I submit to you that the Resident Evil series of films are some of the best video game-inspired movies made to date. Are they art? Yes. Are they high art? Hell no. Are they entertaining? Definitely. The long running video game franchise is largely credited with inventing the “survival horror” genre and features a complicated web of conspiracies and secret organizations amidst a city over run by brain-chomping ghoulies. The films lift a few characters and situations from the games, but leave the tone far behind. If you’ve played a Resident Evil game, you know it’s all about conserving ammo and health and staying away from as many zombies as possible. While it makes for an interesting twist in a game, that would be one boring ass zombie movie so the film goes the other direction into over-the-top, Devil May Cry-style ultra mega super violence.

This is the third film in the franchise and ostensibly the last, though it did make its money back so I doubt we’ve truly seen the last of this series. In the first film, the zombie-making T-Virus was unleashed in the top secret underground facility where it was created. By part two, the city above had been overrun as well. As we begin the third film, zombie apocalypse is in full effect. Humanity is reduced to a few roving bands of nomads, zombies are everywhere and the desert has re-taken most cities as the Earth slowly dies.

Our hero is an amnesiac mega-hottie with super powers called Alice (Milla Jovovich). Ah, amnesia. Video games love amnesia even more than soap operas. Anyway, she’s got her memory back now and thanks to the Umbrella (ella…ella) Corporation bonding her blood with the T-Virus, she now has all of Keanu Reeves’ best moves. On the run from her malevolent masters, she meets and reluctantly teams up with some old companions who are shepherding a group of survivors through the desert in hopes of finding some place zombie free.

Look, I never said it wasn’t silly. There’s amnesia, clones, genetically engineered super soldiers, zombies and high-octane kung fu. Shakespeare it ain’t. And during some of the battles scenes, you might feel like you’re watching somebody play their Xbox 360. However, Jovovich proves her chops as an ass-kicking heroine once again and plays it straight as an arrow. The rest of the cast, including Oded Fehr (of Mummy fame), Ali Larter and Mike Epps are all excellent here, especially Fehr’s Carlos Oliveria who returns from second film. His final scene is probably the highlight of the entire series.

If you enjoyed either of the previous two films, you’ll find more of the same to dig into here. If you hated them, very little has changed and you’re probably just as well off skipping this installment. But if you’re looking for slick CGI effects, some highly stylized zombie ultra violence with hot chicks doing high kicks in mini-skirts, explosions every 45 seconds and some interesting science fiction ideas littered among the corpses, Resident Evil: Extinction is as good as it gets. It takes itself just seriously enough to be cool, but not so much that it gets bogged down in reality.

* Acting – 3
* Blood – 4
* Violence – 5
* Partying – 2
* Language – 3
* Humor – 2
* Predictability – 3
* Girls – 3
* Gore – 4
* Sexuality – 3
* Torture – 2
* Overall – 3

Comparing Scanners with Terminator probably gives it too much credit though. While Terminator was ahead of its time, Scanners is firmly rooted in 1981. Scanners are people who have been born with incredible but dangerous mental powers. Sort of like the X-Men, except instead of having all kinds of different powers, they all have the same one. Over the course of the movie, it becomes less and less clear what this power actually is. At one point it is explained as form of extra-sensory perception that allows the user to connect his nervous system to that of another living being. In practice, it looks like bad actor’s faking diabetic shock to Devo B-sides. With it, you can read thoughts, cause heart attacks, control people like puppets, and… hack computers? In one memorable scene, veteran B-movie badass Michael Ironside uses his power to explode a rival Scanner’s head in one of the most grotesque special FX sequences ever used in film. It is this moment for which the film is probably best known and fondly remembered. Sadly, it comes rather early and little that follows is as interesting.

Our hero is Cameron Vale (Stephen Lack), a deranged, wandering vagrant who is unable to lead a normal life due to the voices in his head. Discovered and abducted by the government, he learns that he is a Scanner, and the voices in his head were the thoughts of everyone around him. They offer him a way to control it if he agrees to work for them. With little fuss, he does, and soon our hobo is a dapper double agent, sent out to infiltrate the rival Scanner underground led by the powerful and dangerous Daryl Revok (Michael Ironside). His psychic misadventures lead him to a different group of Scanners, one opposed to Revok’s underground and with the help of their leader Kim Obrist (Jennifer O’Neill), Cameron discovers there’s far more to himself and to being a Scanner than his government masters have told him.

The cast also features Patrick McGoohan as Cameron’s government mentor and Robert A. Silverman as a demented sculptor. Jennifer O’Neill isn’t too bad either, but Stephen Lack… I can only shake my head at the name and move on. This guy is from another world. You will rarely see acting this bad in your life. Despite a few classic moments, like the aforementioned head-explosion, this film is an embarrassing, dated mess. If it had really been about crazy psychics from various secret societies running around the city and blowing each other’s heads off (like Highlander without sword-fights, just decapitations) THAT would be an entertaining film. The plot, despite a hilariously over-acted and gore-filled final showdown, never makes much sense or rises above the horrible performances and grating music. It may have a reputation as a classic but the original Scanners is one headache you can just avoid. Maybe the remake will take the idea somewhere better. Somewhere with more exploding heads.

* Acting – 2
* Blood – 3
* Violence – 3
* Partying – 1
* Language – 2
* Humor – 1
* Predictability – 1
* Girls – 1
* Gore – 3
* Sexuality – 1
* Torture – 1
* Overall – 1

Nerdy but hot Emily (Danica McKellar of Wonder Years fame) organizes a class field trip to a nearby island in order to investigate the local flora and fauna for extra credit. Cliché runs amok on the ensuing boat trip, as Emily sparks a connection with the popular yet sensitive football player, while the rest of the “teenagers” (including a big dumb jock and a horny foreign exchange student) demonstrate their knowledge of pop culture for no discernible reason.

Eventually, of course, people have to start dying. Cue the creepy owners of the island, Vincent King (Sean Kanan) and Mary Shelley (Juliet Landau). Outwardly, they seem as adorable and inviting as can be. They’re even horror movie buffs like the kids, so everyone gets along great. Then their teacher disappears. Then the phones go out. Naturally, they start smoking reefer and splitting up to breed and then start disappearing one by one.

We’ve all seen this movie before. That’s not even the biggest problem, sadly. Self-awareness can elevate the horror when done well, but it’s not just the patently Buffy-esque rag-tag collection of teenagers that are guilty here. Even the film’s killers are in on the ridiculous gag. From conversations about Saturday morning cartoons, to the blatant similarities to other famous horror films to referencing those films in the dialogue this movie literally has absolutely nothing to say other than to remind you that it has absolutely nothing to say.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans might like to see Juliet Landau doing her thing, and Danica McKellar is as gorgeous as ever. And yes, there are some bouncing boobies and a bucket or three of fake blood. However, you don’t get there without a truck-load of bad acting, plot holes wider than Texas and continuity errors in nearly every scene. HACK! does earn a few extra points for a pointless twist at the end and surprise incest. None of this, however, can save it from being an uninspired slasher.

* Acting – 2
* Blood – 3
* Violence – 3
* Partying – 3
* Language – 2
* Humor – 2
* Predictability – 5
* Girls – 3
* Gore – 3
* Sexuality – 3
* Torture – 1
* Overall – 2

The role of Earl Brooks is certainly unlike anything Costner has done in the past, but unfortunately it’s also a bit of a cop-out as well. The voices in his head that drive him to kill are given a physical presence in the film, in the form of Earl’s imaginary friend Marshall, played by William Hurt. Marshall is the real killer and driving force behind Earl’s addiction to murder, so mostly we just see Kevin Costner playing the nice guy who’s secretly crying on the inside, while William Hurt plays the nasty, psychopathic stuff.

The film sets up Earl as having been lying low for years, after decades of killing under various modus operandi. The plot centers around a gifted Federal agent (Demi Moore) who is determined to find him, and a sleazy peeping tom (Dane Cook) who blackmails Mr. Brooks into making him his apprentice after catching him on film during his rusty return to the murder business. There’s also an interesting, if somewhat confusing, subplot concerning Earl’s daughter possibly (Danielle Panabaker) following in her father’s blood-soaked footsteps.

While the four main actors are excellent in their roles (especially comedian Dane Cook, who is almost unrecognizable here), there’s not a whole lot of murder going on, and the film gets a little sidetracked following the Federal agent’s storyline, which includes a completely different serial killer who’s obsessed with tracking her down and killing her. These parts feel almost like a completely different film, more like a lame Se7en retread than the Talented Mr. Ripley-esque tone of the rest of the movie. The 120-minute running time, filled with long stretches of endless back-and-forth between Earl and his psychopathic alter-ego and only a handful of murders, will definitely wear out some viewers. Perhaps worst of all, the best bit of gore is wasted on a fake-out. Nevertheless, the film picks up in the last act, delivering a few surprising twists at the end.

It remains to be seen whether the other two parts of the trilogy will ever surface, but Mr. Brooks stands on its own as a compelling, if uneven, take on the myth of the American serial-killer. Like Showtime’s Dexter, or Patrick Bateman from American Psychopath, Earl Brooks is a serial killer everyone can love and root for.

* Acting – 4
* Blood – 2
* Violence – 3
* Partying – 1
* Language – 2
* Humor – 2
* Predictability – 4
* Girls – 2
* Gore – 2
* Sexuality – 2
* Torture – 1
* Overall – 2

Michael Myers, the crazed slasher protagonist of the original series, has always come up short in the movie monster pantheon. He certainly has his fans, but his presence and methods are very similar to another masked killer of promiscuous teenagers, Jason Voorhees of Friday the 13th fame. While this film attempts to show us deeper levels of Michael we haven’t seen before, it still does very little to elevate the character or bring him out of Jason’s shadow.

We first meet Michael as a small child in a broken and dysfunctional home. His mother is a stripper trying to make ends meet, his father is an abusive drunk and his jail-bait sister is far more concerned with herself than with helping the troubled child. The only family member he seems to bond with at all is his baby sister, Lori. Soon it is discovered that Michael, who frequently wears a clown mask to disguise what he considers his ugliness, has been killing and torturing small animals. Enter Dr. Loomis, a child psychologist contacted by the school to help Michael before it is too late.

Of course, it is already too late. Mere seconds after Dr. Loomis appears in the film, Michael moves up the food chain to humans, starting with a school bully who has been antagonizing him. From there, we see him take revenge at home, brutally murdering his father and then his sister and her boyfriend. Only baby Lori and his mother (at work at the time) are safe from his rampage. He is then put in a mental institution, visited only by Dr. Loomis and his mother, who takes her own life out of grief soon after the murders.

After this, the movie begins jumping forward in time as Michael grows up in the mental institution, crafting elaborate masks for himself and refusing to speak. Eventually, he escapes and returns to his home town to find his baby sister Lori and finish what he started. The rest of the film is basically a modernization of the original Halloween, condensed to fit into the last half of the running time.

The biggest problem the film has is the relentless nature of the awful things it shows you. While it is every bit as sick as The Devil’s Rejects, it has none of the character, attitude or rebellion themes of that movie. And while Michael proves himself the Jackie Chan of slaughtering defenseless teenage girls with his varied instruments of death (knives, forks, baseball bats, bare hands and so much more), the film plays all too similar to a Friday the 13th, only without any laughs or charm. The level of violence against women in the film may turn some stomachs as well, especially when you throw in a brutal gang rape about halfway through the movie. Violence against women is particularly fetishized with no real conclusion or payoff in the film, which makes it fall closer to “torture porn” than real horror.

Despite a great cast featuring Malcolm McDowell, Danny Trejo and many returning players from House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil’s Rejects, Halloween fails to entertain. It succeeds only in being utterly different from the original. While there are certainly some creative horror film moments to be found, the film as a whole is a turgid, bloody mess and ultimately does little to re-energize the series.

* Acting – 3
* Blood – 5
* Violence – 4
* Partying – 3
* Language – 5
* Humor – 1
* Predictability – 2
* Girls – 3
* Gore – 5
* Sexuality – 5
* Torture – 5
* Overall – 3