frequently introduces random characters for a scene or two. Karen is typically absent from these scenes, which makes them feel superfluous and unimportant. When the actress is on screen, the film has an anchor and a narrative drive. The scenes without her, on the other hand, feel bloated and directionless (blame editor Will Collazo Jr., who allows these moments to play out interminably).
Compounding the issue is that the majority of the actors are non-professionals and these scenes play like poorly performed improv. The result is long, dull stretches that features bad actors talking over each other, repeating the same dialogue, and generally doing nothing to advance the narrative or develop the characters.
While Karen is one-note and histrionic throughout the film, at least there’s a game willingness to Francesca’s performance. It feels appropriately campy, though as the film progresses, it becomes less and less clear if Amityville Karen is actually in on the joke.
Like Amityville Cop before it, there are legit moments of self-awareness (the Serial Mom references), but it’s never certain how much of this is intentional. Take, for example, Karen’s glaringly obvious wig: it unconvincingly fails to conceal Francesca’s dark hair in the back, but is that on purpose or is it a technical error?
Ultimately there’s very little to recommend about Amityville Karen. Despite the game performance by its lead and the gentle homages to Serial Mom’s prank call and white shoes after Labor Day jokes, the never-ending improv scenes by non-professional actors, the bloated screenplay, and the jittery direction by Phillips doom the production.
Clocking in at an insufferable 100 minutes, Amityville Karen ranks among the worst of the “franchise,” coming in just above Phillips’ other entry, Amityville Hex.
The Amityville IP Awards go to…
- Favorite Subplot: In the afternoon event, there’s a self-proclaimed “hot boy summer” band consisting of burly, bare-chested men who play instruments that don’t make sound (for real, there’s no audio of their music). There’s also a scheming manager who is skimming money off the top, but that’s not as funny.
- Least Favorite Subplot: For reasons that don’t make any sense, the winery is also hosting a beer tasting which means there are multiple scenes of bartender Alex (Phillips) hoping to bring in women, mistakenly conflating a pint of beer with a “flight,” and goading never before seen characters to chug. One of them describes the beer as such: “It looks like a vampire menstruating in a cup” (it’s a gold-colored IPA for the record, so…no).
- Amityville Connection: The rationale for Karen’s killing spree is attributed to Amityville wine, whose crop was planted on cursed land. This is explained by vino groupie Annie (Jennifer Nangle) to band groupie Bianca (Lilith Stabs). It’s a lot of nonsense, but it is kind of fun when Annie claims to “taste the damnation in every sip.”
- Neverending Story: The film ends with an exhaustive FIVE MINUTE montage of Phillips’ friends posing as reporters in front of terrible green screen discussing the “killer Karen” story. My kingdom for Amityville’s regular reporter Peter Sommers (John R. Walker) to return!
- Best Line 1: Winery owner Dallas (Derek K. Long), describing Karen: “She’s like a walking constipation with a hemorrhoid”
- Best Line 2: Karen, when a half-naked, bleeding woman emerges from her closet: “Is this a dream? This dream is offensive! Stop being naked!”
- Best Line 3: Troy, upset that Karen may cancel the wine tasting at his house: “I sanded that deck for days. You don’t just sand a deck for days and then let someone shit on it!”
- Worst Death: Karen kills a Pool Boy (Dustin Clingan) after pushing his head under water for literally 1 second, then screeches “This is for putting leaves on my plants!”
- Least Clear Death(s): The bodies of a phone salesman and a barista are seen in Karen’s closet and bathroom, though how she killed them are completely unclear
- Best Death: Troy is stabbed in the back of the neck with a bottle opener, which Karen proceeds to crank
- Wannabe Lynch: After drinking the wine, Karen is confronted in her home by Barnaby (Carl Solomon) who makes her sign a crude, hand drawn blood contract and informs her that her belly is “pregnant from the juices of his grapes.” Phillips films Barnaby like a cross between the unhoused man in Mulholland Drive and the Mystery Man in Lost Highway. It’s interesting, even if the character makes absolutely no sense.
- Single Image Summary: At one point, a random man emerges from the shower in a towel and excitedly poops himself. This sequence perfectly encapsulates the experience of watching Amityville Karen.
- Pray for Joe: Many of these folks will be back in Amityville Shark House and Amityville Webcam, so we’re not out of the woods yet…
Next time: let’s hope Christmas comes early with 2022’s Amityville Christmas Vacation. It was the winner of Fangoria’s Best Amityville award, after all!
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