“Resident Evil: Afterlife” – I won’t stop and neither will they.

For those of you who know nothing about the “Resident Evil” franchise, Afterlife is the fourth installment. Yes, you read that correctly – fourth. Like most horror films, Hollywood wants to milk it until an actual zombie apocalypse occurs. What you may not know is that these franchises are extremely profitable. Forget about Angeline Jolie or Nicholas Cage if you want to bet on a movie making a profit. There’s a reason why Hollywood continues to churn out sequels featuring Freddy Krueger, Jason, Michael Myers, and Jigsaw. Now, you can add “Resident Evil” to that list. All four “Resident Evil” movies have netted at least $70 million and Afterlife should break $100 million. In addition, these movies are relatively cheap to make, with Afterlife coming in at $60 million.

What’s more amazing about these films is that they don’t really change much, yet people continue to go back every time a new one is released. Unlike “Resident Evil,” these other films aren’t even continuations of the previous installment, they just tweak the details a little bit, toss in a few new characters to kill, and roll film. “Resident Evil” at least maintains the overarching story of the evil Umbrella Corporation causing the zombie apocalypse and our hero, Alice (Milla Jovovich), trying to take them down. Aside from that, it’s the same as the rest – Alice finds a handful of survivors, most of them are eaten by zombies, she defeats another component of Umbrella, and the film ends with some sort of cliffhanger. If you’ve played the games at all, you will recognize this as the exact formula they abide by, which is designed to get you to come back for the next release.

Afterlife delivers exactly what you paid for – lots of zombies, two hot chicks (Jovovich and Ali Larter) kicking ass, more zombies, a bunch of nods to “Resident Evil 5” (the game), explosions, and even more zombies. Like the previous three films, Afterlife was written by Paul W.S. Anderson, so even the flow and feel of the movie is familiar, so if you liked those three you will like this one.

At this point in the review, I would normally give you a plot synopsis, but I’ve pretty much done that already. I would also start tearing into flaws of the film, but there actually weren’t any (at least noticeable ones). Let’s face facts, regardless of what I say about this film, the moment you saw a preview for it, you knew whether or not you were going to see it. Plus, you have to suspend your disbelief to enjoy these movies, so we will readily accept anything they throw at us short of Mario and Luigi popping out of the pipes.

Rating: Falls into the category of you knowing full-well what you were paying for so you are prohibited from asking for any money back.