Alice (Milla Jovovitch) and her companions aboard the Umbrella Corporation freighter Arcadia are attacked from above by a fleet of tiltrotor planes under the command of Alice’s former ally, Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory), who has been brainwashed by Umbrella. Alice is captured. She awakes in the suburbs, where she lives with her husband Todd (Oded Fehr) and her deaf daughter Becky (Aryana Engineer). An attack by zombies reveals that this is Raccoon City during contamination. Alice and Becky drive off in the car with the help of Rain Ocampo (Michelle Rodriguez), but they are hit by a truck. Rain is knocked out and Alice hides Becky in a house but dies in a zombie attack, including a zombified Todd.
Alice, alive, awakes in an underground facility and is interrogated by Jill. When the power goes off, Alice breaks out of her cell, rearms, and finds herself in Shibura Square, Tokyo, fighting zombies. She ends up in a control room filled with dead Umbrella employees, including Ada Wong (Li Bingbing), who used to be one of Albert Wesker’s top agents.
Wesker (Shawn Roberts) appears on a screen, saying he no longer serves Umbrella and he is responsible for the power failure that freed Alice. He reveals that her artificial intelligence nemesis the Red Queen (Megan Charpentier), is now reactivated and controls Umbrella. The facility is underwater in Kamchatka, Russia, used for manufacturing clones and simulating virus breakouts. Ada and Alice are to rendezvous with a research crew organized by Wesker. On the team are Leon S. Kennedy (Johann Urb), Barry Burton (Kevin Durand), and her old ally Luther West (Boris Kodjoe). Explosives planted near the entrance will detonate in two hours. They will not meet with Alice and Ada in the Raccoon City suburbs. In a New York simulation, they defeat two giant Executioners. Leon’s team enters a Moscow simulation but are surrounded by the undead.
In the suburbs, Alice and Ada find Becky, the daughter of an Alice clone, who thinks Alice is her Mom. They also find Jill and the clones of dead allies—James Shade (Colin Salmon), also called One, the evil Rain Ocampo, and Carlos Olivera (Oded Fehr again), all of whom are out to capture Alice and her true allies. During a shootout, Ada gives Alice her smart glasses and a grabbling hook so she can escape. Then Alice and Ada are separated.
They find the good Rain clone in the Moscow simulation. Alice gives Becky a weapon and rescues Leon’s crew from zombies and a giant Licker. The group reaches the submarine pens but are ambushed by Jill’s team. Becky is captured by the Licker during the fight and the good Rain is killed. Alice defeats the Licker and rescues Becky. Barry sacrifices himself to save them. The explosions go off, Leon and Luther escape the resulting flood and Alice helps Becky through the ventilation system.
Outside, the snowmobile is knocked over by the submarine rising from the ice and they are captured by Jill and evil Rain, holding Ada as a hostage. During the fight, Alice is able to wrench the mind-altering scarab from Jill’s chest, returning her to her senses. But Rain, now enhanced with superhuman strength and healing, joins the fight, kills Luther and knocks out Leon. Alice shoots the ice under Rain, who is dragged underwater by zombies. Alice, Jill, and team get to Wesker’s headquarters in the White House. Wesker injects Alice with another T-virus, restoring her own superhuman abilities. He explains that the Red Queen wants to wipe out humanity. The remaining uninfected humans are hiding out in the base. Huge hordes of T-virus abominations attack the White House and both the U.S. military and the Umbrella soldiers defend it.
This film, rather confusing with its hallucinations, simulated cities, and both good and bad clones of various characters, was written and directed by Paul W.S. Anderson. It was filmed in Toronto, Times Square, Tokyo, and Moscow’s Red Square, and released in 2D, 3D, and Imax 3D. Reviews by critics were generally negative, but as usual it was a box-office success, carried forward by abundant action, brilliant fight choreography, and Milla Jovovich. Nick Powell, the fight choreographer, was also the second-unit director. There was a good deal of science-fiction in this one, inspired by Inception, Westworld, Aliens, and Blade Runner. Only steal from the best. It was also influenced by Asian cinema.
There was a gallery of returning minor characters loved by the video-game fans, many in two versions, good and evil. Sixteen people were injured when a platform collapsed. The emergency workers had their triage work cut out for them because most of the actors were covered in zombie-wounds and fake blood. One fight between Alice and Jill involved 200 separate moves. This why the movie made 240 million dollars on a 65-million-dollar budget, and why Resident Evil: The Final Chapter got the green light. The main cast-members appeared at the 2012 San Diego Comic-Con. The Cerberus zombie attack dogs to not appear in this one. Game fans were angry that the usual behavior of Lickers was changed to copy scenes from Alien (1980).