With a title like Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2016), it would not be unreasonable to expect it to be, in fact, the final chapter. With this franchise, such notions are all but meaningless. The apocalypse seems to happen after every one of these films, only to have something else be the real end in the next film. But then there is always another ending to come in the follow-up to that one. Say what you want about the Bible, but Revelation is pretty clear that Judgment Day will be the conclusion of one age and the beginning of a new, unending one. You may wish to quibble and say there is no real finality in Scripture, but it is infinitely more determinative than anything you see here. You will see, eventually, when I describe the last scene in the movie. For now, let us get the Milla Jovovich era of this series out of the way.

Getting the Milla Jovovich era out of the way begins in Resident Evil: The Final Chapter with Alice (Milla Jovovich) alone in the ruins of Washington, D.C., after Albert Wesker (Shawn Roberts) betrayed the survivors gathered there for humanity’s supposed last stand. The Red Queen (Ever Anderson) contacts Alice and claims that only 4,472 people remain alive on the surface. Umbrella possesses an airborne antivirus in the Hive beneath Raccoon City that can destroy the T-virus and everything it has infected, but Alice has only 48 hours to release it before the remaining human settlements are wiped out. Alice heads for Raccoon City but is captured by Dr. Alexander Isaacs (Iain Glen), whom she thought she killed in Resident Evil: Extinction (2007). This Dr. Isaacs explains that the earlier version was merely a clone, then chains Alice behind his armored convoy as a horde of zombies follows. Dr. Isaacs, who has developed a rather selective interest in Scripture, compares Umbrella’s plan to Noah’s flood and imagines the corporation’s chosen survivors inheriting a cleansed world. To point out the obvious, using biblical language while deliberately murdering humanity does not make genocide appreciably more Christian. Alice escapes, reaches Raccoon City, and reunites with Claire Redfield (Ali Larter), who survived Umbrella’s attack on Arcadia. Claire now lives with survivors Doc (Eoin Macken), Abigail (Ruby Rose), Christian (William Levy), Cobalt (Rola), and Razor (Fraser James). Dr. Isaacs’ convoy arrives with thousands of zombies, but Alice organizes the survivors into a defense using fire, collapsing structures, and other traps. They defeat the first assault and race toward the Hive, although Cobalt is killed along the way. Umbrella releases mutated dogs, which kill Christian, while the others enter the facility through an air intake. Inside, the Red Queen finally explains why she is helping Alice. A recording shows Dr. Isaacs proposing that Umbrella deliberately unleash the T-virus, allow billions to die, preserve selected executives and elites in cryogenic suspension, and rebuild civilization afterward. The Red Queen was programmed to serve Umbrella and to value human life, leaving her unable to act directly against company employees but willing to help Alice stop them. She also warns that one member of Alice’s group is an Umbrella informant. Along the way, the Hive reduces the party. Abigail is pulled into a reversing ventilation turbine and killed, while Razor dies fighting a biological weapon. Alice, Claire, and Doc eventually reach Umbrella’s command center, where they encounter another Dr. Isaacs, who claims that he is the original and the man commanding the convoy is yet another clone. He possesses the antivirus and reveals a still greater surprise: Alice herself is a clone. The elderly Alicia Marcus (Milla Jovovich), daughter of Umbrella founder Dr. James Marcus, emerges from cryogenic suspension. Alicia suffers from progeria, the disease her father had hoped to cure through the research that eventually produced the T-virus. Alice was created from Alicia as the healthy adult woman she might have become, while the Red Queen was modeled on Alicia as a child. If Umbrella intended this revelation to reduce Alice to a manufactured object, Alicia insists otherwise, telling her clone that Alice has become more than anyone could have imagined. That is at least closer to a Catholic understanding of human dignity than Umbrella’s habit of measuring human worth according to usefulness or origin. The informant is revealed to be Doc, while Albert appears holding Claire at gunpoint. Alicia, still half-owner of Umbrella, fires Albert, thereby allowing the Red Queen to act against him. A security door crushes his leg, and Claire kills Doc after his betrayal. Alice and Claire pursue Dr. Isaacs through the Hive, eventually battling him in the familiar laser corridor. Alice loses several fingers but detonates a grenade on him and retrieves the antivirus. She reaches the surface, only for the injured Dr. Isaacs to follow and seize it. Then the convoy’s Dr. Isaacs arrives and discovers that he is the clone rather than the original. Unable to accept this, the clone kills his original before the pursuing zombies devour him, which is one way to settle an identity crisis. Alice releases the antivirus just before the undead reach her, and the surrounding zombies collapse as the T-virus is destroyed. At the same time, the mortally wounded Albert releases a dead man’s switch Alice left with him, detonating explosives throughout the Hive and killing himself, Alicia, and Umbrella’s sleeping elite. Alice awakens beside Claire and learns that the antivirus destroyed only the infected cells in her body, leaving her healthy human cells intact. The Red Queen explains that she had withheld this information because she needed to know Alice would willingly sacrifice herself to save humanity. Before dying, Alicia uploaded her childhood memories so that Alice could finally possess the past she never had. It sounds remarkably final, especially for a film with the aforementioned subtitle. Yet, we then see Alice ride away on a motorcycle and explain that the airborne antivirus may take years to circle the globe, meaning infected creatures still remain and her work is not finished. As if to underline the point, three-winged monsters appear behind her as she continues down the road.

So ends Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, with Alice announcing, in effect, that there are still more chapters. Such conclusions, among so many other moments I witnessed throughout the past six films, have made it difficult for me to take any of this seriously. A movie is called the final chapter, and yet the last scene claims there is more work to do. People die several times in previous movies, only for it to be revealed in the next that there are clones. Villains change sides, sometimes multiple times. Albert is introduced as a bad guy. Then, in the next movie, he is helping humanity. Finally, in the ultimate film, he is back to being evil. The same can be said for the Red Queen. All this makes a mockery of Matthew 5:37, which reads, “Let your ‘Yes’ mean ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No’ mean ‘No.’ Anything more is from the evil one.” One might say that in warfare, which I guess this is, you need to practice some subterfuge in order to keep your enemy off balance. The problem is that armed conflict, no matter if it is against swarms of zombies, represents a failure. The Church recognizes that armed defense can be legitimate under strict circumstances, but She does not therefore celebrate war as something good. As Pope Leo XIV has repeatedly reminded the world, “War is always a defeat!” Another area this film fails is in religion. As referenced in the synopsis, Dr. Isaacs misuses the Bible in order to sell his apocalypse to the Umbrella corporation. Only God can carry out judgment on such a scale with perfect justice, rather than having it result in the utter disaster seen throughout this franchise. Further, only the Divine can know the hearts of human beings perfectly, and the last person we should be leaving such judgments up to is the soulless head of an even more soulless corporation.

Actually, though I hate to be brutally honest, “soulless” is a good word for Resident Evil: The Final Chapter and every one of its franchise cousins. As I approached the end of this last one, I kept hoping that it would have a happy conclusion for Alice, despite my annoyance with her character. I’m a sucker for a happy ending, but there is no such luck here.